The movie is a domestic fantasy of a kind that seems relatively rare in secondary fantasy, a story of family and of the relationship of mothers and children. This scope allows for an exploration of the depth of their characters and their relationship. And time does pass: the main story covers two decades or more of time, becoming almost a generational story with the relationship of Maquia and Ariel at its core. All of these things are present, all of them shape the film, all of them interact to shape the world of the story as time passes. There are reasons why the Mezarte attacked the Iorph. There is a kind of resistance against the Mezarte, there are other Iorph survivors, there are neighbouring nations of the Mezarte who have plans of their own. There are large-scale epic overtones in the film that explode at the climax. We have to understand them to understand what’s happening to Mezarte society, and have to understand Mezarte society to understand what options there are for Maquia and Ariel and the other people they come to live with. The politics of Mezarte are important, but only insofar as they shape Maquia’s everyday life. The concern of the movie is with how she lives over time, over the years as she raises her son, who she names Ariel (also Erial, according to the IMDB, in either case voiced by veteran voice actor Miyu Irino, who among other films had a role in Miss Hokusai and was the male lead in Spirited Away). Instead the film follows Maquia as she wanders deeper into Mezarte, away from the ruin of her homeland, and tries to learn how to raise the child she’s now acquired. Most of the standard ways would involve Maquia trying to overthrow the Mezarte, or maybe the baby growing up to fight them. There are a lot of ways for the story to go at this point. In doing so she stumbles across a human infant, whose parents have been killed by bandits. Only one youthful Iorph escapes, Maquia (voiced by Manaka Iwami). The Mezartians ride dragonlike creatures called Renatos, and easily destroy the Iorph. For while the Iorph’s society is timeless, their world’s shattered by the invasion of a human army from the kingdom of Mezarte. In an idyllic forest live the Iorph, an immortal people who weave long cloths called the hibiol, which are symbols of their lives and destinies: “the work of a loom is like the flow of time,” we’re told early on, and this is a movie that is deeply concerned with time. Not only is it an early contender for my favourite film of this year’s festival, it’s immediately become one of the best high fantasy films I’ve ever seen. Opening this weekend in a limited release across North America, and next weekend in the UK, it’s an elaborate secondary-world fantasy story that mixes the epic and the domestic startlingly well. Written by veteran anime screenwriter Mari Okada, it’s also her first feature as a director. The first film on the Saturday was an anime from Japan called Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms ( Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana o Kazaro, which according to Wikipedia translates directly as “Let’s Decorate the Promised Flowers in the Morning of Farewells”). Which meant that Fantasia was well and truly underway. Last Saturday I had three movies I wanted to see. Weekends are when most people are most often free to see movies, so the programmers obligingly schedule a lot of films for Saturdays and Sundays. Weekend days are busy days at the Fantasia film festival.
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