Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

"Your magic is growing stronger. You need to learn control. But when we grow stronger the world grows more dangerous."... is an advice given in "Kubo and the Two Strings". An animation which seems initially to be addressed mostly to a younger target range. I don't know if it's hard or I'm really too lazy to unfold every piece of tale we have here, but one thing is certain: This is not a children's movie. Looks deceive. It's an allegory from start to end, which requires a lot and sometimes in-depth analysis to understand...

Kubo is a boy missing one eye living in a Japanese village, without a father and whose mother struggles somewhere between dementia and Alzheimer as days go by... One day, Kubo forgets to obey the rule of coming home before the night sets. So the fantastic threats saying that his relatives on the mother's side = 2 aunts and The Moon King - an evil grandpa from another world will come to take his last eye left become real. With a final appearance his mother saves him sending Kubo on his father's path, a great samurai, to search for a legendary armor made out of three pieces, which will solve the problem. The search or the armor?... That's one of the many questions left after the ending. Where you probably should become aware that everything you've seen it's probably a symbolic dream of the main character, and the effective reality in the movie is in a very tiny amount. Well, if you're in the mood for a bit of analysis :)...

Starting with the title, where it's relatively easy to infer that "the two strings" are the parents, and that the third string of the Kubo's shamisen is actually Kubo, the first line in the movie - "If you must blink, do it now." that initially might look like a bad cliche, but when it gets repeated seems to catch a meaning, and up to the ending with a short break on a black screen finished with a "The End" said before a really nice cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" by Beatles, this whole movie is cryptic... So cryptic that at some point you get lost. I guess that not even the screenwriters could give a cohesive interpretation of everything it's there, some parts having maybe a different meaning independent of others. I could say that the result is quite close to Miyazaki's animes, where behind the childish facade lie often meanings that are much more mature.

As I said in the beginning, it's hard, both subjectively and objectively, to give an interpretation of what I've seen in "Kubo". I actually think there's a bit of room for a personal meaning to be found by everybody, the common element being: family. Maybe just a warning, and that's if you have issues in this area... think again before watching this, or expect some tears...

I've tried in the latest days to close the year, as usual, with an entry that's really worth watching - that's why the frequent posting :). I think I finally found it, so I'll allow myself to wish a Happy New Year! for a hopefully better 2017 & Happy Holidays! for what's left of this season ;)

Rating: 4 out of 5

P.S.: I don't know if somebody really went that far to think this on purpose, but there's a third verse in the final cover which says something like "I look at the world and I notice it's turning / While my guitar gently weeps / With every mistake we must surely be learning / Still my guitar gently weeps". Well, the same verse, in an older, demo version, sounds a bit different ... "I look from the wings at the play you are staging, / While my guitar gently weeps. / As I'm sitting here, doing nothing but ageing, / Still, my guitar gently weeps.". Now, figure out, which and where fits in this story ;) ...