In This Corner of the World (2016)

IN THIS CORNER OF THE WORLD  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Sunao Katabuchi
Here's something you don't see every day: an animated feature about life on the ground in Japan before and during World War Two. Its protagonist is a girl named Suzu, and the story tracks her life from 1932 through 1945. A lot of what happens is mundane. It starts with Suzu as a little kid, helping her dad collect and sell seaweed in her native Hiroshima. She grows up, gets married, and moves in with her in-laws in a neighboring town. There are personal triumphs and defeats and struggles along the way. And there's the war. Rationing becomes a fact of life, and at one point, Katabuchi takes time out to share a recipe, to show how you can make a meal out of a little leftover rice, a few undersized fish and a handful of dandelions. (Hint: Add salt.) And there's the increasing toll of the bombing as the Americans close in on Japan. What saves Suzu at least partly is that she's a dreamer and an artist. When anti-aircraft shells explode overhead, she sees splashes of color. She sees what she'd paint. What it's working up to isn't hard to guess, and there's a matter-of-factness in the film's approach, not just to the epic horror of the atom bomb, but the everyday hardships and dangers (which include death and dismemberment) faced by those who simply live in the wrong place and end up in harm's way. My dad, who spent the war on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific, went through Nagasaki not long after the bomb fell there, and never forgot what he saw. I think he would've appreciated this movie.