Cloud (Kuraudo)

 

Writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa

director on the set with Masaki Suda

CLOUD (Kuraudo)                B                                                                                                 Japan  (124 mi)  2024  d: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Now a death game begins.                                                                                                           —a dissatisfied customer

From the maker of CURE (1997), PULSE (2001), BRIGHT FUTURE (2003), Tokyo Sonata (2008), and Before We Vanish (Sanpo suru shinryakusha) (2017), all very different movies, known for making self-reflective psychological thrillers, where a common thread is the role technology plays in the modern world, playing on the collective fears of Japanese society, yet he never introduces special effects, preferring to use the classic tools of cinema over traditional American special effects and big stars, placing an emphasis on sound, lighting, photography, and editing combined with highly effective storytelling.  Noted for his psychological films that often focus on ambiguous narratives that accentuate the inner existential turmoil of characters and their search for meaning, Kurosawa is also known as one of the more intelligent and technically proficient filmmakers in the world today, yet he continues to experiment with new genres and styles, drawn by the idea of making an action thriller, where his contemporary work is just as thought-provoking as his distinctive earlier work.  Returning to a familiar theme of technology being a disruptive force, representing the emotional emptiness of modernity, this avoids the supernatural element of his earlier films, replaced in this instance by a scathing critique of capitalism, where an economy of exploitation causes a loss of identity, exploring the theme of media-amplified alienation, turning into a karma film, as it so prominently features cause and effect, with deceptive business practices leading to violent retributions, yet when that payback finally arrives, it’s not at all what we anticipate.  With an equal amount of oppressive mundanity and perverse amusement, this is a haunting change-of-life experience with lingering effects.  Stylishly subversive, yet also bold and unpredictable, there’s a sociopathic edge to each character that keeps viewers on edge, unsure of what’s about to happen, bearing some similarities to Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist (Aku wa sonzai shinai) (2023), which may not be surprising since Hamaguchi studied under Kurosawa at the Tokyo University of the Arts.  The idea for this story began in 2018, and may have originated with Takahiro Shiraishi, the “Twitter Killer,” who murdered and dismembered nine people in 2017, most of them young women, contacting his victims through social media, primarily Twitter, after they had posted about suicidal thoughts, luring them to his apartment under the guise of helping them, but then proceeded to rape and kill his victims, and was executed by hanging in Japan on June 27, 2025.  The Internet, from its dial-up infancy, was once viewed with such promise as this mystical and magical thing, thinking it was the answer to so many problems, a research tool that could access resource information with instantaneous results, without having to trek to the library, while things could get done so much faster and with greater accuracy, including correspondence with friends or business associates anywhere in the world, yet it also has a tendency to isolate and alienate people from general society, lowering the quotient for having to have social skills or good manners.  Over time we’ve become addicted to cellphones and social media, where an all-consuming narcissistic obsession has fueled an anonymous hate culture where no rules apply, as there is no referee or moderator to intervene, so people have free reign to do or say whatever dumb thing they please, however racist, homophobic, hateful, or misinformed, where you don’t need a moral compass to intentionally smear someone’s character, impugn anyone who’s different, or even invent fictitious scenarios or conspiracy theories that spread like wildfires (Hate culture is ruining the internet), creating waves of invisible and unwanted pressure just to get through each and every day. 

