Review: For Our “bright future” by Takashi Kitakoji, the “bright future school”:

Misunderstood as a cynical technician specializing in various “screwballs” (if speaking in the baseball term), Kiyoshi Kurosawa is an authentically cinematic director, specializing in straight balls. When he was to make a film bright future, I was convinced that he shows genuine “bright future.” “What is impossible to understand ….., in my words, it is called a “monster” and I think it odd that you won’t admit there are monsters in this world. I believe that monsters certainly exist and that it is fine.” (from Kiyoshi Kurosawa interview during the shooting of this film)

How the authentically cinematic Kurosawa portrays the “bright future” on the screen? He cannot possibly fabricate a dreamy story by putting the “dark present” and “dark past” in parenthesis. This is a method of a half-baked technician.

I’ll give you an easy example. If a seal shows up in a dirty river in Tokyo or Yokohama, seals are not supposed to live there, so Japanese people feel unexpectedly attached to this “cute” seal and give it a nickname, or spectators and reporters from media go crazy. It is like a healing ceremony in order to even temporarily forget the “dark present”…..

On the contrary, schools of jellyfish floating on the rivers in Tokyo in bright future are literally “monsters.” Their luminous shapes coming out of darkness are starkly beautiful, but they can never be cute. If you want to touch them, they sting you with their poisonous needle with no hesitation. Furthermore, their poison is not used for some purposes (like revolution?) . They are “incomprehensible” or “monsters”, according to Kurosawa’s definition. After some victims were stung, helpless people rush to eliminate them in heavy protection precisely like those policemen handling the aftermaths of the 1995 Tokyo subway gas terrorism by a cult group. It is important that the “monsters” for Kurosawa refers not to the terrorists who used sarin gas but to the sarin gas itself. Kurosawa’s “monsters” are indifferent to human intention like disturbing the orders in the world or subverting the establishment. Shin-ichiro Arita (played by Tatsuya Fuji) perhaps spent his youth in the 1960s and gets excited by the massive schools of jellyfish in the river. We may detect his revolutionary past in his excitement, but Kurosawa coldly responds to this kind of excitement. Shin-ichiro is stung by the poisonous jellyfish. On the other hand, his son Mamoru (played by Tadanobu Asano) knows everything about jellyfish as a monster possessing no intention of its own. Therefore, he was attracted by its beauty. These revolutionaries are met by severe defeat by the counterattack of the “monsters” they once trained as their tools for revolution. They were also aspiring for the “bright future” but Kurosawa does not believe such a revolution. The “bright future” defined by Kurosawa can only be born only after you admit the existence of the incomprehensible monsters as they are, not as their useful tools or trying to eliminate them. In this sense, Kurosawa agrees with the stipulation of the “dark past” and “dark present” that a sort of revolution is merely an “illusion.” Nonetheless, he aspires for the “bright future.”

From now on, I will go into the core of my review. The most important and challenging aspects of bright future are that Kurosawa shows many elements new to him, although this is authentically Kurosawa film. In this sense, Nimura’s conversation with Shin-ichiro after the former throws a television antenna down from the roof of the latter’s modest recycling factory. Nimura comes down to the ground and asks Shin-ichiro: “Have you ever been up there (looking at the roof)?” “No” answers Shinichiro. “You can’t see anything from up there. That’s what I discovered,” continues Nimura. I happened to be present during the shooting of this scene and I somehow got excited hearing these lines besides the camera. These casually exchanged lines made me expect an important change Kurosawa was taking in this film. Somewhat as his own destiny as an excellent and authentic filmmaker, Kurosawa has obtained the “bird eye’s” point-of-view looking down the world. Kurosawa’s greatness is to capture the chaotic world and the scary monsters living there in the perfectly planned and materialized images on the screen. In bright future, Kurosawa chose to abandon the bird’s eye view looking down the world from far above….

We are surprised by the tone of his images emphasizing the darkness made possible by digital video shooting; audacious costumes designed by Michiko Kitamura; and above all, the emotional scene in which Shin-ichiro embraces Nimura. We wonder whether we had ever seen such a scene in Kurosawa before. There are very few female characters in this film. It may be possible to see a gay triangular relationship of the three males. The prison meeting room scenes continuously show thrilling moments, and when Nimura shouts at Mamoru that he will wait for the other for many years until he will be out, it is like a confession of a lover. Tadanobu Asano all the sudden wonderfully turns cold, as if he is a genuine femme fatale. Tatsuya Fuji, with the atmosphere of the 1970s youth film typically shot by director Toshiya Fujita, gives Kurosawa’s film an “alienating effect.” In the above-mentioned embracing scene, he tells the distressed youth, “I will forgive all of you, for everything.” Of course, Kurosawa detects somewhat transcendent=educational “bird’s view point” in his line, and the director does not allow the two to consummate their “love”. Shin-ichiro character is like the roles played by actor Koji Yakusho until this film. Kurosawa and Yakusho share the generational camaraderie however, this is consciously crushed and Kurosawa keeps suspicious of Shin-ichiro’s viewpoints. Fuji was at a loss how to interpret this script and during the shooting he told us that “all three men are part of Kurosawa, but all of them could be the same person.” This interpretation may be close to the right answer. Kurosawa gave up the bird’s eye viewpoint to look down the world from far away, but through the scattered viewpoints challenges the chaotic world. Scattered viewpoints mean “loving” viewpoints. Generational gaps make distance between loving two, however, they are close to that rigid distance between the lovers agonizingly trying to overcome. It seems to me that bright future is Kurosawa’s romantic movie he challenges to create for the first time or after many years.

Lastly, I would like to mention the young boys, new to Kurosawa. They are further younger than the generation of Mamoru and Nimura, thus, materializing the “bright future” in this film straightforwardly. For example, Nimura leads them to attack the office at night and these boys are so jovial. Kurosawa as an authentic filmmaker has often portrayed the violent actions of a group and made his viewers experience the attractive moments of cinema, which is medium inherently good at depicting dramas of many people. The young boys drama this time is quite different from Kurosawa’s previous fascistic groups. These young boys are so happy and enjoy their innocence before they go into the age of falling in love. It is the abandonment of the “bird’s eye” viewpoint. If you see something through the “bird’s eye,” all the groups seem to be fascistic.

The last scene of this film seems to be an homage to A High School Girl with a Machine Gun (Seira-fuku to kikanju, 1981) directed by Shinji Somai. At the same time, the last scene will make the viewers anticipate a “bright future” and it is deeply moving. The group of kids wearing the same T-shirt with the face of Che Guebara walks on the street of Omote Sando (A main street in fashionable area in Tokyo). They will soon fall in love, and suffer from the distance between lovers, however, at this right moment, they look in front of them and their future spreads there. On the screen, you cannot find Mamoru or Nimura or Shin-ichiro. They lost their love and go beyond our views. However, all the futures exist as some space where we do not exist. After fifty or sixty years, or several hundreds years, we will no longer be there. To affirm that time keeps flowing and space keep spreading after our death. To hope and believe that there is a bright future there. To hope and believe there is our bright future in front of these young kids (maybe they are looking at the movie camera?) Today, we come to belong to the bright future school!
 

• Discuss any article about entertainment in Japan in our Discussion Forums.
• Most of the movies and music presented can be found at Amazon.com
• Japanese rock fans, don't miss Rock of Japan