FYC: "Ride Your Wave" for Best Animated Feature
Saturday, March 6, 2021 at 10:00PM ;)
There's nothing more wonderful about cinema, about art as a whole, than the ability to surprise. If I feel a film showed me sights I never thought possible, if it told me stories I could have never imagined, it instantly earns respect and a special place in my heart. Following that line of thinking, one must say that no other picture in this awards season surprised me quite as much as Masaaki Yuasa's Ride Your Wave. Mixing supernatural stylings and teenage melodrama, the Japanese director has managed to create one of the most painful portraits of loss and paralyzing grief in a long time. If you thought the sight of a girl talking to a water bottle would never make you tear up, think again…
At the start of Ride Your Wave, it's impossible to predict where it's going to end up. Reiko Yoshida's screenplay sets up a teen romance with a peppy attitude and the direction only helps to sell the pure joie de vivre of the whole thing, the camera flying through the air in miraculous motion and impossible angles. This wondrously filmed story is about 19-year-old Hinako Mukaimizu who, at the start of the picture, has just moved to a seaside town where she can both attend college and indulge her hobby of surfing. This last thing is what catches the attention of Minato Hinageshi, a young 21-year-old firefighter.
One night, when Hinako's apartment building catches fire, their paths cross, and romance soon blossoms. For the young woman whose idea of the future is a nebulous undefinition, there's a lot to love about Minato's maturity and endless talents. In many ways, this surf-loving firefighter with a strong moral backbone, great cooking abilities, and an adoration for well-brewed coffee, feels almost too good to be true. Still, there's no deception going on, only brilliant honesty. unsurprisingly, their relationship growing strong as months pass and summer gives in to fall, to winter.
Only one tiny crack shows on the surface of this dreamy existence. Hinako's a bit too dependent on her boyfriend, the relationship consuming her whole life in such a way that she even starts abandoning her love of surfing. It's nothing too dramatic, but an emotionally complicated detail that adds a sense of weary realism to the poppy flick. And then, something horrible happens, something that cuts through the saccharine slop and which I won't spoil. Suffice it to say, the characters' world is thrown for a loop and not just Minato and Hinako's.
Their friends and family have plenty of screen time too, their particular perspectives, their hurt, informing much of the movie's tone. The occurrence is so shocking that it tears the fabric of reality in the same way loss can twist our sense of the world. From this tear, magic infects the world of Ride Your Wave, its impossible possibilities bringing bright new ways for the filmmakers to break and mend the audiences' collective hearts, feast their hearts, dazzle their ears. Pop music is involved, a porpoise cartoon, illegal fireworks, and lots and lots of water.
For those who love the art of animation as a pure expression of movement, color, and mutating shapes, the way Ride Your Wave represents the fluidity of water is spellbinding. It has a personality in quite literal ways, but even before the paranormal genre twists manifest, the beauty of the sea has long defined the movie. This is the prototypical ideal of how computer technology can merge with traditional 2D animation, allowing for wilder techniques than ever before without losing the stylistic ethos, the essential aesthetic, of hand-drawn cinema. It feels boundless in the best possible way.
Furthermore, one can draw a line between the flying camera's wild movement and the idea of riding the waves of life, a commonplace sentiment made more visceral by the genuine difficulty each character faces before embracing it. In this, Ride Your Wave is a great example of style unified with narrative to the point they're one and the same. Subjectivity and psychology inform animation, the drawings an extension of how these people face their turbulent problems, the peaks of joy, and the depths of misery. Even when things seem to be improving when the movie's content in the pleasure of twinkling lights and black coffee, complicated emotion can ruin the idyll.
A primal scream will ravage through the air and reverberate the screen, eliciting copious tears from every viewer with a pulse. This understanding of how chaotic the human mind, the heart, can be is what makes Ride Your Wave such a surprising jewel as well as a technical miracle. Sadly, the flick has been getting such little attention this awards season because, all things considered, it's one of the most breathlessly creative dramas out there, animated or otherwise. Do yourself a favor and go watch Ride Your Wave. I promise you won't regret it.
Ride Your Wave is currently streaming on HBO Max and Hoopla.
Reader Comments (4)
Japanese animation hasn't had the proper recognition from the Academy. I think there have been only 3 films nominated for Best Animated Feature. I think Spirited Away is one of the most brilliant animations I have ever seen. Ponyo, Howl's Moving Castle and Kiki's Delivery Service are also outstanding. Lets hope Ride Your Wave gets nominated too.
6 nominations: Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, The Wind Rises, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, When Marnie Was There, Mirai
Long live 2D animation!
Ride Your Wave left a lot of impressions on me and the after effects always remained even when I was playing Geometry Dash Scratch