Review: cocoon -One Summer of Girlhood paints a potent and precise portrait of war

I keep starting and erasing and re-starting this review. It's hard to know how to begin. Sometimes, I watch a movie, and when I sit down to type up my thoughts after, it just flows out. Other times, like now, I find myself struggling with how I want to get into cocoon -One Summer of Girlhood. I could talk about how animation is often dismissed as a medium for kids, which obviously isn't the case. I could bring up some of the other animated movies that touch on war, and how this deserves to be listed alongside the best in the genre. But it all feels so simple, too easy, not as good or interesting or impactful as this movie deserves. I've rarely been as deeply moved by a movie as I was by cocoon, and I don't know how to put into words its profound impact, the power of its vision and message. But I want to try.

As I'm writing this, it's the opening weekend of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, one of the year's finest movies. When I put cocoon on, I wasn't even considering what a fascinating counterpart it could be to The Odyssey, but it ended up feeling like the two films are in conversation with each other about the fragility of humanity, how easily connections between disparate groups can be severed, the haunting weight of being the rare survivor of an atrocity. And, perhaps most poignantly, the way humans are seen as so easily discarded when thrown into the gears of war. And not only in the eyes of the enemy.

Adapted from Machiko Kyo's manga (which is apparently even more graphic and horrific -- I haven't read it), cocoon starts and ends with messages reminding the viewer that the story is fictional and not inspired by true events. I imagine there are a couple reasons for this. First, it perhaps makes its story of a fictional war in a fictional country more immediately accessible and universal. More importantly, it removes any chance of a feeling of disrespect or disservice to the actual victims whose plight during WWII serves as obvious inspiration for this story.

During WWII, Japanese students in Okinawa were deployed as a nursing unit. They were manipulated into believing that the war would soon be over, that the Americans would be defeated, and that they would soon return to their normal lives. They are known as the Himeyuri students, or the "Lily Corps." Hundreds of students were killed. Some were raped. Some took their own lives in the face of the horrors they faced.

cocoon (the lack of capitalization is part of the title's stylization, per GKIDS' website) tells a story that hews very closely to this history. We follow San, one of numerous girls who is helping with war preparations. She's observant buy shy, often noticing details around her that others seem to miss, but just as often feeling timid about voicing these observations. She doesn't want to mess up, cause trouble, or get something wrong. She's a far cry from Mayu, her best friend who's still relatively new to the island. Mayu is headstrong, tough, and unafraid to get her hands dirty. San looks at Mayu and her other friends with adoration and envy; she wishes she could be more like them.

The girls are assigned to start working in a hospital that is being fashioned inside a cave, helping to treat wounded soldiers, keep things tidy, and help however else they can. But the frontlines creep ever closer, and soon the bombs are exploding and bullets are flying right outside their cave. In due time, the cave is repurposed into a command center, and the girls are thrown out, left to fend for themselves. They're told to head to the cape, where they may find safety. 

So often in war stories, there's a very "us vs. them" tilt to it. These are the good guys, the ones who have faces and whom we empathize with. And then there's the faceless enemy on the other side, the bad guys, the ones we root against. Part of what makes cocoon so powerful, and so interesting, is that it's more about what the girls' own country is doing to them rather than the threat of violence at the hands of the enemy. They're taught to serve their country diligently, because their country in turn will provide them with food, schooling, and other services. But we are witnessing the exact opposite. Their country is using them, wringing them dry, and then throwing them out when they're no longer useful. Their country only cares for them when they are tools to be used in the war campaign; once their apparent usefulness runs out, they are discarded.

The film's title refers to a recurring metaphor that is straight-on and blunt, but wielded excellently throughout. The girls, in their rare spare time, are studying silkworms. They learn about the bugs' life cycle, and how they are boiled alive to make silk, only a few specimens being allowed to survive so they can lay more eggs. Eggs that will hatch into more silkworms to boil alive. It's a vicious, violent cycle, and one that lends itself very obviously to the girls' plight. 

An extra wrinkle of this metaphor is that silk moths, despite having wings, are unable to fly, because humans bred that out over the years. It's easier to keep them in check that way. They don't need wings that work, because they'll never be allowed to fly, never have the chance, that's not their lot in life. They are born so they can be boiled, so that humans can look pretty in their silky things. 

The silkworm element is introduced within the first five minutes or so of the movie, and it immediately sets your understanding of the story to follow. That's when I started crying, and I didn't really stop for the rest of the movie's runtime. Over and over again (or really, continuously), I found myself weeping for these girls. The film does such a great job of hammering home how young they are, how naïve. At first, it almost feels like they're at summer camp or something, often slacking off, not understanding the imminent danger they're in, finding moments to be kids when they can (worrying about how they look, picking flowers, giving each other gifts). I've rarely been so deeply moved by a movie.

And it's a movie that never wastes a moment. It clocks in at just over an hour long (it was made for TV in Japan), and I was impressed at how beautifully it fills that hour. It doesn't feel like a breathless rush, nor do the characters feel underserved. I fell in love with this group of girls, felt so deeply for them, and found each scene to perfectly paced and executed. It's an incredible achievement.

cocoon was released on NHK in Japan to commemorate the 80th anniversary of WWII. The film was produced with the aim of reminding people of the horrors of war, in the hopes that we can strive for a more peaceful world. I think that's a message we could use at any point in human history, but it feels particularly urgent right now, in the face of, well, everything. cocoon deserves a spot alongside such momentous animated war movies like Grave of the Fireflies and In This Corner of the World -- like those movies, it's a beautiful and deeply felt film that stands among the best in the genre, animated or not.