SMALL WISH (Royal College of Art, 2002)
Directed & written by Hiromitsu Murakami
UK (1½ minutes)
A little girl in bed, her face obscured by the mirror in the hand, says that she feels things changed that morning. She then lowers the mirror, revealing an enormous pair of eyes.
A BOY WHO WANTED TO BE A SUPER HERO (Royal College of Art, UK, 2004)
Directed by Hiromitsu Murakami
Written by Hiromitsu Murakami and Mark Simon Hewis
8½ minutes (part live-action)
A boy, playing with a toy superhero and monster while leaning out a window, tells us how he dreamed of becoming a superhero. But, hearing about crimes that no superhero ever prevented, he became disillusioned with his dream and the whole world, locking himself in his bedroom. The monologue scene ends with the superhero figure dropping out of his hand and breaking on the pavement below.
Next we see a panda, and the boy talks about his new dream - to become a panda that spent its time in a zoo eating bamboo leaves. He describes how he became more depressed as time went on, up to the point where he was thinking about jumping off the roof of his house. But on the roof he meets a walking panda soft toy (which, he says, feels familiar to him) that tells him he is now a superhero who must save the world. A shoal of fish with wings fly past.
The boy goes to sleep and wakes up on a beach. The panda leads him down an empty road, while he muses about the world being a play performed for him. The two end up outside the boy's bedroom, and the boy wonders if he'll meet himself; the panda "undresses" (i.e, undoes a zip fastner on his back and vanishes) leaving his fur behind. The boy puts it on and walks into the door, finding a depressed five-years-younger version of himself. He remembers that, at that time, he cut class for the first time and was scared that things would change for the worse - but as no-one noticed, he became worried that nothing would change at all. The boy in the panda suit tells his past self "hold on there - I'm going to hold on too".
And that, the boy tells us, was how he saved the world. He finishes by commenting that children's superheroes change as they get older, and his happened to be a panda.
Compared to Hiromitsu Murakami's previous short Small Wish, Boy who Wanted to be a Super Hero is longer, heavier in theme and more technically accomplished. While Wish cut-out animation and, while not exactly cheerful, was rather light-hearted in its quirkiness, Super Hero is a mixture of live action and CGI that deals with its main character's depression. But it's not a gloomy film. It carries a message of hope and, even in its bleakest moments, is more delicately wistful than brooding.
An interesting contrast with Small Wish is that Murakami's previous film had the main character leaving her fantasy (at which point her "Keane eyes" shrink back to a normal size), but the boy here stays in his dream world of superheroes and talking pandas. And his eyes stay wide open.
But that's not to say that he isn't in touch with reality. He acknowledges its existence, if only as something to run from. And while Small Wish had fantasy intruding on reality - parents becoming penguins, teddy bears beating up bullies - Super Hero deals with more restrained fantasy; the panda only appears to the boy and, as we see later, is the boy. Also, instead of replacing reality, it simply helps the boy cope with reality.
But why a panda? Again, we can't expect a kid's dreams to make sense. But there's some obvious symbolism in the boy's role model changing from a comic book hero who saves the world to a creature that - in the boy's own words - sits in a zoo and eats bamboo leaves all day. But, more subtly, when the boy becomes the panda he doesn't depart from reality - he provides comfort for himself, so that he can "hold on there" and, again, cope with reality. A Boy who Wanted to be a Super Hero is a coming of age tale.
(As a side note, the Japanese-British Murakami has included another nod to his heritage. Despite the Coronation Street-esque British setting, the boy's two toys are a Power Ranger-style hero and a Godzilla-like monster. Just thought I'd point that out.)
