This isn’t exactly a movie review, but a reflection on a movie I saw last night and all the ones like it.

Last night, my oldest sister bought a movie called Wolf Children. This movie was made in Japan, directed by Mamoru Hosoda and was released on DVD and Blu-Ray this last November. It won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation for the year of 2013, the 2012 Mainichi Film Award for Best Animation Film, and the 2013 Animation of the Year award at the TAF in Tokyo. It also won two awards in Norway at the Oslo Films from the South Festival and an Audience Award at the NY International Children’s Film Festival last year.

Needless to say, I was absolutely spellbound by this film. I expected there to be a certain tang of realism in the film, as many Japanese films that I have seen are very grounded and focused on making a moral point about life. Japanese movies by no means romanticize life as many American movies like to do, and this film is absolutely a show of that trend. The film follows a mother, Hana, who must raise her two children on her own. Of course, this isn’t to say there isn’t some magic in it—the children are half werewolf on their father’s side—but the challenges that Hana faces are very real, only hyperbolized by her children simultaneously being wolves who howl, chew on furniture and occasionally accidentally show their ears in public. Her children keep her up all the time, get sick, and she has to treat each of them differently, as they have completely different personalities. The movie is “bittersweet” according to my sisters, although I don’t see how it’s so much bittersweet as it is realistic. I prefer the “bitterness” that runs throughout this movie, as it matches life more than American movies dare to.

I suppose what I’m leading up to is the caution that is instilled in American cinema and, though perhaps a stretch, American culture as a whole. Through the fear of stepping on any toes, cinema in America doesn’t even approach the line of morality in question, which is where many of life’s most important questions lie. Frozen may have stepped close to it in terms of women’s roles in society, but there are rarely movies which deal with down-to-earth, gritty factors of life while holding the audience’s hand when it comes to hope. I believe these factors are extremely important when approaching life itself: not everything is awful and dreary, but it’s not sugar coated either. Many Japanese movies I have seen, Princess Mononoke and Grave of the Fireflies coming to the front of my mind, deal with very important issues in society and others, such as From Up on Poppy Hill and this one, Wolf Children, addresses very different, but equally important, themes of humanity itself. Japanese cinema doesn’t seem to be afraid to touch those gentler parts of humankind, those quiet truths that aren’t horror, that aren’t chick-flicks, but hold truthful ups and downs of life. It’s drama, romance, action, tragedy, horror and comedy that make up life; Wolf Children, and many others, aren’t afraid to include a piece of each.