Citizen Kane is arguably art — some say it’s the best movie ever made. I think that’s a bit of a stretch, but it was good. I’m still torn on whether they should have revealed the MacGuffin at the end. But that didn’t change me, either.
I don’t really know that any movie has changed me, per se. But I think Wolf Children — a foreign film, an animated film at that, and an anime film (so, it’s gotta be “for kids” to guys like Scorsese) — has the potential to change people more than Citizen Kane does. It’s a love letter to single moms, and I mean that quite literally with no sarcasm. It’s about a young mother who is raising two special-needs children. Because it’s a sort of fable, the “special needs” is that they’re werewolves, but that also means it can be any special need an audience member chooses to insert. You could say it’s neurodivergence, though the film never attempts to do so. It leans 100% into the werewolf lore, or its own take on it (or maybe Japan’s, I’m not sure). One child wants to live as a wolf, the other, as a human. So they seek out what it means to be either one and find their place in the world, while their mother is basically forced to move the family out to the country when she finds city life with a pair of werewolf cubs impossible. While it is a fantasy film, an anime film, a cartoon, and a fable, it also highlights the real struggle real single mothers go through every day. That’s something a lot more people can relate to — either as mothers themselves, or as someone who has a mother, or whose sibling or friend is a mother. I mean, as opposed to Orson Welles’ take on Howard Hughes. This guy was basically Caesar — TF do we care about his problems? Because of what the MacGuffin reveal in the final scene tells us about him? Now he’s just like any of us? Nah. Good movie though, especially for its age. And clever, too. But if it’s art, it feels like art for art’s sake, and that rings about as hollow to me as a superhero movie that knows exactly what it is — and what it is not. And I can name a few animated films I think are better than either. Wolf Children isn’t even my favourite, it’s just an easy pick for the sake of argument.
Citizen Kane is arguably art — some say it’s the best movie ever made. I think that’s a bit of a stretch, but it was good. I’m still torn on whether they should have revealed the MacGuffin at the end. But that didn’t change me, either.
I don’t really know that any movie has changed me, per se. But I think Wolf Children — a foreign film, an animated film at that, and an anime film (so, it’s gotta be “for kids” to guys like Scorsese) — has the potential to change people more than Citizen Kane does. It’s a love letter to single moms, and I mean that quite literally with no sarcasm. It’s about a young mother who is raising two special-needs children. Because it’s a sort of fable, the “special needs” is that they’re werewolves, but that also means it can be any special need an audience member chooses to insert. You could say it’s neurodivergence, though the film never attempts to do so. It leans 100% into the werewolf lore, or its own take on it (or maybe Japan’s, I’m not sure). One child wants to live as a wolf, the other, as a human. So they seek out what it means to be either one and find their place in the world, while their mother is basically forced to move the family out to the country when she finds city life with a pair of werewolf cubs impossible. While it is a fantasy film, an anime film, a cartoon, and a fable, it also highlights the real struggle real single mothers go through every day. That’s something a lot more people can relate to — either as mothers themselves, or as someone who has a mother, or whose sibling or friend is a mother. I mean, as opposed to Orson Welles’ take on Howard Hughes. This guy was basically Caesar — TF do we care about his problems? Because of what the MacGuffin reveal in the final scene tells us about him? Now he’s just like any of us? Nah. Good movie though, especially for its age. And clever, too. But if it’s art, it feels like art for art’s sake, and that rings about as hollow to me as a superhero movie that knows exactly what it is — and what it is not. And I can name a few animated films I think are better than either. Wolf Children isn’t even my favourite, it’s just an easy pick for the sake of argument.