Movie Review: Spring and Chaos (1996) directed by Shouji Kawamori
Kenji Miyazawa was a poet, children’s story writer, and agriculturalist who lived from 1896-1933. Like many poets, he was unrecognized during his lifetime, but had his work become widely known after his death. You may have seen the animated adaptation of Night on the Galactic Railway. This movie, Japanese title Īhatōbu Gensō: Kenji no Haru, depicts scenes from his life.
As you might expect from a film about a poet, we’re not getting a linear or even particularly coherent narrative. There’s bits where he argues with his pawnbroker father about the ethics of the family business, teaches students at an agricultural school, talks to his best friend and sickly sister, writes poetry and tries to become a farmer, in a sort of thematic order.
Like the other film I mentioned, the main characters are depicted as anthropomorphic cats. (There’s a few dog people but always in shadow.) It’s a stylistic choice that doesn’t always work; I think it robs faces of expressiveness.
To make up for this, there’s a lot of artistic expressiveness going on, with different animation styles being tried during the parts where Miyazawa is composing his poetry (even live action at one point, I think.) These parts are creative and interesting to look at.
In the end though, this movie is like the modern poetry I don’t get. I can tell where it’s going, mostly, but it’s not getting me there. I think artists, animators and poets will get the most out of this.
