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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Belle
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cookiemanstah
 Posts: 546 |
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I’m glad this movie is seemingly good sounding and a return to form. The Boy and the Beast and Mirai were horrendous.
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NJ_
 Posts: 3014 Location: Wallington, NJ |
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His only bad movie was Wolf Children, the rest were fine.
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cookiemanstah
Posts: 546 |
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Now that’s a wild take on his most popular film. Why do you think that? It doesn’t have much to do with the article here so it can be brief. |
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Gemnist
Posts: 1758 |
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Everybody has their own take on Hosoda’s films. My personal favorite is Wolf Children and his weakest effort IMO is Summer Wars, and I know for a fact the latter is a hot take considering the Toonami broadcast made it the most well-known of all his films.
So in line with my opinion, I’ve always found his more action-oriented films to be more lacking. They’re not as thematically resonant and emotional as his more straight drama films, but I still think they’re quite enjoyable. Here’s hoping Belle can excel that. |
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liatris
Posts: 56 |
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It is in line with general reviews in Japan that the animation, music and direction are top-notch, but the plot is too forced to be appreciated.
Bell clearly has overseas expansion in mind, but it will be interesting to see how it will be received outside of Japan. Will it be the first step in the advancement of non-Jump anime films? At the moment, it's making money in China, but it's difficult to make a hit in the rest of the world. However, if it doesn't make inroads overseas, it could cause a toppling of summer blockbuster movies losing out at the box office to shonen Jump anime. Japanese summer anime movies are very expensive in terms of both advertising and production costs. |
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Neko-sensei
Posts: 283 |
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Sorry, this response is gonna be long. Think of it like a mini review-after-the-review. And good grief, do not look at the spoilers if you don't want to be spoiled!
Thank you, Richard, for the thoughtful and insightful review! My initial response to the film can be read here (for context on my Hosoda taste, I think The Boy and the Beast is his only really bad film, Summer Wars fails to make the two halves of its plot cohere, and Mirai is a perfect little masterpiece profoundly betrayed by misleading marketing). I'd encourage you to give the film another watch (if you haven't already), as you might reconsider its weaknesses—I think both elements you mentioned are important to Suzu's story. Note: I'm not sure why the review says that 竜/Ryuu/Dragon is "known only as 'The Beast'"; I saw the film in Japanese theaters and both the Japanese and English in-"U" text referred to him as "Dragon" until towards the end of the film, when his enemies begin referring to him as "The Beast." Is it possible that Richard somehow saw a subtitled version, and "The Beast" was used as a translation throughout? At any rate I'll call him "Dragon," since that's the name he gave himself. Although the high-school romantic entanglements may not be connected to the identity of Dragon, they are critical to Suzu's development, both by providing context for her daily experience and by showing us how she interacts with others in the real world. It's important to remember that the movie is not Dragon's story—it's 100% Suzu's tale. Solving the mystery of Dragon's identity is deeply entwined in Suzu's character arc with solving the mystery of her mother's decision to "abandon" her own child by saving a stranger (the exact relationship between the two mysteries is revealed in a moment of epiphany at the climax of the story, which I won't spoil in this paragraph but is profoundly moving), and the sense of valuelessness she feels at that "abandonment" is also what drives her standoffish social interactions in school. Since Suzu is the subject of the film's narrative, not a Sherlock-Holmes-style detective-witness, I think seeing her lived experience is critical. Also, that "school drama" produces Hosoda's second-best cut ever (second only to Ryo-timo's tracking shot of Makoto running in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time), a completely brilliant long shot of a train station interior into and out of which extremely embarrassed youths perform their extremely embarrassed dance of adolescence—a pure red-faced joy to watch. That school life side of the story is also one of several ways in which the film connects to the fairy tale's "beauty is only on the outside" moral. In fact, the Japanese title sets up that theme! Suzu is the "Freckled Princess," and freckles are seen as blemishes (or at best, marks of plainness) in Japan; the title is telling us that Suzu is not a "snow white" princess but the ordinary-looking kind. When she first joins "U" she can't believe that it's generated such a beautiful avatar for her, and thinks that the algorithm has picked up the wrong person's image... until it adds the freckles. Inside "U," there's an entire subplot about a jealous rival virtual singer who dismisses Bell as "merely a pretty face," and spoiler[begins to support her only after seeing that that Suzu is just as plain a girl in real life as she is herself]. Most importantly, when Suzu's relationship with her childhood friend Shinobu creates unintentional school drama (no one can believe that the school's prince could possible care for such a plain girl—he deserves the princess, Ruka!) she is able to defuse the situation by pointing out her own unattractive plainness. Essentially, Belle is set in a world just like Beauty and the Beast's, where everyone judges by appearance; Hosoda is simply a little more pragmatic in his approach to that reality, and explores how beauty, plainness, and the "ugliness" of Dragon can all be used to achieve desired social ends. Also, spoiler[the fact that Suzu unveils herself in the film's climax is Hosoda's ultimate take on the topic—her audience is (apart from a few vindictive holdouts) awed by Suzu's courage