Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, Mari Okada’s directorial debut, follows Maquia, a mythical, ageless being, after she rescues a baby, Ariel, and raises him as her own. It chronicles their lives as Maquia adjusts to the outside world and learns how to provide for her newborn son. Much (honestly, all) of the draw of this movie involves Maquia and Ariel’s journey across foreign lands, their bond together as mother and son, and what we can learn from how it changes over time and circumstance.
And to its credit, Maquia’s chronicle of parenthood is told with surprising acuity. Maquia’s early days of raising a baby on a farm are replete with the simple joys of parenting itself. Seeing Ariel walk for the first time, or being there to hear his first words—to Maquia the movie, these are joys worth sharing, milestones in parenthood that feel like their own reward. But parenting is not just some babysitting here and there. Maquia the movie does not shy away from the uncomfortable realities of being a working parent and its newfound emotional and economic toll. A forced relocation turns into a financial disaster, with Maquia struggling to make ends meet. At home, Ariel is uncooperative, and lacks the maturity and understanding to support his mother when she’s down. Maquia the movie shows an incisiveness to parenting that feels as if it was drawn from Mari Okada’s own experience with motherhood herself, and it is certainly all the more convincing for it.
Adding to Maquia’s strengths is how it sells itself as a powerful and moving film, and everything from the sophistication of its production to its loving journey of a mother and her son would speak as such. This is because Maquia is adept at keeping the “texture” of its drama intact. In its big moments, everything feels the way it should. Its ideas of parenthood and love are (supposedly) universal. Its animation is fluid, and the various subtleties of each character’s emotional states are expressed in thoroughly convincing detail. The soundtrack that plays during key moments between Maquia and her son may be one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.
And that, on a basic level, is about where the strengths of this story end. Maquia the movie prides itself on being an important, heartfelt drama, but much of this drama either doesn’t land, doesn’t make sense, or both. The things these characters are saying are just too unnatural, too out of touch, too focused on some heightened dramatic reality where children swearing they will grow up to “protect” their parents (from… what, exactly?) makes those parents break down in tears. And it’s telling how blunt some of the drama is that I was rarely left with the sense that anything substantial was actually said during what should have been key moments of catharsis.
Then there are the pacing issues. The frequent timeskips create tonal disconnects where characters we thought we knew spontaneously change, some for seemingly no reason. It takes active effort, as a viewer, to readjust to people behaving in ways that seem incongruent with how we have seen them only moments prior, even if the movie has some ostensible reason to do so to reflect how people change through the passage of time. One minute we see Ariel reconciling with Maquia after the stress of being a parent becomes too much for her to bear. The next minute, he’s… avoiding her? With no explanation? And then it happens again, a few scenes later? Where is the movie going with this? And what’s a Hibiol, again?
And yet, this is still a movie worth applauding. Maquia is not just a drama about the trials a mother goes through in raising her son. If that’s all this movie had going for it, I would not be writing this review. Because Maquia does not just chronicle the relationship between a mother and her child. Maquia charts Ariel’s growth over his entire lifespan, from early childhood to teenage development to independence in his adult years. Suddenly, Ariel is leaving the house, he’s getting married, he’s expecting his own baby. And suddenly, you realise Maquia isn’t just about someone figuring out how to be a parent—it’s about the nature of parenting itself.
The promises of parenthood are never what we expect. There is no guidebook, no instructions, no steps on parenting that teach us how to treat our children right. Being a mother is something Maquia learns only as she does it, where she has to both realise what her mistakes are and fix them, all on her own. We are constantly reminded of the lingering doubt in her mind if she has actually been a good parent at all. And as Ariel matures, new problems arise. As he grows older, he is no longer the naïve, dependent child he once used to be. But Maquia continues treating him as such, her good will getting in the way of being a good mother because she is parenting in the only way she knows how.
Which was why I found it so curious this movie would insist that Maquia losing Ariel was all but inevitable. Because it’s true. Maquia does not stay with Ariel forever. This movie makes it a point to show Ariel beginning his own life as an adult, now as a husband, and a soon-to-be father of his own. The childhood innocence Maquia once saw in Ariel is lost as he grows older, and in its place is the same sense of maturity and responsibility Maquia had to learn as she was raising him. People grow, and people change, and Maquia the movie posits that, sometimes, that change is irreconcilable with the past. The idea that familial love is unconditional and forever is incompatible with this movie, where Ariel’s relationship with Maquia grows ever more strained as he matures into adulthood and becomes increasingly independent, and as he comes to terms with his own unique responsibilities that arise from it. Instead, Maquia the movie is about accepting how our children will one day grow beyond us, and how they will come to value the efforts and sacrifices they made for their children as we did for them.
I don’t know if this is a good movie, but I do know it is ahead of its time. The script itself feels amateurish, and what should have been powerful and moving drama was let down by characters talking in ways that meant nothing of substance and carried little meaningful dramatic weight. It has pacing issues, tonal issues, and is full of confusing narrative ideas—some which work, and some that absolutely do not. And yet, I have never seen a movie that makes such profound statements on the nature of parenthood, and the courage of those who undertake it. Maquia is a movie that cares deeply about what being a parent really means, a movie that understands how our children will not always stay with us, and how they will grow up and learn to take on the same mantle we took on for them. As a character drama, this movie is riddled with missteps and questionable narrative choices. But as a reflection of parenthood? As an affirmation of everything that makes parenting worthwhile? It is a triumph. Sometimes, being a parent is about being there for them when it matters, and to love and nurture them all the while. And sometimes, the most loving thing you can do is to let them go.
