"The Imaginary": A Perfect Recipe for Embracing the Long-forgotten Childhood

A few days ago, I went to the cinema with my little sister to attend a certain annual festival which showed Japanese movies and animations. It has somewhat become a routine for us both for these past two years. Truth to be told, I wasn't as excited as the year before, for this year I had zero knowledge regarding the movie that we were going to watch. In short, we (or I) came empty-handed (or should I say empty-minded?). I purposefully refrained myself from reading any reviews or watching the trailers beforehand. Anyway, my little sister was actually the one who picked the movie at that time. All the initial knowledge I had about the movie was merely the title and the studio that produced it. 

Thus, here's the title: The Imaginary. 

If you dig deep down to the very first post I uploaded in this blog (link here), you'll find a story with almost EXACTLY the same title as the movie. I might've peeked a little about the movie's very-very brief summary, and soon I learned that it tells a story about a girl and her imaginary friend. 

Does it start to sound familiar? To me, it's a yes. So let me proceed. WARNING: may contain spoiler. 

In short, the movie was about a series of journey from the perspective of an "imaginary" named Rudger and his "creator", Amanda. I'm not gonna dwell too deep into the storyline, for I don't want to ruin your experience of watching the movie by yourself. What I want to say that Amanda-Rudger's relationship is a not-so-different one from my characters', whom we may call as Avery and Alice. From what I can recall, I wrote about Avery and Alice as a story of someone who had step out of their childhood realm and into the world of the grown-ups. Imaginations may no longer feel as vivid as they used to, since adults tend to make a more realistic approaches towards life. Avery and Alice's story also showed how someone undergo a process of being more open in their social life. Avery used to be a loner —someone who rarely interact with others and lived inside her own "head". That was when she created "Alice", someone whom we might call —borrowing the terms from "The Imaginary" movie— as an Imaginary or made-up friend. As time went by, Avery discovered her way to reconnect with people around her, especially friends. Soon, Alice the Imaginary was no longer needed as Avery approached adulthood. Yet at one time she emerged back into her mind to remind her that Alice used to be "alive" and helping Avery out to navigate through her lonely life.

In "The Imaginary" movie, the dynamic between these Imaginaries with their Creators may not be exactly the same way as how I pictured it years ago in my written work. It's different, yet feels the similar at the same time. Perhaps it's because of the sense of familiarity from the similar theme. However, there were certain scenes in the movie which served a similar purpose as my written work. First, when Amanda's mother, a fully-fledged adult woman, realized that once she used to have an Imaginary too, and she tried to embrace that fact once again. Second, the scene which arguably could be one of the saddest in the movie: when Amanda bid farewell to Rudger. Though not described explicitly in the movie, I think Amanda had come into terms that Rudger is not "real", and she had to let go of him in order to take a new step into her upcoming life stage. It broke my heart when I watched it, as much as it broke me when I penned Avery and Alice's last goodbye.

At the end of the day, there's always some things we need to let go while we move on to wherever place we aim for. However, it won't hurt to revisit your childhood memories once more, don't you think? Even if it's only an imaginary one.