Bright Future
By Chris Hyde
March 1, 2005
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Bright Future makes its domestic DVD debut with a Palm Pictures release.
Of all the directors to make genre films in the recent wave of what is now known a J-horror, Kiyoshi Kurosawa is perhaps the most enigmatic. Known for work peppered with mysterious situations and characters of half-formed motivation, this craftsman’s oeuvre leans towards terror with an artistic eye that sets him apart from his peers. Kurosawa’s films are also notable for their vague distrust of technology and a subtly surreal pessimism; while never unremittingly bleak, this man’s cinema tends to exude a fair leeriness about people’s ability to communicate with each other as well as intimating much uneasiness about society’s direction.
In other words, this is an artist whose temperament is ideally suited for peering into the ways of post-Nikkei collapse Japan. But while for the most part he employs a fairly documentary style, Kurosawa certainly isn’t one to approach things head on. More typically you’ll get allusion and obfuscation, as his characters stumble around half-blind until their emotions get the better of them. This director is much more about letting the audience try to figure things out for themselves rather than spelling it out completely; and, in fact, there are most likely finished scenes in his technically polished films that perhaps even Kurosawa hasn’t completely puzzled out.
Prior to Bright Future’s release, Kurosawa had worked almost entirely inside genre film with work like Cure, Charisma and the amazing (and underrated) Kairo. Looking to push the filmmaker in a new direction, for this one his producers asked him to create a movie that didn’t rely so heavily on the horror/thriller framework — and the result is in many ways a departure from his previous output. Still, there remains much to connect this one with what has gone before in the filmmaker’s cinema, and it certainly isn’t without elements drawn from the rubric of horror and sci-fi - but in the final assessment Bright Future must be said to represent a unique place in Kurosawa’s canon.
The story of the film circles around three male protagonists: Yuji Nimura (Jô Odagiri), a young man seemingly lost in his own reality, Mamoru Arita (Tadanobu Asano), Yuji’s friend and mentor, and Shin-ichiro Arita (played by great Japanese film actor Tatsuya Fuji, best known as the lead male in Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses), Mamoru’s estranged father. Initially, the movie’s plot follows the two younger men as they work in a laundry and engage in some strange, almost ritualistic behavior that might have profound implications for Japan. In the main, it’s entirely unclear just what exactly they are up to - and their fixation on a poisonous jellyfish only serves to make their motives all the more impenetrable.
Eventually, Mamoru Arita’s father enters the fray and the film becomes a generational test of wills for the characters. Surprisingly, this contest plays out not so much between father and son as between Yuji and the older man; circumstances here dictate that Shin-ichiro’s paternalistic impulses end up applied to Yuji and the incapacitating rage that he holds in his heart. The conflict between the generations in Bright Future isn’t so clearly defined that it’s held up front and center by Kurosawa — in fact, it comes wrapped in an odd package of oneiric premonition and luminous Lamarckian invertebrates who may be harbingers of either doom or hope. The director’s desire to hang back and hide in the shadows while alluding to his themes has always been paramount to his technique, and this tendency remains well in evidence throughout this one as Kurosawa allows the motives and mores of his players to remain shrouded and unclear.
Viewers who wish a clear accounting of all character actions and the reasons for the same in a story might find that Bright Future is far too ill-defined a venture for them; but for those others who don’t mind having their narrative served up with a bit of gauzy sheen may uncover much to like in Kurosawa’s approach. But it isn’t just the filmmaker’s imprecise yet capable craft that drives this movie forward, as the three principal actors all carry off their roles with steady aplomb. At this point, there’s very little left to say about Tadanobu Asano as he stands as perhaps the most accomplished actor of his generation and is as good as ever here. Less celebrated is Jô Odaguri, who prior to this film had not really taken a lead role in a film but who ultimately proves to be an excellent choice to play the out-of-step Yuji. Last up comes the simply superb turn put in by the veteran Tatsuya Fuji, a role that rates as strong as anything he did as a younger man.
Given its talented cast and the guiding hand of its idiosyncratic director, Bright Future succeeds as a film in spite (or perhaps even because of) its often amorphous and hazy nature. Luckily, as a special added bonus to their excellent-looking DVD release, Palm Pictures includes here a 75-minute documentary on the movie titled Ambivalent Future. This piece provides some great insight into the director’s working style, and while it’s sure not going to answer all of your questions it’s an undoubtedly invaluable look at the filmmaker and his craft. Kurosawa, his producers and the members of his cast and crew all provide many telling comments as they speak about the production, and you also get treated to lots of nice footage from backstage at the puppet show. While the bulk of this is all pretty great stuff, the best material comes from the director himself as he talks about his thoughts and influences; personally I found it most intriguing that the only outside directors whose works come up in this discussion were the American filmmakers Don Siegel and Robert Aldrich.
Though some ways a departure from his earlier films, Bright Future still remains at its base a quintessential Kiyoshi Kurosawa work. At times unsettling and at others so indistinct as to be nebulous, this film may make its points in an allusively indeterminate manner — but that doesn’t manage to lessen their overall impact. The director’s themes encompass universal situations that impact individuals and cultures all over the world, though as they are set in modern day Tokyo they do indeed have particular implications for Japanese society and its denizens. But that certainly doesn’t mean that the film’s pleasures should be reserved only for citizens of that often insular Asian nation, as the director is hardly limited to turning his eye on Japan alone. With that in mind, it’s a very welcome thing to know that the folks at Palm Pictures have smartly decided that Bright Future deserves a prominent place on Region One DVD shelves.
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