We try again to make sense in an insane world.
We turn our attention to a movie anime called "Summer Wars"
Just once in a great while, amid the hustle and bustle, the endless chatter, and the astronomical noise, we see a little sense; expressed as a moment of silence.
Today, I will not discuss the surface plot, the conflicts in the main struggle or the specific characters. There are so many important characters in this movie; it would be a kind of insanity to attempt to highlight even a round dozen of them. Besides, things like the plot of the story, the struggles, and the characters are unimportant. This time.
To get hung up in all that blather, is to miss the the fact that the trees look like a forest; only to truly miss the fire in its' interior. We don't call that entire image a forest, unless we've all lost the point of our own existence.
I bring this point, to the reader, in order to cut down the shouting so that the real point of "Summer Wars" can be clearly seen. To try to give you an idea of where I'm going, I'd like to give you some examples in my own history:
My uncle Bud died just after the Christmas of 2014, at the ripe old age of 93.
But before that, incidents were common. Bud's wife Connie, might be arguing over the phone, with her son Rapheal, about the actions of Rapheal's wife. Both of them went to Northwestern University for different reasons; and they both found themselves married to each other almost for contrasting reasons. The volume of the conversation over the phone increases by moments. Connie's daughter Janice walks in to the kitchen, just getting home from work, and wants to know if she should buy some green beans for a casserole, Connie is trying to make for supper.
Uncle Bud is oblivious to all of this, as he is really heatedly busy watching the Cubs Game on TV. He screams at the TV at the top of his lungs about the bums that work on the Cubs batting lineup, almost to the point of interfering with the conversation Connie is having on the phone, while Connie is trying to make head-or-tails of the comments from Janice. Connie yells upstairs at Uncle Bud, to quiet down so that she can hear Janice. Bud screams back down stairs; "... Who the hell is Janice? ..."
Uncle Bud has Alzheimer's and is so forgetful that he can't even remember the names of his own children, but the names of the batters on the Cubs Lineup are fresh and clear as the day Bud saw his first baseball game, 75-years previous.
So what does this all mean? The notions we think we have about family are often couched in phrases like community, order, and rational thought. But in the great scheme of things we really ought to see as reality; the Chaos of Human Relations inside of family, are rarely seen clearly. And even rarer, described on paper; or film.
Which returns us inexorably back to the true nature of "Summer Wars". Summer Wars is not about the larger world, or of the nature of multidimensional conflicts that extend past our own households; or even about the problems of money or politics. The story plot-points are window-blind hangers, to form an impression, most of us never really see. The family, disjointed, not really listening to each other, conflicted, unreasoning, and more in tune with their interior conflicts than they are about the things that make them the family they are; alive, diverse and sometimes unwarranted; are sometimes the very things that brings a family in turmoil and in deep trouble; together. Quite often, for reasons difficult to explain, families will come together in fellowship, and in determined spirits of casual-seeming importance, try to put aside the daily noise of family life, to solve problems above and beyond themselves.
Writing this seems an exercise in futility. People who have never really recognized their own families, will miss the meaning in the words I'm using to try to describe an emotion. Emotions are tricky things, and are ephemeral, spiritual; and almost unreachable at times. And most of them deal with family. Family that we have seen, family that makes up our own household, or just the feelings we have for that other significant person which might become the basis for a new family.
Families are the center of the world. Good families, bad families, conflicted dark, cruel, honorable, strong, beaten, destroyed, and uncomfortable, or even successful. But whatever your complaints or your commendations; nothing else is quite so powerful as our memories tied to family.
So I write this review of a movie that celebrates that institution few have value in, but all know soundly.
So three cheers for family. And highest possible recommendations to a tiny story, that quietly brings into focus, that rarest of misunderstood institutions.
I whole heartedly give this tiny microcosm of real life a solid 9, and I hope those of you who understand the larger principles of authorship and the development of story; will give it watch!