and inspired by the normalness of her real appearance, showing that although humans do judge by appearance by default, great talent or great goodness will always trump a plain face]. Which brings me to my most important point—one I'm going to have to hide almost entirely in spoilers, for which I apologize. Fairy tales do not have a single moral; their message is dependent upon who is telling them. Although the Disney telling of Beauty and the Beast that Hosoda is interrogating does have the explicit conclusion that "beauty is only skin-deep," the elements Hosoda wants to challenge are different: first, he wants to make the story about its female protagonist's inner life, and not the Beast's (he's mentioned this in interviews, and I think it supports my interpretation of the film). Second, he wants to point out the absurdity of romantic love as the measure of a good heart—many previous writers have commented that Disney Belle's relationship with the Beast is dysfunctional at best. Belle and the Beast don't get to be "good people" just because they fall in love with each other; they have to demonstrate compassion and an effort to grow as human beings. This critique of the Disney story is what forms Belle's beating emotional heart and leads to one of the most moving climaxes in cinema. Suzu's problem is love, and its solution is love, but not of the romantic kind. spoiler[Suzu's mother perished in a flooded river, saving a child trapped on a sandbar. The young Suzu begged her mother not to go; in fact, the mother had to physically push her child off of her in order to dive into the flood. As the story begins, Suzu cannot understand why her mother abandoned her own daughter in order to save the life of a total stranger—or rather, although she can understand it in the abstract, she still feels abandoned by someone she thought cared for her more than anyone else, whose emotional priorities turned out to be an unsolvable puzzle. When she discovers that Dragon is actually Kei, a boy desperately trying to protect his younger brother from vicious domestic abuse, Suzu comes to the epiphany that she wants to save this stranger even at the cost of her own life, and that it was this feeling of pure self-sacrificial goodness—sacrificial love—that motivated her mother to take her fatal plunge. In one (I cannot stress enough, overwhelmingly emotional) moment, Suzu finds her own value as a human, finds her values as a human, and understands how her mother's embrace of those values also embraced the daughter she loved—the daughter whose natural compassion compels her to follow her mother's path.] I really can't tell you how much more valuable this kind of epiphany is than the idea that "love trumps looks." spoiler[What I find most beautiful about Suzu's story is that she resented her mother for her goodness—it is not her mother's behavior, or her relationship with her daughter, that Suzu can't forgive, but rather her noble death itself. Suzu attempts to run away from that goodness, only to discover it sleeping within herself. (I am reminded of Kurosawa's idea in Red Beard that evil may beget evil, but compassion also begets compassion). Suzu's acceptance of her mother's love, realized through her own actions, is what makes her a "good person" and a force for goodness in the world—not her (admittedly ridiculously adorable; "Haha, I died") crush on Shinobu.] It is possible that since I am, like Hosoda himself, the lucky product of a loving home with (in my fortunate case two) parents who modeled fierce self-sacrificial love for their children, this message speaks more directly to me than it may to others from different backgrounds, but I can testify that Suzu's moment of realization hit me right in the feelings harder than anything else I've watched in the past five or six years. So I guess I don't think at all "that there is someone out there who will understand your pain—and that together, you may be able to heal what you couldn't alone" is the message of the story. spoiler[Suzu and Kei do not fall in love romantically, and they really don't end up "together"—Suzu still likes Shinobu. Kei loves Suzu as his savior and source of strength, and Suzu loves Kei as the person who led her back to her mother, but they still plan to live separate lives.] The message is, as it always is in Hosoda movies, about the continuity of families, the importance of compassion for others, and the incredible power that comes with finding grace inside yourself. Now, I do think that the film is imperfect. It has a serious villain problem—spoiler[there are absolutely people who behave with the brutal, abusive logic of the film's antagonist, but precisely zero of them will back down in that way when challenged. They might back off for a moment, but they'll later be able to rationalize the incident as another example of how no one properly respects them and most likely resume their abuse with a vengeance.] Still, I'm willing to forgive the presence of villain, and even the slightly absurd conclusion of his story, for the spoiler[incredible shot of Suzu, blood trickling down her cheek (her freckles have been ripped off!), defending the two boys in the rain, fully realizing the promise of her mother's love.] Despite the caveat, this is a great film, one I'm not ashamed to admit made me (and others in my theater!) weep openly, one that benefits enormously from repeated viewings, and one I heartily recommend watching with the best possible sound system you can. I've seen it both in IMAX and on the "Ultira screen" with "Vive audio" (the local Aeon Cinema's premium format, which may actually be a better way to watch movies not produced in the IMAX aspect ratio), and honestly, I can't wait to see it again! |
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ErikaD.D
Posts: 659 |
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I read some reviews including Neko-sensei's mini review here. Although Belle is look interesting, including animation, art and music. For me, one thing I don't like in Belle is another Hosoda movie who have a MC whose mother is dead (and father, as usual -- lives). I find it ironic that Hosoda is a same man who creating Wolf Children, about a single mom raising two children when the kids father is deceased (and he recently criticize Hayao Miyazaki for depicting women and girls in his movies) -- decided to kill off two MC's mothers in his two movies (A Boy and the Beast & Belle) for a character development or plot. I find it cliche and even unnecessary. I feel that in Belle the MC's late mother is a plot device or something.
