The original title of this film can be roughly translated as “A Nameless Life” and there is really no other way to sum up the story. We will never learn the protagonist’s real name, but in the one hundred lonely years that we accompany him for 90 minutes of cinema, we see ever new facets of him. The film opens with a seemingly innocent montage of taxi rides in 1994. But as nonchalantly as the scenes are strung together here, it is important to pay attention to the subtleties if you want to stay on top of things during the ensuing century-long trip. The journey begins in the northern Japanese province and takes us through the J-pop world of Tokyo’s hip Harajuku district to a post-apocalyptic future where Fernand Léger and Stanley Kubrick shake hands.
Ryuya Suzuki is considered an outsider in contemporary Japanese animation. He is the sole author, director, animator, editor, and musician here. “Jinsei” is entirely his vision, a film about life and death, fate and rebellion, about power and powerlessness, unsparing and emotional. The 2D animation is imaginative, surprising, usually minimalist, always irritating, occasionally contemplative and then explosive. A hellish ride through human abysses, produced with so much attention to detail that new spaces open up every time you watch it.