Jinsei Film Review: Life Itself

Ryuya Suzuki’s singular achievement Jinsei seeks to encompass all of human life through stunning animation and surrealist storytelling.

Suzuki boldly navigates themes of loneliness, trauma, and fame. His first bold swing comes in the form of the film’s animation style. Utilizing a mostly monochrome color palette, Jinsei has a distinct look, using grays and dark blues to stylistically match the often gloominess that looms over the protagonist’s life. A recurring shot of the protagonist’s father (Shohei Uno) holding a cigarette to a smokestack against a navy night sky is a particularly powerful image, one that effectively uses both color and forced perspective shot angles. The filmmaking and camera movement are both quite inventive throughout. The film occasionally breaks its own rules of color, immediately drawing attention to these scenes. Seeing the occasional splash of red—on a door, in a hallway, or from a girl’s dress—or another color besides the typical blues and grays remind us of the spontaneity life throws at us from time to time.

Jinsei pairs these filmmaking choices with a bold narrative. Though it essentially amounts to the key moments in the protagonist’s life, the plot takes some surreal turns. Faces are sometimes shown without eyes. If the eyes are, indeed, the window to the soul, perhaps Suzuki is suggesting that humanity itself is losing its collective soul as it barrels towards dystopia. This reading doesn’t feel that outlandish, given what occurs in the film’s bizarrely surreal final chapter, which feels like an animated, sci-fi episode of Twin Peaks: The Return, another example of Suzuki’s storytelling spunk.

Despite that boldness, however, the film does suffer some shortcomings. Splitting Jinsei up into distinct chapters, Suzuki sets himself up for audiences comparing the quality of each section. On this level, it’s clear that some chapters stand out over others. The first two chapters, portraying the protagonist’s youth, his relationship to his father, and his struggles with bullying, along with the film’s final zany chapter stand out. The sections in the middle, where the protagonist becomes part of a popular band, could easily drag for some viewers. They certainly don’t feel as thematically layered as the other chapters. With only a few short films under his belt, Suzuki struggled slightly in fleshing out his admittedly universal and important concepts across a full-length feature.

Even with these narrative flaws, Jinsei should be viewed as a success for the filmmaker. Suzuki wrote and directed the film and composed the magical score. It’s a singular work by a singular voice, something we frankly need more of in our contemporary art. It’s flawed but fascinating; this artist takes a huge swing. And much of it works, as we are left thinking about the nature of our own lives.

Jinsei will be released in theatres in New York on June 5, 2026, and nationwide on June 12.