A
quick note: this is the first entry in an extended review of the film,“Wolf Children,”
that will be split over a number of essays.
WARNING:
Spoilers ahead for “Wolf Children.”
So
seriously, just go and watch “Wolf Children” with English subtitles (don’t
watch the dubbed version for your first viewing)! You’ll thank me later! And
you’ll probably want to call your Mom as well…
I
absolutely love Mamoru Hosoda’s masterpiece, the 2012 anime film “Wolf
Children,” for a lot of reasons. Some of those reasons are deeply personal,
while others are more distant and technically or aesthetically based. Today, I
would like to discuss one of my more technically and aesthetically-inclined
reasons for my love of this film: its masterful usage of various elements of
visual storytelling to enhance the overall cinematic experience.
At
the core of this section of the extended review are the concepts of composition and editing, what is or isn’t in the shot and how shots are connected
respectively, and just how those concepts are used to great effect in creating
the visually stunning world and story that is “Wolf Children.” I'll be asking what the question of the scene is, or what the director wants to convey with his composition and editing, and analyzing a few specific scenes for what and how they use these concepts to answer that very same question.
Question:
How does one show character choice?
Here’s
a simple, elegant, and extremely effective way: have the character look left or
right for each option, respectively. One can see this in a lot of films, “Pulp
Fiction” for example, and it’s a pretty cool tool for filmmakers and foundation
for good visual storytelling (“Snowpiercer – Left or Right”).
But there is something else one can do to create a powerful piece of character
choice visually: make the choices, framing, or actions funny. Essentially, make
the shots and editing funny and one can get their point across far more effectively.
Hosoda
uses these two ideas to create a very fun and empathetic scene in the film. In
this particular scene, Hana is confronted with choosing where and who to take a
sick Yuki to; a vet’s office for a veterinarian that specializes in Yuki’s wolf
side, or clinic for a pediatrician that specializes in Yuki’s human side?
Notice
what we see Hana do immediately and how the lens is orientated, she runs
straight towards the camera and she looks left and right relative to the lens. We
immediately know that she has two choices from both the framing and “left or
right” screen direction used.
We
then see what her options are: a doctor’s clinic and a vet’s office. Hosoda
will reinforce that these are her choices by having the camera move from one
“choice” to another without any cuts, from a first-person perspective, and with
some natural human eye motion-blur effects. He pulls us into Hana’s choice and
decision-making process by making us feel like we’re with, or perhaps, are
her.
Next, we pull out of
Hana’s perspective and are positioned straight behind with a clear left right
divide being created, with Hana in the middle of course. She tentatively moves
towards each “choice,” but she hesitates each time and looks towards the other
“choice” in each instance. She has only two options, the framing and camera
placement exacerbates that for us, and we can see that she really doesn’t know
which one to choose due to multiple instances of her hesitation. Shots like
these get their humor, comedic, and empathetic values simply from their framing
as we want to both laugh and cry at Hana and her apparent predicament (“Buster Keaton – The Art of
the Gag”). You seriously can’t help but feel both amused and sad for Hana
and her situation because of this shot’s stellar composition.
We then see Hana
talking on the phone, though it is never stated who she is talking to. The
audience is able to infer what “choice” she is debating and when through these
shots’ framing. She is seen sitting below a pay phone, looking left, and with
her body obscuring, but not blocking out, the view of the doctor’s clinic sign.
She is then seen looking ever so slightly to the right with the vet’s office
sign clearly behind her. The first shot’s framing demonstrates a fundamental
disconnect between the doctor’s office and Hana. In short, we intuitively know
the doctors were of no help.
Ultimately, it is the
vet’s advice and Yuki’s statement that she’s hungry that resolves the dilemma,
and we see this through the slow switching of subjects in the shots to just
Hana and Yuki and the fact that she is no longer looking towards her options,
instead she looks back to where she came from and away from where the “choices”
were located. We then see that there were three options, and only in the end do
we and Hana realize that.
In framing these shots
to create a visual of “left right” for Hana’s choice, Hosoda is able to fashion
brilliantly comedic and empathetic scene where we, as the audience, can really
get a feel for the process of decision-making that she has to go through on
pretty much a daily basis. In one quick scene, we instantly feel for the Hana
and the situation she is in. Nothing is easy for Hana or her kids, even going
to the doctor, so we see and get a burdened feeling from Hana’s options and
situations, all the while it being wrapped perfectly in a visually funny scene (“For
Your Reconsideration: ‘Wolf Children’”). Now that is some good
and compelling visual storytelling if you ask me!
Question:
How does one show a character’s dread that arises from their entrapment in a
situation?
