Suzume and the Way of the Mind
I saw that a local cinema was showing one of my favorite movies. It made me sad.
In 2018, I watched Your Name. on my way to/from school. I thought it was good; nothing outstanding, but decent. Five years later, I decided to go to a cinema and see Suzume, by the same director, on a whim – and, let me tell you, I was floored by the time I walked out. I was done.
Until the next day, that was, when I decided to revisit Your Name. I popped my Blu-ray disc into the player and pressed play. And sure enough, once again, I was blown away – arguably even more so than the day before. I wondered why I had held it in such low regard all this time, and figured it must've been a combination of my taste changing over the course of half a decade and the fact that, when I watched Your Name. the first time, I did so on a low-end tablet with a ridiculously low maximum brightness on a bus with shitty headphones.
Long story short, I went to see Suzume again the week after, since I wanted to catch it at least one more time before it left theaters again. I cried even more than the first time... Needless to say, both films now hold a special place in my heart.
Fast-forward a few months. I think I've recovered pretty well from the emotional damage caused by watching Suzume, then Your Name., then Suzume, again. I was looking through programs of various local cinemas, saw that one of them decided to give Suzume one last screening – and had to pause.
Initially I thought that I would be excited to go see it again, or even just glad that it was still showing amidst the onslaught of never-ending superhero movies running for months on end (but that's a different topic). Instead, I was... indifferent. Almost repulsed. This realization, in turn, made me kind of sad.
Thinking about it for a while longer, I realized I still liked Suzume. Its place in my favorite films on Letterboxd was still justified. And I realized that this phenomenon was something I'd experienced before: In 2021, when I first listened to Nurture, I did so for hours on end for a few days, and then... nothing.
I believe this is some kind of defense mechanism of the mind: Both Nurture and Suzume affected me a lot emotionally, and so, after the initial shock wears off, my brain seems to think "this is uncomfortable, and kind of nice, but mostly uncomfortable, so screw this", and tries to trick me into never watching/listening to it again.
I hope that, by being aware of this process, I'll be able to defy these thoughts. I also wonder if this is a common occurrence. Have you experienced something similar?
My experience with Your Name. also makes me wonder what other movies I should revisit that I previously only watched on that very bus. I could be missing out on quite a few gems...
This post was updated on the 14th of July with some minor wording and linking improvements.