Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (Film, 2018)
At almost 2 hours long you'd think that Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms would have more than enough time to comfortably tell its fairly simple story without feeling both jumbled and disjointed and yet the pacing felt both frantic and rushed and in many ways by the end I felt like I had just watched a TV compilation, a little harsh but the sentiment rings true. Without divulging too much into story specifics the film revolves around Maquia, a young girl belonging to a tribe made up of people that live for centuries, they live secluded from the rest of the world, spending their days weaving, the cloth they produce containing their memories and stories. Maquia is both timid and shy, typical traits for a protagonist within this type of story, and of course there's another girl who's both brash and outgoing, somebody that Maquia herself looks up to, envious of her carefree nature. Early on Maquia is told by the village elder to never wander outside the village and that if she ever does, to never fall in love because the fact that she'll live on for centuries would mean that the people she meets along the way will inevitably die long before she does, leaving her alone. The characters live a peaceful and tranquil life but that tranquillity is quickly disrupted when their village is attacked and Maquia is separated from the people she's spent her whole life with. Assuming that everyone's been killed she sets off to survive alone but in the desolate woods she hears the crying of a baby, and through circumstances she takes the infant as her own, her journey through motherhood begins.
Mari Okada's directorial debut is clearly tackling an important topic, with what it means to be a mother as a cornerstone, among the fighting and action motherhood and all it pertains is the focus. Because of this, character interactions are the draw, it's a shame then that the film relies too much on talking and less on showing, Okada's background in screenwriting clearly taking precedent here. Rarely does the film allow its visuals to speak for itself, in fact characters almost never shut up and it's unfortunately very typical of these over-sentimental and melodramatic works, and this is a continuous trend throughout the film. Overwrought and theatrical the audience is often told how to feel without any of the work being done or any of the effort being put in, you're catapulted through the relationship at breakneck speed to the point that I found it hard to truly care or believe that the interactions were genuine. That's not to say that I couldn't resonate with any of it, in the end the core tenets, motherhood and parenthood are important and something that I hold dear, which is why I wanted to like the film more than I did. Truth being told, a few scenes did elicit a response from me and in the end some scenes worked better and were more effective at building the world and its characters than others, but these scenes are few and far between.
Visually the film is pretty, character animations are nice and backgrounds are detailed, colourful and varied, although some of the CG stands out. Annoyingly a few characters look almost identical and the main character herself looks really silly which took me out of some of the more serious moments, although you could argue the juxtaposition is intentional, Maquia after all being a young girl that's forced into an adult world. Whilst the visuals are ultimately a draw, the music was for me utterly forgettable, the talented Kenji Kawai was unable to muster up a memorable melody and I for the life of me cannot remember a single piece. The world itself is interesting enough, filled with medieval architecture and huge open fields but the world building itself is wafer-thin and there's nowhere near enough to grasp onto in this department. Early on I thought that the shot composition was strange and inefficient at depicting the necessary information but it improved as time went on and overall it's a pretty film but nothing too remarkable.
As the credits rolled I felt apathetic to what I had just watched, both generic and predictable, Maquia has its moments but I never once felt invested in its story. Not only did the tension and action feel forced but I felt that the film itself would've benefited from the removal of all the secondary plot points, but even then the mediocre writing wouldn't help matters. I may sound really down on the film but it wasn't offensively bad, but both inoffensive and generic it's not something that I'm going to be revisiting nor thinking about any time soon. A simple but fairly interesting story on paper bogged down by a rushed and forced third act, nicely animated and colourful there might be enough here for some but the story itself is ultimately uneventful with the drama missing the mark.
