Voices of a Distant Star Film Review: Cinephilia

This is the story of high school students Mikako Nagamine and Noboru Terao. When aliens attack, Mikako volunteers for the space navy. The lovers remain in contact using mobile phone text messages (they seem to have great coverage in the future), but as each battle takes Mikako further into space, her messages take longer to arrive and the effects of faster than light travel mean she ages more slowly than Noboru.

This remarkable one-man-show animation is fairly inspiring to all budding lone film-makers out there. Director Makoto Shinkai made a short film called She and Her Cat in 1999 which won him some awards and a reputation. This gave him the confidence to embark on this 30-minute full-colour ‘feature’ that could teach a few anime production houses a thing or two.

Makoto developed the concept, wrote the screenplay, directed, animated, and voiced the lead male character. All in about seven months. Not only does it look visually striking, the story is an appealing (if somewhat cute) exploration of a sci-fi favourite – that people traveling faster than light will age more slowly than their loved ones back on earth. So not only are Mikako’s messages taking months to arrive, Noburo is growing old much faster than she is.

It’s a lyrical piece, with the text messages taking on a haiku-like brevity and preoccupation with memory, love, loss and the interface between the technological and the natural. It’s short, but it’s good. BP

DVD Extras: The DVD comes with three versions of She and Her Cat as well – I enjoyed this story even more. A young woman adopts a cat who falls in love with her and narrates events. Other extras include production animatics, trailers, and an interview with the director. All this works well on the DVD format. I’m guessing the short films were transferred directly from digital sources in a 1.33:1 format. You can choose between the original release with English subtitles, an English dub, and a director’s cut – in which the director and his fiancé do the voices. The 5.1 audio is there, if understated.

DVD available from: Reel DVD

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