There’s a moment in the movie Belle where the background characters in U mention how Belle’s songs feel like they’re written specifically for them, and I definitely got that feeling watching this movie, that it was something almost made for me. A reimagining of sorts of Beauty and the Beast for the social media era, I personally found I was able to connect with the characters and thought they were incredibly compelling, and Suzu in particular was very relatable to me.
I thought a lot of the character interactions and their various arcs played out in a very satisfying manner. For instance, there's Suzu's best friend, who is just pretty loose at the mouth and can be almost rude and inconsiderate at times, yet one of my favorite moments in the film is when they’re having lunch, and she catches herself slipping up and saying something that she knows was super messed up. Suzu isn’t bothered, because she knows her friend enough to know she didn’t mean to offend her, but all the same she assures Suzu that no matter what she’ll always support her, and I don’t know, but I guess moments like that just kind of hit home and struck a certain chord with me. Even the rival singer in U who gets jealous of Belle, when she has a complete 180 after Belle is revealed to be Suzu, and she sees that she’s able to relate to her, her jealousy goes away, and she becomes a very vocal supporter. It's little moments like that throughout that made me find the movie just very charming.
I also liked how the musical aspect played out. For the most part, these are songs that Suzu had written in her past as it relates to her mother, but she’s never been able to express these thoughts and feelings in song until now. I like how we see her in the process of writing the song for the Beast, and I like how the last song she sings to him is actually a repurposing of another song dedicated to her mother, which was the song she was attempting to sing on the bridge earlier on, but was unable to do so at the time. It all ties in together, feels very organic, and shows how the artistic process can work for people, whether they have something happen to them that gives them a mental block from being able to express themselves, or showing how someone might be inspired and put that inspiration towards creating something beautiful with it. And I also liked how it showed that her raw talent alone wasn’t enough, but that she needed the help of her friend to basically act as her producer to really break out and get noticed, which I also thought felt very realistic.
And I love how it played out the story of how much Suzu takes after her mom, even in ways that she wasn’t aware of. She spends most of her adolescence not understanding why her mother did what she did, only for her to discover near the end that she is very much her mother’s daughter, and isn’t one to just stand by and let a bad thing happen. I like how the movie criticizes the mentality of “don’t be a hero”, and argues that you should help people in need, even if there’s risk involved.
Even as it regards U, I just really like the realistic manner in which it interprets the internet. The mob mentality (shown as a literal mob as they storm the Beast’s castle), and how a lot of people don’t really think for themselves online necessarily. I like how it takes a critical stance against the type who would try to dox someone in the name of so called "justice", and come away thinking they’re the hero for their villainous actions. And I like that it does this all in a manner that doesn’t ever put the movie on hold, it plays out organically along with the rest of the story. In a way, it’s almost chaotic, but there’s a calmness to the chaos that makes it so it never feels like it’s just meandering off subject as all these other side notes play out.
This is a movie I haven’t really written about because it’s one of those where I just have so many thoughts on it. After all, there’s so much I feel that’s worth talking about. But for me, I thought this movie was absolutely wonderful, and it’s easily my favorite of the 20s so far.
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