Therapist Reacts to A SILENT VOICE

And depression doesn't go away, doesn't lift for most people, but there's a capacity to feel again. There's a capacity to experience joy. The cure for so many things is connection. And we may think no one wants to connect with me, but we just need to find the right people. It is so beautifully composed. I get why so many people love this film. Welcome to Cinema Therapy. I am Alan Seawright, professional filmmaker, and I need therapy. I'm Jonathan Decker, licensed therapist, and I love movies. What do you got for me today, my friend? Today, I'm going to have you react to one of our most requested films ever. 2016's A Silent Voice. It is a Japanese anime film. This is our first venture into anime. It is. Such a diverse genre, and I totally understand. It has fans all over the globe, and it can do anything. And you are very vocal. Yeah, and I guess I think it's not a genre, it's a style. Right, it is a style. Because anime can be Western, it can be comedy, it can be romantic, it could be horror. It could be Akira, which is, I don't know what that is, but it's amazing. And in this case, it's a heavy, heavy drama. A heavy drama about teens, and bullying, and suicide. It's… it was a lot. Yeah, it was… but you know what? It was… it was very uplifting in its messaging. It was. And as far as… It ended in a good place. As far as what it's trying to get us to do when it comes to treating one another, there's a lot of power to this story. So, what's our setup? Well, Ishida is a kid. He's going to school. He's kind of popular, has some friends. Elementary school, right? Elementary school, yeah. Young kid. He's like, fifth grade maybe, something like that. A girl shows up. She's transferred into the class. Her name is Nishimiya. She is deaf. And communicates with people using little flip books. Yeah, notebook. Write down your message to me. Write down your message. Look at this. And if they're open, she teaches them to sign and… Right, and there's one girl in the class who starts learning to sign. But Ishida is, you know, kind of a punk kid, like many of us were. And bullies her. Kind of goes along with, there are other people in the class that are bullying her as well. He kind of gets wrapped up in it and pushes it further than anybody else. And does some really pretty, pretty heinous stuff. Psychological torture and physical abuse. Absolutely. You feel so bad for Nishimiya, because she just wants to fit in, and she just wants to be loved and have a friend. Yeah. And then we jump forward in time several years. Ishida and Nishimiya are still in school, but they're almost done with high school. And… Because of his bullying, he has become bullied. He's become an outcast. People said, that guy's trouble, stay away from him. And so, he's been lonely, and to where he doesn't look people in the eye, because he hates himself for how awful he was. He's been taught that he's awful, and he doesn't look people in the face. And when everyone's represented, I thought this was interesting. I thought it was brilliant. Just a wonderful touch of filmmaking. Anytime he looks up and sees faces, he doesn't see a face. He, like, puts an X in front of everyone's faces. Yeah. And when he finally opens up to Nagatsuka, who is, like, my favorite derpy best friend of all time, in a film… He was a great character. The X, like, peels off like paper and falls on the ground. It's… That's a fantastic little touch. I loved it. So, anytime he actually connects with someone, the X falls off their face. But he's going to take his own life, because he feels so unloved. Yeah. And he realizes, before he does that, he should go make amends with Nishimiya. So, he actually chooses to not go through with his suicide attempt. Because before he leaves, he's got to make things right with her. He then attempts to befriend her. There may be some, like, attraction there, but mostly it's a very pained, strained, psychologically fraught relationship. And she's nice, but maybe not fully understanding his intentions. But it… The whole film is like this just beautiful… Well, this is Nishimiya's sister. She takes pictures of dead things. So, she takes pictures of dead things so that her sister can have pictures and see what death looks like. Because Nishimiya, the deaf girl, has been so bullied, she wants to die too. Yeah. So, here Nishida's trying to befriend the sister of the girl he bullied. He's trying to be a better person. I can see the difference though. It's way better in Japanese. See, now he's hiding her face. He's hiding her face and just looking at her face. Or he's ashamed. What's beautiful about this film is someone who's done awful and trying to be good. And it's not easy. It's not a quick fix. Yeah, it's a film-long fix. She sees him and he sees her and that's... This film does a lot of things really, really beautifully. The camera work, for lack of a better term. There's so many close inserts of hands and just objects, feet. They're