Screened out of competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2024, this film centers upon Ryosuke Yoshii, played with alienation and detachment by Masaki Suda, who voiced the Heron in Hayao Miyazaki’s latest The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka) (2023), viewed as an ambitiously young but directionless factory worker from Tokyo who builds an illegitimate side business of black market reselling, operating “on impulse and instinct,” cornering the market by picking up merchandise on the cheap and then reselling it online under a pseudonym at exorbitant prices, impervious to the effect this has on others, cheating buyers and sellers alike, who feel they got swindled.  The film effectively shows how the digital frontier has infiltrated our lives and become a domain for our most troubling and malicious tendencies, a world where human relationships have been reduced to transactions.  Initially living in a cramped apartment with his girlfriend Akiko, played by Kotone Furukawa, from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 #10 Film of the Year Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Gûzen to sôzô) (2021), Yoshii decides to move to an undisclosed larger location out of the city, attempting to remain anonymous from disgruntled victims who are attempting to track him down.  Refusing to join the new business of his school friend Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), who helped bring him into the online resale business, while also turning down a promotional opportunity from his boss Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), telling him, “I’m just unassertive.  It only looks like I’m committed,” he becomes more and more disconnected from the world around him, losing all interest in anything except his bank account, and even avoids his relationship with Akiko while hiring a devoted assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira), to help expand the business.  In a sly turn of events, the perpetually bored Akiko comes on to Sano, but he curiously rebuffs her advances with surprising resolve.  What stands out is the way Kurosawa visually expresses the online sale, where the computer becomes a central character, revealed in a very cinematic manner, creating anticipation and suspense, filling the screen with items for sale, all meticulously listed in ordered columns, changing color as they’re purchased, literally coming alive as customers express an interest in his merchandise one item at a time, ultimately becoming the realization of all his hard work and dreams, Clip from Cloud directed by Kurosawa Kiyoshi YouTube (2:17).  But Kurosawa has something else in mind, as this isn’t an entrepreneurial success story, but something else altogether, a glacially paced thriller with unexpected twists and turns near the end, leaving viewers in the dark about where this is going, portraying the hidden face of the Internet and the anonymous people who hide behind the screens, pushing every trace of humanity aside in order to get what they want, becoming an exploration of the dark edges of our society, where this is a “The Internet will steal your soul movie,” with cautionary warnings about the kind of world this is becoming.  Going against the grain of a traditional Japanese work ethic, where working in solidarity with an entire team is the business model for achieving security and success, Yoshii is something of a lone wolf, an independent contractor who mostly displays feelings of ambivalence and uncertainty, yet a firm believer in opportunism and his own compulsion, with an allegiance to no one but himself. This puts him at odds with the status quo, but may reflect the perspective of a younger generation seeking quicker, more instantaneous methods of success, more reliant upon technology and their computer prowess, driven by wanting to see results now.   

Elegantly shot by Yasuyuki Sasaki, who worked on Hamaguchi’s Asako I & II (Netemo sametemo) (2018), using long takes and abrupt cuts, making exquisite use of empty space, where characters are often shot engulfed in their surroundings, with musical composer Takuma Watanabe adding his own eerie stylishness, with Shinji Watanabe’s positively brilliant sound design, Kurosawa has staged a generational divide choreography pitting the old ways against the new, which proceeds in a very slow manner, taking a while to get started, showing a quiet detachment, but viewers need to get acclimated to just what kind of business Yoshii is running, quitting his job at the factory, going all-in on his own business acumen, where an overly materialistic Akiko seems to be drawn to him over his ability to make money, no questions asked, but he starts clashing with both his assistant and girlfriend over his increasingly obsessive work habits.  What’s important in this film is that it features ordinary people leading ordinary lives.  A frustrated Akiko never figures out how to operate an espresso machine, supposedly an upgrade over a regular coffee maker, and eventually moves out when she is so completely neglected by his preoccupation with his business, while Yoshii also fires Sano after discovering he used his computer, with his assistant trying to warn him that others are angered by his questionable business ethics, or lack thereof, like stirring up a hornet’s nest, completely dismissing this notion that he needs to do a better job concealing his identity online, but this insider access feels too close for comfort and creates friction, especially when Sano refuses to be fired, claiming he’s only looking out for Yoshii’s interests.  Yoshii, on the other hand, can’t tell whether the threats are real or imagined, though there is a trail of random incidents left behind like breadcrumbs.  None of this sounds particularly dramatic or cinematic, but the filmmaker cleverly reveals only the barest outlines of a story, establishing a rhythm of disorientation and dread, where there is an outpouring of angry resentment against Yoshii, as people want to bring him down, driven by greed, hatred, self-interest, and desire, trying to follow his computer footprint, initially with no success, but an online forum produces his address (Yoshii inadvertently allowed his address to be seen on his phone during a bus ride), so a group bands together to go after him, revealed with such a remarkable economy of means, where an open door changes the entire trajectory of the film, veering into a cold thriller with a dark, satirical edge, CLOUD by Kurosawa Kiyoshi – Official clip 1 | #venezia81 ... YouTube (1:11).  Kurosawa always does more with less, which distinguishes him as an innovative filmmaker, making the most out of a seemingly innocuous situation, as it makes little sense for his former boss to show up ominously outside his place in the dead of night, adding an element of lingering creepiness, as we don’t really know why, CLOUD by Kurosawa Kiyoshi – Official clip | #venezia81 Fuori ... YouTube (1:37), but this soon escalates into the horror mode, as a swindler drama morphs into a standard thriller, shifting into a home invasion mode before turning into a bleak­ly fun­ny, full-blown action movie.  When it becomes apparent people are after him, Yoshii escapes into the woods to avoid a vengeful lynch mob that is out to get him.  Just when he thinks he has eluded them, he suddenly finds himself surrounded and kidnapped by a gang of disgruntled people armed to the teeth wanting to exact revenge, all with warped reasons for getting involved, where it gets confusing who they all are, a gangster, apparently, who joins forces with his former bosses and a few petty revenge seekers, leaving him with few options. 

Tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse, a man with a blowtorch intends to burn Yoshii alive and stream it online for profit, becoming some sort of gruesome revenge spectacle, an exaggerated overreaction to be sure, but they represent a Greek chorus of anger and resentment, people who have been easily manipulated, misled, and taken advantage of, powerless and seemingly without a voice, yet here they’re given a platform to exact retribution, but more surprises await, as things don’t go exactly as planned, where the warehouse format may remind some of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992).  Kurosawa interjects a few unforeseen obstacles in the form of Sano, his misunderstood and completely unappreciated, and fired, assistant who tracks him down by the GPS on his phone, turning out to be a former yakuza, who even after his release considers it his natural duty to defend his employer, turning into a Charles Bronson vigilante who intends to exact justice.  Coming out of nowhere, the quietly polite Sano turns into the X-factor, exhibiting surprising resourcefulness, stalking and killing the kidnappers with astonishing efficiency, rescuing his former boss who he still swears allegiance to, as if he never left his former position, combining forces to track down the remaining few that continue to pose a threat.  Yoshii is placed in the position of a combatant with a gun in his hand, completely bewildered how he found himself in this position, but what he’s called upon to do is shoot to kill in order to save his own life, revealing in no uncertain terms that it’s either kill or be killed, a metaphor for the cutthroat capitalist business landscape where it’s the Wild West out there, with real life gunslingers, dripping with a sense of paranoia and dread, with potentially violent costumers lurking around every shadowy corner, reminding us what unchecked capitalism looks like (The rise of end times fascism | Far right (US)).  This scenario references the Sam Peckinpah film STRAW DOGS (1971), where the meek husband of a violently raped woman turns into a fanatically-driven killer to exact justice.  Akiko even makes a late appearance, but her motives are suspicious, just like everyone else.  With a surreal ending that has a heavily absurdist literary No Exit aspect, Sano and Yoshii drive off into an apocalyptic orange-colored landscape, like falling into the abyss, with Sano professing his primary purpose is to make more money, where nothing else matters, as we hear a doomed Yoshii mutter under his breath, “So this is how you get into Hell.”  Probing the depths of human deception and depravity with an unblinking gaze, Kurosawa’s film is challenging in an untraditional way, offering ruminations on how our online preoccupations are draining peo­ple of their human­i­ty, as Yoshii and Sano form a symbiotic connection with an ambiguous future together. The title reflects the intangible, nebulous nature of the Internet where digital interactions and transactions occur in a vast, interconnected space, where things can be ephemeral and difficult to grasp, as this insightful satire of online capitalism and hate culture exposes a virtual world spilling out into the real world where violent incidents can occur for seemingly no reason whatsoever, as petty grudges and frustrations are blown way out of proportion.  The Internet, which can both connect people and become a catalyst for conflict, magnifies the worst in us, mirroring the endless rage that social media stokes, as virtual anger inevitably spills out into the physical world, something we commonly see every day.  While the Internet brings about the end of the world in PULSE, so eerily ahead of its time and prescient in its mixture of techno-horror and social commentary, we face the teetering fragility of this future at our own peril.    

Видео Cloud {Kuraudo} Masaki Suda-Kotone Furukawa ... entire film may be seen with English subtitles on YouTube (2:04:02)

Recollections of the Yellow House (Recordações da Casa Amarela)

 

Erich von Stroheim from Blind Husbands (1919)

Count Orlak from Nosferatu (1922)

Director João César Monteiro

 

 

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE YELLOW HOUSE (Recordações da Casa Amarela)       B            Portugal  (122 mi)  1989  d: João César Monteiro

