Director Kôji Fukada
HARMONIUM (Fuchi
ni tatsu) B+
Japan (120 mi)
2016 d: Kôji Fukada
Those happy times have been and gone.
—a song sung by Yasaka
(Tadanobu Asano)
An unsettling
and slowly developing film that has a way of creeping up on you, where the
intensity and full force of this innovative film comes as a complete
surprise. While the Japanese title might
best be translated to Standing On the
Edge, this is a typical working class drama that might lull you to sleep
with its simplicity before suddenly taking a strange turn veering into the
horror genre. While not as audacious as
Takashi Miike’s AUDITION (1999), the two-part technique is similar, though this
restrained family drama is much more carefully calibrated to send the audience
swooning into the ambiguity of unanswered questions. Winner of the Jury Prize (2nd Place) in the
Un Certain Regard at Cannes, and one of the better directed films of the year,
Fukada upends the traditional format for a Japanese domestic drama, creating an
eerie film that stands alone in its stark originality, where you may wish to
see it again just to review the embedded clues that you might have missed the
first time around, as events escalate quickly, catching the viewer
off-guard. An ordinary husband and wife,
Toshio (Kanji Furutachi) and Akié (Mariko Tsutsui), live an uneventful life
with their beloved 10-year old daughter Hotaru (Momone Shinokawa) who is
learning to play the harmonium, seen practicing with a metronome in the living
room for an upcoming recital. What might
seem strange to international audiences is just how expansive Toshio’s
industrial workshop is, where he has created a small machine factory as an
addition to the family home, which opens to the street like a garage door. To see welding and sheet metal cutting
happening in one’s garage is not something you see every day, where the decibel
level would have to be extremely high, an ear-splitting presence to any
neighborhood. In America you’d have to
get certain zoning changes permitting industrial work in what is otherwise a
residential neighborhood, but in Japan, this may be a fairly common
practice. Nonetheless, Toshio retreats
to the private sanctity of his work in the garage much like other husbands head
off to work every day, where the audience gets used to the routine, with the
husband returning into the home later that evening where they all sit down for
dinner. There is little back and forth
banter between the parents, as mostly they ignore one another, while the mother
and daughter say grace before meals and then chat away, with the father
remaining silently isolated and alone.
Without a word
to his wife and daughter, Toshio is unexpectedly met in his garage by an old
friend, who is invited to stay with them temporarily, where he will help with
the needed work while living with the family.
Yasaka, the invited guest, is played by Tadanobu Asano, who has a
storied career in Asian cinema working with some of the best directors, most
recently in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s JOURNEY TO THE SHORE (2015) and his earlier
BRIGHT FUTURE (2003), Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE (2003) and
INVISIBLE WAVES (2006), playing the uncle in Katsuhito Ishii’s The
Taste of Tea (Cha no aji) (2004), a samurai swordsman in Takeshi Kitano’s
ZATOICHI (2003), and the sadomasochistic killer in Takashi Miike’s ICHI THE
KILLER (2001), but also has appeared earlier in Nagisa Ôshima’s GOHATTO (1999)
and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first film MABOROSI (1995). To say the man carries dramatic weight is an
understatement, yet we learn he was recently released from prison, but more
about his past remains a mystery, so it’s not clear why Toshio offers him the
job and invites him into his home. What
is immediately apparent is the stilted and impassive manner in which Yasaka
carries himself, always dressed for a funeral in a clean white shirt buttoned
up to the neck, retaining an eerie air of stillness, suppressing all emotions,
speaking in a hushed and halting deadpan, yet always exceedingly polite. He’s a bit spooky, with unclear motives,
turning up mysteriously, seemingly appearing out of thin air like a ghost,
where he simply has a strange and daunting presence. When Akié asks about their longstanding
friendship, as she never heard her husband mention him before, nothing about
his past is revealed, where the husband’s usual stoicism is to remain
tight-lipped. Yasaka’s table manners,
however, are amusing, as he noticeably slurps his noodles while
instantly devouring a meal in seconds. Still unconvinced,
Akié remains suspicious of his presence until Yasaka takes an interest in
Hotaru and teaches her a melodic song to play on the harmonium, which she
eagerly wants to play at her recital. In
fact Yasaka develops a closeness to Hotaru that is missing with her own father.
As if that’s not enough, he makes
flirtatious moves on Akié as well, who at first seems open to the idea, a
comment on her diminishing relationship to Toshio, but then firmly slaps him on
the face, a jolt that seems to kickstart the film into another gear.
While the first
hour cleverly reveals the hidden illusions of a marital couple, where the
stranger pinpoints and accentuates their weaknesses, we also learn bits and
pieces of Yasaka’s unraveling mystery, namely that he served eleven years in
prison for murder. Without warning, the
pace of the film quickens for one chilling moment that is simply shocking. Coming on the heels of the slap, and the
revelations of his prior crime, Yasaka suddenly finds himself in a precarious
position hovering over a fallen Hotaru and disappears from sight, where she is
never the same afterwards. One
mysterious event shakes the family’s tenuous equilibrium, leaving them
heartbroken and despondent, as if touched by a permanent stain of guilt that
they can’t wash away, though we see Akié constantly scrubbing her hands in Lady
Macbeth style, refusing to allow anyone to touch her, as her obsession with momentarily failing her daughter can never be scrubbed clean. The film jumps ahead another eight years with
the arrival of another new young worker, Takashi (Taiga), who seems helpful and
respectful, until they learn of his connection to the past. As if resurrected by their own internal shame,
the film suddenly surges into foreign territory, becoming wracked with tension,
with the family descending into a neverending pit of emotional chaos, with
viewers along for the ride, as Toshio and Akié sense the unseen presence, once
again, of Yasaka drawing near, throwing the family into disarray. With waves of dread creeping back into their
lives, the couple is tormented by their past, revealing scenes of searing
emotional power, as they are quick to search for answers. Believing Yasaka may be living nearby, they
curiously explore what appears to be a pristine Japanese neighborhood that
could be the subject for wood prints or brush paintings, as the wooden houses
blend so perfectly into the abundant foliage of the hilly landscape, with few
roads or sidewalks, like a throwback to the interior of Japan before modernization,
just a gorgeous, beautifully developed paradise on earth. They believe they hear the sound of Yasaka’s
song that he played on the harmonium, as if calling out for them, or it may
simply be their own drudged-up memories coming back to haunt them, as they are
shaken to the core, unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Elegantly shot by Kenichi Negishi, the formal
minimalism includes a few startling cuts, where the sheer look of the film
grows increasingly impressive. A film
about guilt, sexual repression, and personal boundaries, when there is a
violation of personal space, an inevitable explosion occurs, where by the end
of this film it’s hard not to feel like something extraordinary occurred.
No comments:
Post a Comment