Even in the midst of a massive COVID wave this January, box office receipts continue to surprise. One of the most impressive openings of the pandemic era so far didn’t feature a franchise superhero, but the pop star avatar of a teenage girl in Mamoru Hosoda’s critically acclaimed anime epic “Belle.” The GK Films release took in over $2 million in just 1,300 theaters this weekend racking up the third-best per screen behind “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and the latest “Scream.” Oh, and the Cannes premiere could find the “Mirai” filmmaker with a second Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.
Loosely inspired by the original “Beauty and the Beast” fairy tale and its cinematic adaptations over the century, “Belle” centers on Suzu, a shy teenage girl who spends most of her free time in a virtual world known as “U.” When she begins to sing under her online identity, Belle, turns into a virtual and real-world sensation. The “Beast” is Dragon, an anti-hero the security forces of U are trying to kick out of the system. When the two meet they form a unique bond. Fearful of Dragon’s real-life circumstances, Suzu recruits her friends to try and find her friend before things take a turn for the worse.
Speaking to The Playlist in his native Japanese with an English translator, Hosoda discussed his vision for the classic tale through a 21st Century lens.
Hosoda notes, “I wanted to think really hard about what does it mean or what is the meaning of beauty in this case and what is it mean to become a beast? Even in the 18th-century version, I think the Beast’s character had this interesting duality where it has a very violent-looking exterior yet a very kind heart on the inside. But the idea of beauty hasn’t really been explored that much in the original version because I think beauty was exactly that, exterior beauty. That was all you could really look in.”
Over the course of our interview, Hosoda touched on the mix of CG and traditional animation in the film, integrating the film’s fantastic songs in the storyline and more.
Please note: There are some spoilers in the context of the film. This interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.
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The Playlist: What was your inspiration for this story?
Mamoru Hosoda: The, I guess, the underlying basis for this entire story is the “Beauty and the Beast” classic French story from the 18th century. What I really admire about that story is how the values are inverted in many ways where what appears beautiful is actually ugly, and what may look ugly on the exterior is actually quite, quite beautiful. And its inversion of values, I think, is a story that it’s recurring. And of course, the 1946 “Beauty and the Beast” by Jean Cocteau and in 1991 more famously Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” there’s been many interpretations of it over the years. The ’91 Disney version, for me, it was so impactful that I have been thinking to myself, “How am I going to make this? I mean, I’d love to reinterpret this movie and in my own way.” And it took me 30 years to finally get here. But the, I guess, sort of inspiration was I thought, “Well, how would ‘Beauty and the Beast’ look if we put it into the context of the internet and our current modern society?”
Where did placing that story in the U world come from?
The “Beauty and the Beast” in present-day context versus its original 18th-century version, I wanted to think really hard about what does it mean or what is the meaning of beauty in this case and what is it mean to become a beast? Even in the 18th-century version, I think the Beast’s character had this interesting duality where it has a very violent-looking exterior yet a very kind heart on the inside. But the idea of beauty hasn’t really been explored that much in the original version because I think beauty was exactly that, exterior beauty. That was all you could really look in. That was the only definition of what beauty was. So because it was cast against a much different set of values, I think it inevitably didn’t carry much meaning, this concept or idea of beauty. So taking this into the present day, I wanted to see the different interpretations of what can make something beautiful and I think in many instances, it’s this sort of strength that we can express in today’s context that can be interpreted and as one definition of what beauty is. There are some elements that remain the same such as the human relationship aspect, but when the Beast is cursed, even in the original story, and becomes the Beast, I try to think about what being cursed means in today’s context. That’s where a lot of his sort of traumatic experiences come from and where a lot of the scars come from on his character’s design itself.
At the end of the film, you make a gutsy choice where you reveal that the true 14-year-old who is the Beast, is a bit younger than Belle and so there’s no real romantic bond for them in the real world. The virtual romance doesn’t have a happy ending.
Yes, right? Had we made the story in the way you described where it was a happily ever after type of ending, I think that would put Belle into a much more kind of older values. It would put into the concept of much older values and if this were an animation strictly for kids, perhaps we might have gone a different route than what we ended up doing.
But I believe animation is simply a means of expression and it’s still very much a film. It just happens to be in animation, so why should we not explore issues that we’re facing today as a society? I think going back to looking at this beast that is cursed by present-day definitions, and Suzu who then transforms into Belle thinking about, “Well, how do I protect this? How do I gain the strength to protect what really matters and look after this younger child?”
