Warning: This article discusses and analyzes key aspects of the film Patema Inverted in detail, so proceed with caution.
Imagine one day you’re relaxing out in a field and you come across a girl, clinging onto a fence, and she’s hanging completely upside down, afraid of ‘falling’ into the sky.
This is the beginning of the animated film Patema Inverted, a film about a boy named Age and his quest to help a girl named Patema back to her village of people that live underground. When I was watching this film, I couldn’t help but make note of some key aspects of it, such as the use of perspective and the film’s main theme of unity over prejudice.
When Age and Patema first meet, they are both convinced that they are on the right side of the world, and that the other person is wrong, as shown in the movie’s extensive use of force perspective. At the beginning of the film, Patema’s point of view seems normal, until she ‘falls’ down to the sky, and instead of it looking like a dark cavern below her, it’s a big blue abyss, with seemingly harmless clouds. Additionally, there’s a part later in the film where Age is upside down in the cavern society with two Inverts, and though the world looks normal for Patema’s people, he is stuck on the ground of the room, and all of their appliances and items are tied to the ceiling. One of my favorite scenes from the movie is actually when both Age and Patema fall into the sky, and they’re both holding onto each other, so they are flying. The camera angle turns sideways, so it looks like they’re leaving their worlds behind for the sky, which I thought looked cinematically stunning.
By having the camera angle follow the characters’ perspectives, the film sells the idea that both societies think that their gravity is correct, and overtime in the film, Age and Patema learn more about themselves and their worlds by working together and opening their eyes to a whole new world view.
At first glance, each of the societies avoids each other; the Inverts survive underground and the Aiga people persecute any Inverts, as they want to have a ‘pure’ society of their own. Patema and Age break this pattern though, as they are forced to work together to get Patema back to her people. But in the climax of the film, the pair come across a journal that Age’s dad kept, where he details his work with Patema’s father figure, Lagos, where they were the first from both of their worlds to work together on their project. Age’s dad’s dream was one day to learn how to fly off into the sky and, with the help of Lagos, he was able to build a machine that uses parts from Lagos’ world to take off. Age and Patema realize that they can work together to get back to their world, just like their dads did many years prior. The friendship of Age and Patema shows the classic theme that unity is key, and this film does a fantastic job at highlighting that throughout their journey.
Patema Inverted is a fantastic animated film that takes a unique concept of inverted gravity and shows the social implications of how differences can set people back, rather than progress forward. I highly recommend checking out the film if you haven’t seen it before, and you can watch it here on Kanopy, either using your school’s login information or your own login. The film itself is in Japanese, but you can also check out the English dubbed version on Kanopy as well. I hope you enjoy it just as much as I did!