Review of the film: “The Colors Within” is a subdued beauty
Review of the film: “The Colors Within” is a subdued beauty
Children’s films frequently lack the real-life experiences of growing up, but Yamada Naoko’s brilliant anime “The Colors Within” subtly captures the uncertainties and desires of childhood.
Suzukawa Sayu provides the voice of Totsuko, a student at a Catholic boarding school exclusively for girls. She describes how she perceives color differently in the first scene of the film. Like an aura she senses from someone else, she feels colors more than she sees them. “My heart quickens when I see a pretty color,” she says.
Totsuko is a vivacious, unrestrained individual who often speaks without fully planning. She unintentionally compliments a nun on her lovely hue. She’s playing dodgeball and is so engrossed in the purple and yellow blur of a volleyball flying at her that she’s in a happy daze when it hits her on the head.
Similar to Totsuko, “The Colors Within,” which opens in theaters on Friday, shows off its emotions. Softly impressionistic, the film is painted with a light brush that resembles watercolor. A slender brushstroke forms the outlines of a hillside horizon in one of those characteristically poetic touches. The spiritual foundations of the film are connected to such emotive sensitivity. “To have the serenity to accept the things she can’t change” is what Totsuko prays for. Three adolescent loners in “The Colors Within” come together to embrace their individuality and discover the strength to change.
A classmate named Kimi (Akari Takaishi) throws the ball that knocks Totsuko down. Shortly after that gym class, Kimi leaves school, allegedly due to boyfriend rumors. (The boarding school does not accept boys.) Curious about Kimi’s whereabouts, Totsuko sets out to locate her and eventually succeeds. She is strumming her electric guitar while working behind a desk at a used bookshop in the area.
Totsuko takes out a piano book as a pretext to talk to Kimi. Totsuko exclaims that they ought to form a band when a bespectacled boy named Rui (Kido Taisei) walks up and claims to play the theremin. Even though they are essentially strangers, they are a group that Totsuko’s sincere optimism and her intuition that they are a good fit for one another have brought together. (Totsuko perceives Rui as green and Kimi as blue.
The trio starts creating music together despite having very little experience—Totsuko has none at all. Kimi and Totsuko board a ferry to an old church close to Rui’s house, where they practice. They don’t discuss their lives much, but enough to get a general idea of what everyone is struggling with. Kimi still hasn’t informed her grandma, who reared her, that she is no longer enrolled in school. Rui, who will be attending college the next year, has a passion for music but her parents anticipate a different career route.
However, “The Colors Within” leaves a lot unsaid. The compassionate Sister Hiyoshiko (Yui Aragaki), the nun with the “beautiful” hue, is one of the characters who speaks for those who cannot. It’s evident that her sense of direction and atonement transcends school policy as she quietly supports them. “Anytime we want to, we can set a new course,” she explains.
However, a large portion of “The Colors Within” is not spoken out loud. Like Totsuko’s feelings of color, it comes from a core of character that, despite these three young people’s failures or setbacks, comes out loud and clear in music. Are they tunes? Or hymns? In either case, Naoko, the director of 2016’s “A Silent Voice,” lets their music speak for itself during the final performance. And it’s awesome.
The Motion Picture Association has given the Gkids film “The Colors Within” a PG rating due to its minor thematic content. Duration: one hundred minutes. Three of four.
