Giovanni's Island

The end of 1945. The war is over and Soviet soldiers arrive on the island of Shikotan. Junpei and Kanta are brothers; their father works on the island and their mother is gone. The islanders give half of their houses to the newcomers and two families start living under one roof. Junpei and Tanya, the Russian officer's daughter, do not understand each other, but at school they sing from either side of a partition. Then their father is taken away and the islanders are removed. The two boys set out with a book in hand; the story their father read them, about a train that travels through the sky. Mizuho Nishikubo directs. It is a Japanese production. The film rests on the occupation of Shikotan at the end of 1945 and the removal of its people. The brothers' names and the train imagery come from Kenji Miyazawa's story of a train crossing the sky; their father had read them that book. The matter it treats is children not understanding a war; the two sides are enemies and the boys never quite learn it. The film does not present the Soviet soldiers as villains and leaves both peoples inside the same machinery. The imagined passages are drawn in something like watercolour and stand apart from the real ones. The narrative turns very hard in its second half and breaks the expectation of a children's film. Music and song are used as the only bridge between two languages. The ending closes with an old man returning to the island. Its limit is weight; the narrative is slow, the subject painful, and the ending heavy for children. Who it is for: viewers who like historical animation and postwar stories. Who it is not for: it is slow, sorrowful, and the ending bitter.