Here’s one fairly
common, but almost invisible, way: trap the character in a tight or
constricting frame. The Coen Brothers and their main cinematographer, Roger
Deakins, use this concept to great effect in their films because their stories
are commonly about people, and the audience, getting the feeling that they’re
trapped by various situations (“Joel & Ethan Coen – Shot
| Reverse Shot”). This is an excellent way to show a character’s feeling of
entrapment, but there is also a way to frame the object of that entrapment as
well to create an even more powerful sense of dread and fear. Therefore, a
scene’s editing is just as crucial as the framing itself in order to get the
desire feeling of being “trapped” across to the audience. Once again, the Coens
trap their characters with slow push-ins, compressing the frame’s array of
subjects until the world outside becomes all but nonexistent and we only see
the character’s facial expressions and, by extension, their inner thoughts (“Joel & Ethan Coen – Shot
| Reverse Shot”).
Hosoda practices the
same visual ideas that the Coens and Roger Deakins use, but instead of
pushing-in in just one shot and just on the character, he makes the push-in
happen over a series of cuts between the two “subjects,” with one being the
“trapper” and the other one being the “trappie.” This is best seen in the scene
where Hana encounters another mother in the form of a seemingly lone bear.
First things first, we
see Hana happily walking towards what she thinks is Ame, and we see what she
sees: a silhouette that looks a lot like Ame. After the shots get closer and
closer on her happy expression, we abruptly see her boot splash in a puddle and
stop, and we see the other boot never hits its mark and instead fall behind the
first in hesitation. It is here that we first see Hana’s distress, and we ask
ourselves “what made her stop so suddenly?” Then we see what made her stop, the
silhouette is actually that of a bear.
Hana begins to slowly
back up, away from the bear, but she is stopped by a tree at her back. She is
cornered and trapped between the tree and the bear. She has no regard for what
is behind her since she just wants to leave the situation, and we see this in
her refusal to mind a small sapling’s obstruction. After meeting the tree, she
cowers in fear.
The bear looks up and
at her with a very dead-pan and neutral, but still somewhat of a menacing,
expression. Notice how the bear is looking straight at the lens from the center
of the frame. The bear, and Hosoda, is making Hana, and us, the sole subject of
its gaze. Hana’s, and the audience’s, focus is directed solely at the bear as
well, thereby making this shot full of the dreaded feeling of being trapped
that Hosoda wished to convey.
After a quick, but
almost painfully long and tension-filled, burst of cuts between the bear and
Hana, the bear turns away from Hana and towards its cubs. Take note of how long
each cut is and what the frame is doing in this sequence. The frames get
smaller, more intimate, and much closer with each cut. Eventually, we get what
amounts to two close-ups on both Hana and the mother bear: the climax and the
most tension-filled stretch of time in the scene. We are trapped with Hana’s
gaze on the sole subject of the bear, and we are trapped with Hana by the bear’s
ever more oppressive and closer gaze. The shots feel almost uncomfortably long
and drawn-out, thereby making us question what is going to happen next and
refocusing our eyes on the bear’s almost blank expression. Essentially, the
framing and editing of this scene forces the audience to go through what Hana
is going through, to feel what she feels: that is fear and dread from a feeling
of entrapment.
As the bear shifts its
focus to its cubs, the frames get wider and includes more subjects, there is no
longer only an oppressive one. Hana’s shots also get steadily wider and greater
in the number of subjects within them. This is the de-escalation of the scene,
wherein all the tension that was built up is steadily waned and lost.
Hana is not suited to
the mountain like Ame is, and this scene elegantly reinforces and partly
illustrates that fact. Hana, and the audience, was paralyzed with fear, so we
feel that we really don’t belong in this situation or in this “world” of the
mountain that Ame inhabits and maintains. By simply showing how unsuited Hana is
to the situation or environment, by making her, and the audience, feel trapped
by it, and how little she knows about the world Ame resides in, Hosoda expertly
makes the emotion realization of this film even more powerful than it already
is (“For
Your Reconsideration: ‘Wolf Children’”).
Question:
How does one show the experience of pure, unfiltered emotion?
Here’s
one way:
I’m going to be honest;
this is probably one of my favorite scenes from any film, anime or otherwise. It’s
definitely my favorite scene out of “Wolf Children” as well! If you need to
learn how to show raw emotion, then this scene may be a master class for you (“The 20 Best
Scenes of 2013”). Hosoda creates this emotionally and visually stunning
scene by using composition and editing to his advantage, along with
some music but we’ll get to some other time.
