Kubo and the Two Strings
(2016)
(SPOILERS) Laika studios have received much acclaim for
their undoubtedly first-rate stop motion animation technique, but I’ve tended
to the lukewarm on their output’s overall quality. Coraline was a strong feature debut, but both ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls
came up short for me. Kubo and the Two
Strings represents a significant uptick, one that shows off a mastery of
tone and atmosphere, but it also suggests Laika still need to beef up their script
department.
Kubo’s a movie
about the power of storytelling that ironically exhibits significant deficiencies
in storytelling, and an animation about the power of intergenerational
forgiveness that fudges the delivery, but the sheer technical artistry on
display is something else, imbuing a lyrical, dream-like quality that far
exceeds the scope of their last couple of pictures in depth and resonance.
Kubo (voiced by Art “Rickon Stark” Parkinson) is a master
storyteller, holding his village rapt with unfinished tales and magical
origami, which he introduces with the warning “If you must blink, do it now”. But his real tale is one of familial
abuse in which his grandfather took one of his eyes and is intent on taking the
other, such that his mother Sariatu (Charlize Theron) fled with him. When Kubo
goes out after dark, against his mother’s instructions, Sariatu’s creepy flying
sisters Karasu and Washi (Rooney Mara) find him – reminiscent in style of A Chinese Ghost Story – and he must flee again, this time on a quest
to find his samurai father Hanzo’s protective armour, accompanied by a
miniature, origami version of his dad to guide him. That, and a made-flesh snow
monkey as his protector. Along the way, Beetle (Matthew McConaughey) joins
them, a samurai trained by Hanzo who has lost his memory and been turned into a
part-stag beetle.
Monkey: Magic is not supposed to be easy. It needs
dedication.
There’s a danger in using magical and fantastic devices in
stories in that the temptation is to assume anything goes. Kubo’s powers come
from his mother, of the lineage of the Moon King (his grandfather). It isn’t
abundantly clear what exactly the Moon King is or does, other than having beefs
with samurais and wanting to extract his grandson’s eyes (to make him immortal,
or to divest him of empathy for others, such that, unable to see into the
windows of their souls, he will become cold and callous – a wonderful message
for blind people everywhere to take away there).
The Moon King isn’t human, but he becomes human at the end
in a rather confused, if undoubtedly nobly-motivated decision on the part of
writer-director Travis Knight and his co-scribe Arianne Sutner. The idea is one
of forgiveness, but it rather serves to embrace the healing power of lies as
the defeated, amnesiac old man is allowed to rest easy in his dotage, with Kubo
and the entire village telling him what a wonderful fellow he is. So what’s the
message here? Forgive and forget? Who does that serve? How does one learn or
atone if one considers it acceptable to leave perpetrators under a veil of
illusion?
It’s additionally curious that Kubo pulls its punches, having been so upfront in leaving its title
character bereft of both his parents – the picture’s a dark one, both
thematically and atmospherically – by presenting him with the consolation of their
Force ghost incarnations to comfort him (apart from anything, when he says “I still need you”, we can’t help but
feel he doesn’t actually, and this is a sop from filmmakers who have lost their
nerve at the final hurdle).
Washi: You’ve been together all this time and
haven’t even realised?
There are other questions too, such as why Monkey/Sariatu
(one of the reveals is that she considered it best not to tell her son she had
used magic to become Monkey, for reasons that don’t entirely connect) doesn’t recognise
Hanzo (I’m assuming his face hasn’t changed), why/how/when Hanzo hid his
armour, particular since he was preparing to go and find it, and why Hanzo was
cursed rather than killed as originally planned. To an extent, none of these
are deal breakers, and the picture is sufficiently invested in its own abstracted
milieu, in a Wizard of Oz fashion (I
was half expecting the entire story to be revealed as a story within a story), that
they don’t largely, significantly, detract, but you’re left with a nagging
feeling that Travis and Sutner were entirely laissez-faire with notions of
internal logic.
The picture’s take on existence and the hereafter is a bit
of a patchwork too, in which, we are told, when we die we shift and transform “so we can continue our story on another
plane” (apparently the one Ben Kenobi goes to). Meanwhile, the Moon King,
in whatever realm he exists (non-corporeal, it seems) warns Kubo that if, he
doesn’t give up his eye, “You’ll be stuck
down here, in this hell” to which Kubo replies that for every terrible
thing down here there’s something far more beautiful, which at least strikes a
marginally optimistic note, if not an outright denial.
The voice cast serve the story extremely well. Theron’s
suitably stern and serious, while McConaughey is having a whale of a time,
pitching his delivery somewhere between Buzz Lightyear and Patrick Warburton, served
a succession of hugely winning comic relief lines and moments. There’s also the
very wise advice that Kubo should include a chicken in his story (“The chicken is funny”), something Moana astutely lived by. The character
design work is sympathetic and evocative, eschewing the tendency to the
grotesque of previous Laika offerings. Dario Marianelli’s score is a beauty (if
the visual effects deserved an Oscar nod, the score did even more so).
With a bit more work and a few more drafts, Kubo and the Two Strings (not a great title) might have been the
masterpiece many have acclaimed it to be. Which makes it sadder that the box
office response was tepid at best. These pictures don’t come cheap, and there
just doesn’t seem to be the same appetite for them as their crowd-pleasing CGI
big studio cousins. Still, Laika aren’t over with yet, with another animation
due next year. Knight, however, the production company’s president and CEO, has
hitched his cart to a bereft franchise, signing up to direct Transformers spin-off Bumblebee. Somehow, I don’t think
“depth” will be thrown around to describe his live-action debut.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
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