the little details that you remember from deeply emotional moments. Yeah. And it does a really good job of capturing It does a really good job of picking those out and focusing on them. Another thing that's really beautiful about this film is the score and the sound. Very atmospheric. It's beautiful. Yeah. It's really, really powerful. So, Nishida, I really connected with... His bullying was to make friends. His bullying was to keep friends. His bullying was to put someone else down so my friends and I could have a laugh. And it was the basic human need for connection sought in a maladaptive way. Exactly, yeah. And it backfired. Not only did he hurt somebody else, he hurt himself because people decided they didn't want to get in trouble at school by hanging out with him. Their parents didn't want them around him. And even just people of integrity were like, I don't want to be around that guy. He's bad news. Yeah. And what ends up happening is both the person that you would normally... Imagine a movie about Biff Tannen in Back to the Future coming to his senses and trying to make things right. Wouldn't work with Biff Tannen because, ironically, he's a cartoon character in a live-action movie. He's a cartoon character in a live-action movie. Nishida is a very well-rounded human. Yeah. In an animated movie. And he is... He's so alone. And he's hurting so badly. And the neat hat trick of this film is you don't just sympathize with the bullied, you sympathize with the bully. And he realizes that decency, making things right, atonement is the word, right? Atonement of making amends, making restitution is the only way that he's going to be at peace. Yeah. I actually... I feel like this film captures depression. One of the things that actually works quite well in the film is when you bring the pace down a little bit and you can focus on those details and stuff. They want you to feel the prolonged awkwardness of being uncomfortable in your own skin. Of feeling not wanted, of feeling judged, of feeling like everything you try and do just makes things worse. And instead of giving you a little bit of that and then some comic relief, the resolution doesn't even really come to the end. It's not meant as entertainment. It's definitely not. No, it's to get you to think about something. I would say the mission of the film is it's an empathy jumpstart. You know, for the viewer. And so often we do have compassion for the bullied, but not for the bullies. We think, well, you know, they just deserve anything that's coming to them because they're just awful people. Right. And to see the humanity in everybody is a gift from this film. It's really, really beautiful. And the capacity for redemption for everybody, whether or not they take it. Yeah. But the path to restitution and atonement is through being willing to suffer discomfort and pain to do right by another person. So here we are and Ishida has been, you know, working with Nishimiya and kind of gathering a bunch of their friends from elementary school. And they're all kind of getting together to have sort of a little bit of a reckoning and apologize for things. She's like, we were all bullies. And she's always minimizing what she did. Can you imagine listening to the conversation, but looking at the river? Like, it's very realistic. But he keeps avoiding people's faces because he's so ashamed. And this shot where we don't see, you know, and then he sits down into it. Ueno. So Ueno's the girl with the ex-girlfriend's face. Now he's more or less accurately diagnosing everything that's going on, but taking way too much responsibility for himself. He's trying to... Hurt people, hurt people. So have you ever dealt with someone like this in therapy who has caused some pain, but is trying to take too much on and like, it's all my fault. Yeah, in therapy, there's something called the identified patient. And the identified patient is there is one person. They're the scapegoat. There's one person who is not solely responsible for everything, but everybody or a lot of people will make it about as if it's all their fault. And so for a long time, Ishida has been carrying the brunt of everything. And that's how he got the rep at school is all the other kids threw him under the bus and said, he's the bully, not us. And he's finally calling everybody else out. If anyone says one person is the problem or if a whole group is saying you're the problem, the issue with that is it feels like, well, multiple voices are saying it. So it must be true. It must be true, right? If people are telling you you are the problem, don't believe it. Because it's not true. We don't exist in a vacuum and we all interplay off of each other. Own your stuff. Sure. Here, I actually like what he's doing. He's a little harsh about it, but he's owning his stuff, but he's done owning theirs. Yeah. And it, you know, he's pulled this group together to, you know, try and make Nishimiya feel better about herself. And it