Unpopular opinion, I'm disappointed because although I talked about dead mom cliches on some ANN comment sections before, I'm actually getting tired of seeing that cliche 100 or more times in animes (series and movies) and mangas, and it's becoming repetitive these days. That's just my view and opinion. Edit: Oh, and Belle has another stereotypically bad dad (the boys father). What a double cliche. Not to mention, the side characters are weak and don't get much screentime. I feel like Belle is the clichiest Hosoda's anime movie. The story and plot is, again, very cliche to me but I like animation and music/soundtrack though. Last edited by ErikaD.D on Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:03 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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Neko-sensei
Posts: 283 |
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There's absolutely nothing wrong with an unpopular opinion (see: my conviction that "Mirai is a perfect little masterpiece"), but I hope we can all agree that the "dead mother" cliché is bad! In this case, however, I think you really ought to watch the film before making a judgment. Belle is a film about Suzu's relationship with her mother; her mother's death is not a device to give Suzu's character extra sadness points (as it all too often is), but the entire story in itself. The movie's message could not be conveyed in any other way. In fact, just as Hosoda is challenging the assumptions of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, he's also challenging the "disposable parent" idea that fuels the dead mother cliché! To say that the movie is bad because it explores with nuance and sensitivity a topic that could be a cliché in lesser hands is to suggest that artists should never try to bring a fresh perspective to old topics, which would simply stop all art. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2247 |
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I'll be honest, the part I was most leery about was the mixing and matching of Beauty and the Beast into all of this, so hearing that it's mostly about grief is actually refreshing! And as someone who enjoyed The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, Belle seems like it combines aspects of both of those, so I'm looking forward to this!
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Jayhosh
 Posts: 972 Location: Millmont, Pennsylvania |
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I thought Mirai was wonderful and probably his apex at that point, so different strokes I guess. Also, the global staff attached to this film is really exciting. You have a Disney character designer, Cartoon Saloon contributing background artwork design and the composer of MGSV and Death Stranding on the score. So to hear that it excels in all of the elements they could contribute is not much of a surprise. I love Summer Wars and Mirai, and Belle seems to be a fusion of those two films in particular, though it seems like an amalgamation of pretty much everything Hosoda has done before. He’s steadily amassing a really solid catalog and is probably the most consistent anime film director right now in terms of general quality. |
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Desa
 Posts: 285 |
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North American release when?
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Richard Eisenbeis
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 88 |
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Honestly, you're right. In hindsight I shouldn't have said "known only as 'The Beast.'" I just should have said, "known as The Best." I don't know how that "only" got in there--maybe my subconscious was trying to be poetic. Now as for whether to use Dragon or The Beast for his name, I did not see a subtitled version of the film. However, as the English text on-screen prominently referred to him as "The Beast," that's what I went with. If the in-"U" English text early in the film called him "Dragon," I'm afraid I missed that (there were a lot of bubbles, after all). Either way, I feel both are valid names, I just chose the one I saw in English text for the sake of the review. |
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Neko-sensei
Posts: 283 |
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At any rate, thanks for the clarification! I'm hopeful that the English-language release will retain the distinction between the exonym and Dragon's chosen name, but we'll see how it goes. (Technically, "Belle" is an exonym too since Suzu names herself "Bell" without the "e," but I really have no idea why "Dragon" gets translated into English from Japanese in speech bubbles, yet "Bell" doesn't get translated back into "Suzu"... I think "U"'s auto-translation system may break down if we think too hard about it.) |
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Mike Ferguson
Posts: 10 |
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If you meant in theaters: “GKIDS will release BELLE theatrically in both its original Japanese language and a new English dubbed version this winter, and will qualify the film for 2021 awards consideration.” 
https://gkids.com/2021/06/14/gkids-acquires-north-american-rights-to-studio-chizus-belle/ |
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Dark Mac
Posts: 313 |
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Everything with the Beast in this movie was terrible. It basically goes down the toilet 30 minutes in when he first appears. I'd consider it the worst Hosoda movie by a lot.
At least the opening song is great. |
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