Okay, let’s dig in! The
first shot of the scene sets the stage, wherein we see the family’s amazement
at the sight of snow for the first time. They are framed by door and the
icicles up top so we know what they’re reacting to without seeing it. By
framing the family this way, in the visual frame created by the doorway and icicles,
our eyes are instantly gravitate to the family’s faces and, as a result, their
joyful and excited expressions of wonder and amazement. Remember, the focus of
this whole scene is the family’s pure, unfiltered joy at the experience of snow
for the first time, and this deliberate framing already keys us into that fact.
We
then see what they are amazed at: a winter wonderland.
Yuki immediately jumps
into the snow, and we see her contrasted with a background consisting of the
snow around her. She joyfully face-plants and rolls around in the snow.
We then cut to Ame, who
is again contrasted by an entirely white background and wallowing in the snow.
He falls down face-first into the snow, and when he shakes the snow off his
face we see a smile on his face.
Hana then joins Ame and
Yuki in their experience by leaping into the snow and hugging them tightly,
again surrounded by the white background. They turn around and we are subjected
to three bright, smiling, and joy-filled faces, perfectly conveying the sense
of joy and raw emotion that was intended for the scene.
Next, we transition to
a long sequence of the family running through the snowy woods with various
close-ups and profile shots showing the joyful emotions and expressions on
their faces. In this sequence, we travel along with the characters and their
emotions. We begin to feel like them because we are intimately following them
through their joy-filled experience, and of course the absolutely rapturous score.
After a very fun and
engaging transition, we then get to see Ame and Yuki “skiing” down a hill, in
an open field, with the white snow, diagonal leading line, and bluebird
background serving to direct our focus purely at the characters, their actions,
and their reactions. This is an instance where minimal, but meaningful,
compositions are used to great and lasting effect. We need only see Ame and
Yuki’s raw emotions, nothing else.
Hana soon joins her
children in tumbling down the hill, all with a smile on her face. Finally, we
get all three family members with the same expression of joy in the same how
doing the same thing.
The family stops their
sledding and all individually, but ultimately in unison, let out their most
happy and joyful sounds and collapse back into the snow together. We get to see
and hear each one of their sounds and expressions individually, but we still
get the treat of seeing them all in unison before they stop.
As the scene comes to
its bittersweet end, we get individual shots of Yuki, Ame, and Hana laughing an
ear-to-ear smile on their faces. There’s no need for a group shot or a
particularly complex set of shots, all that is needed is to see them all
laughing at the experience they just had and the resulting, almost contagious,
smile.
At
the very end, we see them, as a family, lying and laughing in the snow.
By both simply
emphasizing the character’s emotions and their outlets in the form of their
actions and expressions, and using very simple editing and transitions, Hosoda
is able to perfectly articulate the feeling and emotion that both the scene is
about and the characters are experiencing. To pull an idea from my film
textbook, just get close and simply show the emotion of the scene because that
emotion will speak for itself. Thus, this greatest take-away from this scene,
at least for me, is that sometimes you just simply have to film something
happening and only do things to subtly emphasize and direct your eyes to those
emotions, and try to not oversell it or hype it up too much. The utter
simplicity of these shots and the scene itself is one truly amazing way to show
a pure, unfiltered emotion of joy (“The 20 Best
Scenes of 2013”).
After
watching “Wolf Children” and his other films, I think more and more that Hosoda
is masterful visual storyteller, in that his ideas and intents are conveyed
almost perfectly through visual means, even without the amazing performances
given by his voice actors or his insane scores (“Wolf Children (2012) – The
Lateral Tracking Shot”). His films can be understood as visual stories without
looking this deep into them, but that’s the whole point of what I have said
here. How does one show things, almost invisibly, instead of merely and simply
telling them? Take a look at this quote from Roger, “The Big D,” Deakins
himself (“Composition In
Storytelling”):
That is what Mamoru Hosoda does brilliantly in all of his
movies, but especially in “Wolf Children,” his compositions and edits
are almost perfectly seamless and effectively convey a great deal of
information to the audience without them even realizing it. His directorial
choices were perfect for this film, and that fact really and truly shines in
one of the reasons why I love this film. He shows us his theme of the highs and the lows of both motherhood and childhood, and he brings us intimately into that very sacred and shared experience, through those brilliant directorial choices. To me, “Wolf Children” is part of the
essence of cinema and what defines filmmaking as an art form. “Wolf Children”
truly is “a cinematic flower, a beautifully simple thing that grows into a
breathtakingly gorgeous celebration of life as it flourishes” (50 Best Movies…).
~
Works Cited ~
If
you enjoyed this analysis of various filmmaking concepts and techniques, then I
highly recommend both this
video on another specific shot of “Wolf Children” and the Youtube channel that
posted it, “Every
Frame A Painting.”
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