Back home they called the prison “the yellow house.”  Sometimes when we kids played in the streets, we used to take a look at the dark and silent bars on the high windows.  Full of awe we’d say: “Poor buggers!...”  Here we are on our own once again.  This is all so slow, so heavy, so sad…I shall be old soon.  Then it will all be over.  So many people have come into this bedroom.  They said things that didn’t mean much to me.  They left.  They grew old.  Became slow and miserable, each one in his own corner of the world.                                       —opening intertitle

Portugal’s João César Monteiro is one of the more controversial filmmakers, directing only 12 features in his lifetime, writing and starring in all of them.  With an affiliation for poetry, painting, theater, literature, and music, his films are known for their literary components, given a painterly look, typically concerned with matters of the spirit as much as those of the body, where his films are seen as an extension of all the other artforms.  In the early 1970’s, the Carnation Revolution ended more than four decades of fascism in Portugal, spawning a new generation of filmmakers with a distinctively literary mindset, all in the shadow of its modern national poet, Fernando Pessoa, creating a fusion of artistic, cinematic, and literary inspirations.  Part of Portuguese New Cinema, there’s a poetic melancholy, even sadness, in its overall tone in how it portrays a certain lingering “malaise,” which is captured in the shootings of the narrow Lisbon streets.  This sixth feature and breakthrough work had a brief run in America, but like all of his films, never found a distributor.  According to Paulo Branco, Monteiro’s producer and longtime friend, “If there was ever someone who lived completely free, where life and creativity always intertwined, it was João César Monteiro.  He never conformed to any rules and always brought a sense of ‘madness’ to his work— something he proudly embraced.  That’s why his films are so essential and unique in world cinema.”  A profoundly eccentric actor-director, his films are long, deadpan black comedies, minimally plotted and slow moving, where many consider this morbidly perverse film his masterpiece, often described as a visual poem.  Focused on a solitary character of Monteiro himself, this film introduces us to the alter-ego character of João de Deus (John of God), named after the Portuguese-born patron saint of the destitute, an aged, slim and balding man wearing spectacles, a comic everyman and misfit, or Holy Fool, spending his days wandering between an old boarding house and Lisbon’s historic, decadent neighborhoods.  Verging from a sophisticated artist and European gentleman whispering poetry to a lecherous old man, with an unorthodox and obsessively perverse sexual imagination, his lonely life is peppered with degenerate sexual fantasies that when acted upon produce disastrous results.  João is an incorrigible womanizer, as his erotic fetishes border on depravity, like his leering almost predatory attraction to beautiful young women and his mad obsession with collecting pubic hair, becoming such a controversial and polarizing figure that it’s difficult to feel sympathy. Subtitled “A Portuguese Comedy,” Monteiro explores the idea of whether or not his lecherous protagonist is crazy, or whether he’s being stifled by an insane world, choosing a life of great austerity, living an ascetic life, most of the time feeling imprisoned by the world around him, remaining aloof and isolated, like a stranger in his own country.  Stately and elegant, and often hilarious, Monteiro’s films exhibit a refined satire and social commentary, heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, where he is Portugal’s answer to Spain’s Luis Buñuel, yet less well known and more difficult to appreciate, with plenty of Buñuelian pokes at fascism and religion. 