The child abuse issue in movies, oftentimes it’s depicted in a much different light. I think it’s a quite common narrative where the child who is abused or has some traumatic experience as a child turns into the villain, and the superhero takes a stand and then takes down the villain. A lot of that may have been grounded in something that happened to them a long, long time ago. And for me, it could be hurting these kids. It might be quite hurtful to cast them in that light because maybe they are experiencing something that you see in the flashback that causes the villain to grow into what he did someday. So, instead of not showing that aspect of it, I think it’s important we come face-to-face to that side of the narrative and whether it’s as a society or as an individual, kind of show love and show a path for them to not go down that route. Otherwise, why bother making movies?
So the past five or six years have really shown the negative effects of social media and social networks. Did any of that inspire the film or was this a story you had had sort of in the works for a much longer time?
I’ve been making movies that in some way or form kind of deal with the theme of the internet for 20 years now. And to your point, I think it was really the last 10 years where we saw this massive shift of how the internet was being used. And in many ways, it’s become a much closer reflection of our own reality than I think it used to be. It used to be this much more hopeful kind of space, but right now the internet has become this reflection of our reality where I believe we now exist in two realities where’s there’s the reality in the present that we physically exist in, and then there’s another projection of ourselves in the second reality in this space called the internet. I think the internet, and because of it being another reality, is able to pull out a lot of these more negative aspects that we have as people, and oftentimes, it’s the internet that’s cast in a bad light, but I disagree. It’s the way people are using the internet that is causing the internet to be viewed in such a negative light, and the not-so-good sides, the bad sides of, I think, humans are really drawn out, this hostility and very kind of malicious intents. But these are all human traits and not traits of internet themselves. I know Facebook is taking a lot of blame sometimes, but it’s the people using Facebook that is really driving a lot of that. So in spite of all this, what I’m trying to show is that we’re not going to all of a sudden take away our kids’ smartphones.
Good luck with that.
And then tell them to go “Man the farms and live in a pre-electric society.” We can’t stop this innovation and progress, we have to kind of reposition how our children are going to face this new second reality in which they must also coexist. And because of that, I always try to shine a much more positive light on the better sides of what this new technological innovation can bring about.
From an artistic and animation perspective, what were the biggest challenges in pulling off the U world itself?
There were certainly many challenges that we faced with “Belle” and in terms of the visual expression aspect, that was one of them, certainly. We split the animation style based on whether the story was taking place in this cyber internet imaginary world versus the real 2D world. So, we used hand-drawn animation for the reality, but in the internet world, we’re actually using CG animation. And another challenge was definitely the music. We didn’t want Belle to simply be a pop star. Her singing and her voice was much more about the idea of this girl who was really suppressed gaining her freedom through the expression of her voice in the internet world, so to make sure that that weight was properly carried through throughout the movie was another challenge. And finally, the idea of the difference and sort of relationship between the internet world and real world, and the context of more family relationships, I think, was another one we wanted to make sure we expressed. We wanted to make sure we utilized the full spectrum of what animation had to offer as a medium, but still place it within the context of what films can do and take people on this journey so that it really kind of shows and encourages the next generation.
Speaking of the songs, obviously, the peak moment is when Belle sings “A Million Miles Away.”
Mm. Mm. Mm.
It’s eight minutes long, which is very rare for any song in any movie. How did you work with the songwriters to shape the song for the film?
his might come as a surprise, but this is a very fundamental difference in production pipelines for animation between the US and perhaps Japanese productions. But as I understand it, for if you’re going into a movie and you know it’s going to be a musical, you would first write the lyrics, come up with the music, and then animate or storyboard to that. Whereas in our case, I had to storyboard everything out before we even composed the music and this is true for voiceover and music in Japan where the animation and the performances will all be locked, then you would look at the music, and then add the voice acting to it. Whereas in the US, you might voice act first and then animate to whatever voices or performances you capture. So, in the case of Belle, and specifically that eight-minute track to which you’re referring, I had storyboarded out the scene and made sure I hit all the beats and emotional milestones that I wanted to and that scene ended up being eight minutes as I first saw it. So from that, I started working with the composers and he started brainstorming what kind of music can we do? He had to pull a lot of the different musical techniques that he has, and a lot of these sort of emotional beats that we wanted to hit. He says in hindsight that it was rather simple because of that.
“Belle” is now playing nationwide.