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Originally Posted by SeijiSensei
I've got a few questions today.
Was the repeated focus on the knotted rope supposed to symbolize the tie between Mutta and Hibito? The director seemed obsessed with this image.
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Nice association. I thought the image connoted perhaps the danger implicit in spaceflight, or the tenuous strength humans add to the machines they ride into space. The rope makes up for the missing guardrail, but remains precarious, fluttering in the wind, and so reminding us of danger. Still, when the launch blast hits, it holds, indicating the strength the rope adds to the steel and concrete around it, a metaphor for the human addition to the technology that blasts people into space.
I wonder about the location itself--why put Mutta amid the abandoned ruins of an earlier generation of space flight?
Quote:
Originally Posted by SeijiSensei
I suspect the floating pen was another mini-tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey, though the Parker pen in the original has been replaced by what looks more like a Japanese model.  |
Nice catch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SeijiSensei
I miss Serika. She's gotten very little screen time in the past few weeks. I notice we no longer have scenes of Mutta fantasizing over her (with or without clothes) like we did at the outset.
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I do too! But the show's focus is elsewhere, and really on Mutta's reflections on Hibito's achievement. On some level spaceflight is a dance with death, which can only be a solitary activity, all the associated teamwork and JAXA notwithstanding. Mutta's inwardness at this point is the proper correlative to the risk Hibito is experiencing. I don't know that Serika can ever be more than secondary to the show's basic romance with danger.