just turns into the hot potato of blame. They're just throwing the hot potato around instead of doing right by her. But then poor Nishimiya does what he's always done, which is she blames herself. And she says, they were all friends before I came along. I spent some time in Japan growing up and this is not a uniquely Japanese thing, but, you know, sticking out and being different is very much culturally not okay. Yeah. And so I think Nishimiya sees herself as one of those cultural outliers that because she's so different, because she's disabled, she creates a narrative about herself and how it causes disharmony with the group. Well, it's part of the beauty of film and art. You know, anywhere around the world, here in the United States, you have American filmmakers and they make films that shine a light on American culture. Absolutely. Both the positive and the ugly side, right? And that's going to happen in any country around the world. So we're looking at a commentary on Japanese culture. And the flip side of what you were talking about is this incredible human capacity for compassion and forgiveness, which again is universal, but in a silent voice takes on a Japanese flavor. So he saved her from taking her life, but he got injured and now she's here on the bridge and he's... It made her feel even worse because he nearly died to save her. So he woke from his coma and she's outside the hospital, sad of what happened to him. The color palette in this film and the painterly but realistic nature of all the surroundings is just lovely. Talking about bullying her when they were little. He finally apologizes to her. He's come up close to her a couple of times and then always backed off because he's afraid. That's a beautiful line. Puts his hands down like end of message. Which means friend. This happens all throughout the film as people try to take a step into connection and then they bail out of it. It's slower and it's more pensive than Western audiences are used to. But it also breathes. And I love that the moment he takes... He actually apologizes and takes accountability for what he did. And he says, I want to apologize to everyone properly. So he's finally apologized to everyone. He gets invited by his friends to this fair and he's looking around and seeing exes and looking at feet. Can't make eye contact with people. And there was no sound. Like he wasn't really hearing them. And now it's all rushing in. The music here is wonderful. So good. He sees his friends. He sees his family. And friends whose love he had a hard time accepting because he didn't think he was worth it. And depression doesn't go away, doesn't lift. And for most people it's something they still have to wrestle with. It's still there. But there's a capacity to feel again. There's a capacity to experience joy. And depression and having done something terrible are not the same thing. In this case they're interlinked. But the cure for so many things is connection. And we may think no one wants to connect with me. But we just need to find the right people. I mean I don't want to oversimplify but most people who hurt others are hurting themselves. They just want to be loved. And some won't accept it. Others will. That scene where he finally accepts other people's love. Man, it is just a gut punch. It is so beautifully composed. The music is incredible. The performance from the voice actor playing Ishida is great. The animation is fantastic. And that scene. I get why so many people love this film. Jonathan And the thing is when he was going around his high school and assuming people hated him. If you read what people are saying. Some people are judging him. But there are some people who are concerned for him. Or some people who are trying to connect with him. And he just sees feet and exes. Because he believes they all hate him. And he believes he's inherently unlovable. And it's not true. There are people who the ex will fall. And they are accessible to you. And they're here for you. If you're there for them. And if you're humble and accountable. There's a lot of beauty in this film. If you want to grow the way Ishida grows. If you want to take accountability for your actions. If you want to make things right. And have healthy connections. I have created a Strengths Builder. What that is. I walk you through the film. And tell you from a licensed therapist. What steps to take. And what exercises to do. To experience this type of growth in your life. So we've got a silent voice slash shape of voice. Strengths Builder. On our membership site. Which you can find right here. Go check it out. Or here down below. There's links to go take a look at that. And thank you so much for watching. And please. We love it when you share this with your friends. It means a lot to us. And we normally end these with kind of a jokey back and forth. This one's too heavy for that. Heavy and beautiful. And beautiful. True. So I think we're just going to say. Watch movies.