I was one of the lucky ones who attended the world premiere of Garden of Words on 28 April. The film was fresh out of Shinkai's studio that day, having been completed only 3 weeks before being screened at the world premiere. The screening was shown at the Pacific Fair Shopping Centre, located at the Gold Coast in Australia, as part of this year's Gold Coast Film Festival. I couldn't have been luckier! I happen to be living in Brisbane, which is about an hour's train ride away from the Gold Coast. 28 April also happened to be my birthday :) It was certainly a very happy birthday as not only was I among the first the view the film, I also got to meet Shinkai himself during the autograph session and shook his hand! All these perks made the highlight of the day even more special. As it turned out, Garden of Words is definitely another masterpiece from Shinkai, one that is best summed up as achingly beautiful.
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| Shinkai signing my Garden of Words poster at the cinema |
According to Shinkai, what makes Garden of Words unique is that this film uses the traditional Japanese understanding of love as "lonely sadness" or yearning someone in solitude, instead of the modern notion of love as romance. The use of this concept actually does not make Garden of Words too different from Shinkai's previous works, such as 5cm per Second, Voices of a Distant Star and Children Who Chase Lost Voices, all of which deal with the issue of coping with a distant love. However, Garden of Words differs from these previous films in that it focuses on the coming together of two people driven by their longing for each other instead of lovers who become separated from each other.
The two main characters of Garden of Words first encounter each other at a park during the rainy season in Tokyo. Takao is an aspiring shoemaker who decided to skip school to sketch shoes in the park whenever it rains. Yukino is a mysterious older woman who also decided to skip work to read and drink beer in the park when she feels like it. Both slowly get to know each other, discovering that they look forward to the rain that would bring them together at the park. However, they have difficulties working out their feelings for each other, and with the rainy season drawing to an end, they must quickly deal with the yearning they feel for each other.
The challenge of pulling off a film about how lonely desire draws two lovers together is that the love between the characters needs to be developed at the right pace and their blossoming feelings explored with sufficient depth. I'm happy to report that Shinkai has managed to tackle both aspects very well. This is evident in the care and attention he places on various little details that do not seem significant on their own, and are therefore easily taken for granted, but when taken as a whole are crucial in contributing to the beauty of the overall film.
Take, for instance, Takao's ambition of becoming a shoemaker. During the Question-and-Answer session at the end of the film, Shinkai explained that shoemaking actually plays a role in the deepening relationship between Takao and Yukino. Shoemaking is intimate because people do not normally show their bare feet to strangers. When Yukino removes her shoes and allows Takao to use her feet as a model for the shoes, as seen during the movie trailer, it reflects the growing intimacy between the pair as Takao is permitted to touch a normally private part of a person's body. In fact, making shoes is Takao's way of intimately connecting with other people. Coming from a family broken apart by divorce and living with a mother who is sometimes preoccupied with her younger boyfriend, Takao did not experience much love in his life. He seeks enjoyment in the craft of shoemaking, partly motivated by a childhood memory in which his father, older brother and himself surprised his mother on her birthday with a stunning new pair of shoes. Ironically, Takao is so caught up in the intimate craft of shoemaking that he is unaware of the people around him, as Yukino observed at one point during the film.
Rain is another significant part of the film that deserves greater appreciation. Shinkai even went as far as to describe rain as a character of the film. Rain was present at many of the significant moments in Takao and Yukino's deepening relationship; it was what first brought Takao and Yukino together at the rain shelter at the beginning of the film and it made their subsequent meetings at the park possible. Rain was therefore central to the love that grew between Takao and Yukino. In a way, Shinkai explained, falling rain is like falling in love: you cannot help it happening.
Finally, one cannot help but marvel at the breathtakingly beautiful art and scenery that characterizes so many of Shinkai's other works. Shinkai mentioned that for this film he improved on his visual art by using a new colouring style. Shinkai's sharp attention to the film's art is reflected in the life-like details of the surroundings its characters are embedded in: the shimmer of the curtains, reflections in the dew drops, the sparkle of the rain and even faint clouds of pollen and dust in the air. At the same time, the dominant use of sky blue and jade green gives the film a lovely dreaminess. The mesmerizing quality of the film's art led the host of the Question-and-Answer segment to joke that the film was "scenery porn". Shinkai chuckled at that and replied that he never thought of his artwork as visual porn, for him, the gorgeous visuals served to enhance the overall film experience. One might argue that such emphasis on the beauty of the film's art may distract from the main story; there is a risk of style over substance in other words. Garden of Words would have fallen into this trap if the development of its story was weak to begin with. However, as described earlier, Shinkai paid careful attention to developing the intimacy between the two main characters that is central to this film. The loveliness and dreaminess of the Garden of Words' art therefore do not distract but reflect the mood of a film that sets out to explore desire.
Shinkai's Garden of Words is truly a work of art, not just in the visual sense, but also in its ability to capture the lonely desire that makes falling in love painful yet beautiful. I would even go as far as to rank it as highly as Shinkai's other widely-lauded film 5cm per Second. Others may disagree with this ranking but this beautifully crafted film is sure to at least touch one's heart. If the reaction of the audience at the world premiere of Garden of Words is anything to go by, this film would be well-received: at the end of the film, there was a brief silence before a long applause. Shinkai admitted after the film that he was a little worried of how an international audience would react to his new film. "Did you like it?" he asked the audience hesitantly in English. The cheers and second round of applause said it all.
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