Around 10 years ago (just writing that makes me tear up, time stops for no man, I guess), me and my dad left a rained-out-baseball game early, and were looking for something to do with the rest of our time outside the house. It was then that my dad suggested we see a movie. He asked me for suggestions, and after seeing countless ads on Cartoon Network for a movie about a shamisen (I didn’t know what it was back then, but now I can flex my weeaboo knowledge) playing boy traveling with a monkey and beetle across the world to defeat a great evil, I knew what I wanted to see (“I was obsessed,” as the guy says in the ad countless times). I wanted to see Studio Laika’s “Kubo and the Two Strings.”
It’s hard to describe my feelings for this movie, as it is a powerful movie. It’s about a boy, Kubo, traveling the world to collect the three pieces of his defeated samurai father’s gear, the only objects that could defeat Kubo’s uncle. Kubo’s mother keeps him safe from her father and her sisters within a cave overnight. But just as Kubo’s mother takes care of him, Kubo needs to take care of her, as her last fight with her sisters left her in a state of mental weakness; she forgets the stories of her husband, she needs to be fed after waking up in the morning, and she forgets that her sisters took Kubo’s left eye, making him constantly live one mistake away from being found by them.
Kubo is also a storyteller. He uses his shamisen to fold and animate origami to tell his stories to the townspeople. He entertains them. He makes them laugh. He makes them cry. But he is never able to finish a tale. He fears the death of the story. He fears the death of his mother. He fears being alone. And yet when he has to face those fears, there is always something or someone out there that helps carry his burden. That is all I will say about the movie.
While I did not catch all these themes, and was more drawn in by the dialogue, the stunning action sequences, and the music, this was something both my dad and I enjoyed immensely. It stuck in my head for a while, and stayed there. I told my friends about it. I wouldn’t shut up about it. I would play the cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” from the credits on the 3DS YouTube app constantly. It imprinted its man-made models in my mind.
10 years later (I’m better now, but it still feels weird), planned ahead of time (and rescheduled ahead of time), four hours away from my parents (give or take traffic), I went by myself (after group plans fell through) to see the new Studio Laika film: “Wildwood.” Running at two hours and twelve minutes (around a half-an-hour longer than “Kubo” was), it was said to be their most ambitious stop-motion film ever. And it was a strange film.
It felt like I was pulled into another world with its main characters, Prue and Curtis, as they leave the magical world of Portland, Oregon, for something much more mystical and much more dangerous. Prue is a teenage girl who has weird parents and a very cute baby brother she would do anything for. His name is Mac. Curtis seems to be like an old friend who’s nice, a little nerdy, and very socially unaware. But when Mac gets spirited away by a flock of crows (“murder” not now Curtis), they both follow the birds into the fog-covered ivy, parting for them as they enter the ancient woods.
From beginning to end, I was transfixed by the many characters and creatures that lived in this hidden world. I was in awe of the scenic vistas, the harsh reality the story forces characters to go through, and an incredible third act that brings all the world together for one triumphant battle of not only strength, but also determination. I will not spoil the film, as it exists in its world to be seen for yourself.
And yet, when the credits were playing, and the score was being played from the movie theater’s speakers, and the rest of the audience trickled out, I felt dissonance.
I always sit through the credits. Not for a post-credit scene, but because it is something we do as a family. It’s a sign of respect for those who create the films we enjoy. Not just films, but the media we consume as a whole. People put their time and energy into creating masterpieces like these, and they trusted us, the audience, to come and see them. The fact that credits used to play at the beginning of movies is not a shock. It’s like the author’s name and acknowledgments being at the beginning of the book, instead of the end.
Respect. Respect for the artist who put the art before themselves. Respect for the musicians and animators and modelers and carpenters and designers and writers and directors who poured their whole being into a project that proves perseverance in producing a piece of magic is worth their time.
I left the theater a few minutes after the credits finished, and while I was literally alone, my parents being at home, my friends being out, the theater being empty, I felt a part of a bigger world. One I would never truly understand, but I would get a glimpse of now and then. Stories that had no ending because they weren’t stories; they were lives. The only stories that do end are the ones that imprint on you a new chapter in your life.
“If you must blink, do it now. Pay careful attention to everything you see and hear, no matter how unusual it may seem. And please be warned: if you fidget, if you look away, if you forget any part of what I tell you, even for an instant, then our hero will surely perish.”
—Kubo
