In This Corner of the World (2016)

July 8, 2024 5:47 PM

Japan, 1943, during World War II. Young Suzu leaves her village near Hiroshima to marry and live with her in-laws in Kure, a military harbor. Her creativity to overcome deprivation quickly makes her indispensable at home. Inhabited by an ancestral wisdom, Suzu impregnates the simple gestures of everyday life with poetry and beauty. The many hardships, the loss of loved ones, the frequent air raids of the enemy, nothing alters her enthusiasm.

Now on tubi, prime, freevee and peacock. It’s under the title “In This Corner of the World” on tubi.

posted by bunderful (3 comments total)

This isn’t a film about the battlefield or from the airplanes, but instead one about how life changes when battleships begin gathering in your seaside town, air raids start becoming regular occurrences, and you’re forced to make do with limited resources. Based on Fumiyo Kōno’s (sometimes romanized as Fumiyo Kouno) manga, Katabuchi calls his film “almost a time machine” for a history he’s passionate about preserving….

“Everything you see, as far as the landscape, the buildings, those are all correct as it was during the time,” he says. The director points me to a spreadsheet, and explains, “we researched what the weather was like everyday. We took all this real data and we dropped in Suzu and her family and people around her. We plot them in a very real world.”

Mary Sue, interview with the director

Beautiful and heartbreaking.
posted by bunderful at 7:48 PM on July 8

Thank you so much for recommending this. I'm a little more than halfway through right now and... I'm having a hard time comparing the way events unfold to anything else I've ever seen or read! Perhaps "Little Women"?

There's not a strong plot; characters simply change, grow, draw close to each other or are separated, just as in life. As you watch, your own time passes slowly even though the movie is a standard two-hour length. But I haven't got bored yet.

The artwork is simply beautiful and, well, it's a humbly told story. You don't have to be a manga fan to enjoy it.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 8:59 AM on July 9 [3 favorites]

Rabia I’m glad you’re enjoying it! I saw some reviews that complained about how episodic the first half is but I loved it. I restarted it again last night and I think it’s a movie I’ll watch often. If I was still buying DVDs, I’d buy this one.
posted by bunderful at 10:38 AM on July 9