Beginning as a poet and film critic, arguably the most brilliant and acutely intellectual critic in Portugal, writing several years for the newspaper Público before transitioning to a filmmaker, like most of the French Nouvelle Vague filmmakers, studying at the London Film School, then known as the London School of Film Technique, where this recalls the subliminal messaging and existentialist mindset of Antoine Roquentin, the melancholic and socially isolated intellectual protagonist of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1938 psychological novel, Nausea.  Monteiro has claimed that all his films are essentially remakes of THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), explaining there are two possibilities of cinema, the real and the imaginary.  “Dorothy lives in the countryside in Kansas: she’s bored with her daily life and she dreams about another place — and that place is cinema in Technicolor.  In a way, every film I’ve made deals with this kind of feeling — let’s see what Kansas can bring to Oz and what Oz can change in Kansas.”  Winner of the Silver Lion (3rd Place) at the Venice Film Festival, with cinematography by José António Loureiro, shot on 35mm in natural, realistic settings, such as streets, buildings, and interior rooms, where the long opening shot from the water overlooking the city shows us Lisbon in a way we’ve never seen before.  With an introductory acknowledgment of the music of both Schubert and Vivaldi, each adds a degree of cultural refinement, starting with the familiar refrains of a theme so prominently featured in Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON (1975), Barry Lyndon, Trio op 100 (Schubert) YouTube (4:16), branching out to the delicately ethereal, Schubert - Notturno in E flat major, Op. 148, D. 897 YouTube (9:45), before reaching for the religious sublime, Vivaldi: Stabat Mater YouTube (19:01).  Living in a cheap room in a family boarding house in the old section of the city’s waterfront, the film starts out in a state of miserablism and discomfort, as João is besieged by bedbugs in the middle of the night, growing contemptuous of their mere existence, disappearing from view at the first sign of light, like blood-sucking vampires, a reference that comes into play later in the film, yet taking a certain amount of pleasure in bringing the problem to his tyrannical landlady Violeta (Manuela de Freitas), an insufferable woman who offers a speech about the rich history of the building, once home to prominent dignitaries, yet the last thing she needs is an infestation, so immediate action is necessary.  João takes great satisfaction in hearing the crackling sound of the mattress burning, as the tiny little critters meet their demise.  While it’s also clear this is a seedy establishment, João is a Quixotic sensualist, a grizzled, depressive man living a solitary life, where his misadventures suggest an isolated Dostoyevskian outcast, with his bitter, internalized rants playing out like Notes from Underground, finding humor and eroticism in a way that no one else could imitate.  Bleakly absurdist, our unlikely protagonist ruminates on illness and the prospect of death.  As if to stave off the inevitable, he develops a Peeping Tom fixation on the landlady’s virtuous, clarinet-playing daughter Julieta (Teresa Calado), who is thirty years younger, stealing peeks though her door at night or while taking a bath, and then afterwards he inhales and drinks her soapy bath water, taking extreme pleasure at finding a single pubic hair, enamored by the intimacy it represents. 

Having no visible means of support, João shows no signs of remorse with taking money from his 70-year old mother (Maria Ângela Violeta), who still works as a cleaning lady, while he’s not above earning money by nefarious means, like blackmail, suggesting he’s a thoroughly unethical character, developing a healthy contempt for those around him, even stealing money from Mimi (Sabina Sacchi), the neighboring prostitute who has just died, taking money hidden away to pay for her daughter’s upbringing.  Suddenly feeling invincible with his newfound wealth, he initially flatters Julieta with promises before turning into a seduction/rape scene, cutting to an abrupt image of a Beethoven bust, shot from João’s point of view, while Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony ferociously erupts on the soundtrack as he literally pounces on her just as her mother walks in, throwing all his money at her half-naked body, quickly running away in disgrace.  In one of the more hilarious showstopper scenes of the film, all the women of the neighborhood can be heard opening their window shutters to communally share salacious gossip on the incident while offering obscenities about what a raging pervert he is, unsparing in their graphic detail.  Suddenly confronted by the harshness of the city, things go off the rails after that, as João becomes a homeless tramp, sleeping on garden benches and lining up for soup kitchens, which gives Monteiro the opportunity to document the lives of the homeless elderly in Lisbon.  But when he inexplicably starts strutting around in a stolen military uniform, he is arrested and sent to a psychiatric sanitarium.  Of note, Monteiro was locked up in a psychiatric institution for a brief period of time in his youth.  The mood of the film shifts substantially, as he’s suddenly surrounded by mental instability, making him seem more level-headed and sane than they are, but of dubious moral character.  The boarding house and the asylum can be read as metaphoric extensions of the nation, both ruled by eccentric yet strong-willed authoritarians.  One of the more remarkable cinematic references comes into play as Monteiro reaches back into cinema history, specifically Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922), where Count Orlok’s physical resemblance to João is striking, suggesting those with exquisitely fine aristocratic manners can carry out despicable criminal acts, becoming, in effect, monsters that walk amongst us.  Equally as tantalizing is a moment when he and Mimi have a sexual encounter, but the camera moves away from them and shifts to a slow pan of the giant figure of a man in a sleek white uniform, who is none other than Erich von Stroheim in BLIND HUSBANDS (1919), a Chevalier and dapperly dressed ladies man who comes to personify his suddenly inflated ego.  After escaping from the asylum, we’re left with the German Expressionist image of João rising from the sewer ducts in a cloud of smoke, as if rising from a coffin, resembling the shadowy image of Murnau’s creepy monster, with the past effectively merging into the present, with the early morning sound of blackbirds heard singing over the end credits.      

Recordações da Casa Amarela (João César Monteiro, 1989) entire film may be seen here with English subtitles, YouTube (1:57:20)