Skip to main content

Look Back - Review

 


Cast - Yuumi Kawai, Mizuki Yoshida.

Kiyotaka Oshiyama - Director

Tatsuki Fujimoto - Original Writer

         
"Then why do you draw, Fujino?"
         

​​One of the most common complaints when watching a film is the runtime. When movies like Oppenheimer or Killers of the Flower Moon reach or surpass the 3-hour mark, it can be heavy to most viewers, but looking past the raw number of minutes it will take you to finish a movie this often rewards you with a much more intimate portrait of the characters, their mental states and why are they doing the things they do. This is not the norm, and many times the long runtime can feel clunky and unimportant. On the other side, we can get works like Look Back, that with a duration of 57 minutes fails to capture the essence of its two main characters and is more focused on giving us cute and emotional montages, trying to overcompensate the lack of character development.

Look Back presents us two characters, Fujino and Kyomoto, artists that worked on the school magazine drawing short panels. After graduation, they finally meet each other, and they began working together, just to find out this collaboration is not as perfect and satisfactory as they would have liked.

Struggles between the two main characters represent the author's struggle to create art, the common question "Why do you make art?" is repeated in many reviews and tweets over the internet. As an introspection of ​ Tatsuki Fujimoto (The original writer of the manga), it works perfectly. As a narrative, the lack of depth and detail in this world makes it complicated to follow. I have yet to read the original manga, but I feel this is more of a struggle of the director Kiyotaka Oshiyama, who focuses more on Fujino's part of the story, giving us a montage of how she improved her drawing skills, how she stopped talking with people and her relationship with Kyomoto rather than expanding both characters, giving them fair runtime and development, rather than making Kyomoto subservient of Fujino, not only in the story but also in the way she is written for the film (The story only moves if Fujino wants to do something).

Could there be another motive why this story feels so stale? I think so. Maybe Japanese producers and directors are preoccupied with recreating the stories they are adapting as close as possible to the original material, ignoring that while both mediums can complement each other, they also are not the same. Something that Bryan Lee O'Malley and BenDavid Grabinsk, showrunners of Scott Pilgrim: Takes Off, understood when making their adaptation of the comic book for Netflix.

I am saddened this film did not work for me, but I am amazed at how people are reacting to the movie, can animation be only for kids and to emotionally manipulate people? Do they only care for perfect drawings, cute characters and 'escapist' stories? The more time passes, the more I regret the phrase "animation is cinema". If you want to see a movie where the main character wants to improve after his idol and friend's death just watch ​ Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago - The Ultimate Director's Cut it will at the very least make you go outside and feel good about the potential we all have.

         

         

Final Score - 3/5




Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: What is a Woman? - 2022

  Story  -   Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire travels around the world to ask one of the biggest questions of this generation. Cast  -  Matt Walsh Crew  -  Justin Folk (Director) Runtime   - 95  minutes           What is a woman? A woman is someone who claims that as their identity. After two years of the pandemic, many theater chains and venues are struggling to put people in their seats, it is harder than ever to get a group of 150–200 people to sit quietly and watch a drama, comedy, or even horror movie, surprisingly, one category of film that has seen a consistent demographic to show up are "conservative" or "right-wing" movies. This is not a new phenomenon, there have always been movies whose primary audiences were conservative, republican, and white throughout history, but this new era of filmmaking has been growing and gaining more attention after the release of the 2023 movie 'Sound of Freedom'. The supposed docum...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Resan (The Journey) - 1987

  Story  -   Petter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves. Cast  -  Peter Watkins Crew  -  Peter Watkins (Director) Runtime   - 873  minutes           "I think to remove the veil of ignorance from the world is the most direct way at least to achieve enlightenment." Sometimes it is incredibly difficult to sit and watch a long movie, after all, the way of life in the XXI century has been accelerating to the point that 90-minute movies are consumed in 20 different parts on a tiny screen while commuting to work. This is a world that 15 years ago I would have never imagined. I believe on this occasion, watching a movie divided into 19 different sections has helped me to appreciate and embrace what it is trying to say on a different level. It is hard for someone in 2024 to...
Post a Comment
Read more

Emilia Pérez - Review

   Cast  - Karla Sofía Garcón, Zoë Saldana, Selena Gomez. Jacques Audiard  - Director           "Habla, esta gente habla, pero ahora lo van a pagar."           ​As a Mexican, having to watch ignorant, simplistic, and often disrespectful depictions of how life is in this country is to be expected once in a while. There are countless examples of this in cinema, television, and the opinions of random Twitter users. Most of these are embraced, reclaimed, and even celebrated by large sections of the population, I doubt Emilia Pérez , with its soap opera sensibilities will be hated by many of them. For the more progressive outlets, critics from Mexico, and on Social Media, this is yet another example of a whitewashed representation of the entire country's way of living, its government, and attempting to tackle an issue that causes hundreds of thousands of dead and missing people every year without the proper education and g...
Post a Comment
Read more