Shreya's Treasures

KIMI NO NA WA (YOUR NAME) DIRECTOR: MAKATO SHINKAI GENRE: FANTASY, ROMANCE               “I feel like I’m always searching for something, someone.” Haven’t we all felt the same at some point or other in our lives? A sense of displacement from our daily lives, and a search for something that would anchor us to a more commonly perceived sense of normalcy? Every now and then, there comes a transcendent piece of cinema, a film that not only surpasses expectations, but also makes the entire idea of having expectations appear as ludicrous as one attempting to understand the secrets of galaxies located millions of light-years away; that not only captures the zeitgeist but coats it in a benevolent luster that is enough to exorcise the demons of the age and enhance the legacy of the era; that unites audiences and critics alike into a cacophony of rapture. Kimi no Na Wa, translated in English as Your Name, is one such film. "Dusk:  the time of the day ...

KAFKA ON THE SHORE HARUKI MURAKAMI GENRE: MAGICAL REALISM, FANTASY, NOVEL FIRST PUBLISHED: 2002 "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution ta kes will be dif ferent for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write"                                     - H. Murakami It is easier to be bewitched by Haruki Murakami's fiction than to figure out how he accomplishes the bewitchment. His narrators tend to be a bit passive, and the stakes in many of his shaggy-dog plots remain obscure. Yet the undercurrent is nearly irresistible, and readers emerge several hundred pages later as if from a trance, more curious tha...