For Reel

Director: Makoto Shinkai

The body switch that occurs early in Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name. produces many of the tropes that one might expect. That is, the empathy that comes when these characters inhabit other people, as well as what they learn from that experience, will undoubtedly provide life lessons by the climax. But Shinkai has more on his mind, and by the midway point it is clear that he has been laying the groundwork for something more decidedly cosmic. That is, if this is a comedy about personal identity in its early-goings, Shinkai later turns the film into one more concerned with a crisis of national and historical identity, bridging the gap between disparate worlds as a way of understanding time, place, and ultimately the effects of tragedy. As a narrative, then, Your Name. sometimes seems overambitious, but regardless the unpredictability feels true to the emotional reality of confused teenagers. No matter how great the stakes become, this is ultimately a film about two people trying to find each other because, in its familiar, bittersweet way, they’ve helped each other find themselves.