five centimeters per second is a film that found me at the right place, and the right time. academicially burnt out, romanticially frustrated, stranded indoors, and longing for connection on a snowy january sunday. i has fallen in love with shinkai's modern classic your name, and i was dying to see his older works - especially with this one not having a "happy ending" akin to your name's ending. however, online discorse seemed to protray the film as a mixed bag. many didnt understand it. for me, i felt the complete opposite.
if you don't 'get' this film you haven't been in love - the kind of love that endlessly tugs at your heartstrings, and can't help but burrow into the deepest wells of your soul. yet, that love is never quenched, squashed, or in other ways, extinguished.
wheather through distance, time, any kind of separation, that feeling seeps its way into your bones and slowly pulls you apart. you know something is wrong, that you're incomplete. yet that last missing piece to complete you is always slightly out of your grasp.... or that part of your emotional jigsaw puzzle has been lost, forgotten under a musty couch in a home you moved away from years ago. that longing eats away at you.
but in real life, that longing will eventually fade. and you'll forget about all of it, the good and bad, your pain and subsequent healing. in this film we will never see that.
we only see a man haunted by his past, feeling unfulfilled in his job and life, pushed to alcohol and tobacco to quell his longings. and man, it hits hard.
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i've seen some people call the characters in this film 'bland'. and i can understand their reasoning for that. they're not really deeply developed, with a lack of fleshed-out personalities and unique mannerisms. but i strongly disagree with where those criticisms target.
you're not supposed to be seeing their struggles within them.
you're not supported to sympathise with akari and takaki.
they were written for you to empathise with them and see your own struggles reflected in their lives.
i firmly believe that you are meant to project yourself onto these characters, and flesh them out yourself with your own expierences.
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as someone who hasn't found closure in many things, this film strikes a chord within me. i feel my own pain surrounding previous relationships of mine in this film. but seeing that pain shown somewhere other than within the bounds of my own mind does give me closure. i think that things will get better. all i can do is hope. and cry. and i don't think i'll cry like the way i did when i watched this films ending montage while watching another film for a long time.
gorgeously animated, emotionally resonant, hauntingly beautiful.
(originally written january 12, 2025)
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