🎬 Movie Review: A Silent Voice (聲の形)

Shoya Ishida is the average elementary schoolboy, he likes to play with his friends and has a lovely family. Someday a new alumn comes into Ishida's class and she's not an ordinary one: it's Shoko Nishumiya, a deaf girl, who interacts with people by writing on her notebook.

Soon, she becomes Ishida's and his friends' target for their pranks, but Ishida is just the worst: he steals her notebook, waters her with the water pump, writes awful things on the class blackboard...till he reaches the lowest point: he rips with force Shoko's ears implants, several times. 
The girl, who's kind-hearted and nice, tries her best to deal with the bullies and become friends with Ishida, but at some point, she's retired from the school and he will not see her for a long time.

Years have gone by and now it's Ishida who's bullied; to say it better, he's isolated from his high school classmates and, even if it's a great cause of suffering, he doesn't do much to change things, thinking that he deserves every bad look or rumor about him because of how he treated Shoko in the past. He's a 'lone wolf' and also thought about taking his life, but eventually thought it back.

Besides becoming friends with a classmate, Ishida's life is pretty much the same every day, until he coincidentally runs into Shoko and sees it as the begging of his journey to redeem himself from the hurt he caused her when they were younger.
Ishida and Shoko will meet again with other former classmates, who have been openly cruel to her (or just watched on the other side), making the healing process a bit more challenging...

My Opinion👍👎

This isn't an easy movie to watch: it's hard to comprehend why Ishida is behaving the way he does and it deals with deep and, unfortunately, daily topics, like bullism and teenage suicide; for these reasons, I would suggest the view to everybody, because the protagonists are normal people with normal lives, even so, they have to answer to actions they made in the past.
Even if it's not a sad movie (SPOILER: nobody dies), 'A Silent Voice' is hard to watch and will leave you in the end with a massive weight on your chest, but it also has positive messages: you CAN change yourself for the better, you CAN fix your past mistakes and, with supportive and loyal friends by your side, you don't have to do this alone.

Would I pay the full prize ticket? This movie was a special event in Italian theatres as it was aired for just 2 days: I paid the full price ticket and, whether I don't think it was entirely worth it, I don't regret it that much.

Ranking: 4/5

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