Journey to the Shore
Kiyoshi Kurosawa delivers an existential ghost story where the haunting tone and sublime cinematography make up for a certain implausibility
Japanese master filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa (The Cure, Pulse), known particularly for his chilling horrors and meditations on the metaphysical, has talked of his struggles of working in post credit-crunch Japan's increasingly Americanised film industry, in which money for films relegated to 'genre' has all but dried up, and only those with demonstrable fan bases win that all-important green light, leading to endless franchises and live-action anime adaptations. Similarly, international festival culture cultivates a certain kind of indie cinema from Japan, in which classicist aesthetics and modestly bankable art house dramas rooted in traditional Japanese cultural concerns are preferable to the 'lowbrow' pursuits of horror, science fiction and crime thrillers.
These twin economic factors largely explain Kurosawa's abandonment of his more experimental cinema for the risk-averse fare of drama and romance in Tokyo Sonata (2008) and Journey to the Shore respectively. Both picked up awards in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section – proof of the efficacy of his current strategy.
Journey to the Shore centres on the middle-aged Mizuki (Fukatsu). The unexplained disappearance of her husband, Yusuke (Asano), has kept her in a death-like stasis for three years while exhausting every possible avenue to find him, however heartbreaking (correspondence with a mistress) or irrational (copying out a Shinto prayer 200 times). Going through the motions like a ghost, Mizuki one day discovers Yusuke in her apartment, not alive but well. With gentle geniality, he euphemistically explains his suicide in the Toyama Bay and asks Mizuki to journey with him back there.
Some viewers may be frustrated by this meandering plot device (the journey, as much literal wandering as it is figurative self-reflection) and its whimsical tone, yet Kurosawa manages to render his canonical obsessions of haunting, mourning and existentialism with deft, sublime cinematography that ameliorates the film's paucity of logic.
Extras
The accompanying booklet containing a statement from Kurosawa on the film and a sharp essay by critic Anton Bitel.