Sunday, March 3, 2019

Voices of a Distant Star - A Relationship Across Time and Space


     Considering the very limited production team, The Voices of a Distant Star was able to effectively portray the struggles of a long distance relationship in a way that made me actually care about what the characters were going through within only half an hour. The paradigm of Mikako and Noboru sending emails between one another, with the sending time increasing drastically is a great way to illustrate what it's like to have to simply wait for something. Without creating a plot driving element that is too complex, the send-time going from 6 months to 1 year to 8 years is something that I think a lot of people can relate to - although those numbers are quite large to have to wait for someone to respond. Whether it's friends, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or even your parents - we've all been in a situation where we would try to send them a message and they would not be able to respond immediately for whatever reason. 

Do they not like me anymore? Do they think I'm annoying? Did they DIE? 
 
Whatever it is, simply waiting for a response without knowing what's happening on the other end allows for intrusive thoughts to pervade our minds before we eventually run out of the energy to care. This exact thing happened in the film, when the email send-time went from 6 months to 1 year - Noboru thought Mikako had decided to stop responding because he hadn't gotten anything from her in a year. He ran out of the energy to care simply because he didn't know that she had jumped even further in space.

Ultimately, what I really like about the message of the film is that, the act of simply waiting - being forced to wait - is something that can test the emotional strength of an individual. Waiting can be very taxing, especially if what you were waiting for leaves just as quickly as it arrived. Is the time spent we spend on some things worth it? In many cases, I'd argue that it is - especially in the realm of maintaining relationships. Waiting is something that we all have to do, right - we have to be patient. But I think patience is finite - although some people have much larger reserves of it - and it can only be a matter of time before the voices of that distant star become too far to hear.

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