Akarui mirai

I can see the maddeningly inscrutable "Bright Future" serving as the subject for some poor film school student's dissertation in a course entitled "The Use of Enigma and Symbolism in Post-Modernist Cinema" or (if you prefer the vernacular) "What the Heck Was That Film All About Anyway?" For I am absolutely convinced that one could spend a full semester - at the very least - trying to fathom the various levels of meaning in this film and never come up with a thoroughly satisfactory answer at the end of that search. And here I've always thought Ingmar Bergman movies were a challenge!

Shot through with heavy doses of allegory and Magic Realism, "Bright Future" tells the story of a sullen, moody young man named Yuji, who works at a dull factory job with his close buddy, Mamoru. The latter owns a deadly Red Jellyfish that he keeps in a little tank at home. One day, he gives the jellyfish as a present to Yuji, telling him that he has decided to quit the job and move on to bigger and better things. But instead of doing that, Mamoru murders the boss and the boss' wife, with little or no explanation given as to motive. Mamoru is immediately arrested and charged with first degree murder. Meanwhile, in a fit of despair, Yuji turns over the tank, only to have the jellyfish slide through the cracks of the floor and somehow land in the Tokyo water system, where it miraculously proliferates to the point where the area is literally inundated with freshwater killer jellyfish. While all this is going on, Yuji begins to develop a close but tentative bond with Mamoru's father, who was pretty much estranged from his son before the murder. As Yuji gets more and more obsessed with finding the elusive jellyfish, he seems, paradoxically, to be coming to a greater sense of reality. Well, there's the "plot" in a nutshell; now it's your turn to try to figure it all out.

If none of this makes any sense to you, don't feel bad because it doesn't make any sense to me either. The best I can make of it is that Yuji is intended to represent the younger generation in modern day Japan - disconnected, rudderless, utterly lacking in motivation, purpose and goals, and prone to act out of ill-defined impulse rather than rationality and logic. And somehow, by committing the murder that Yuji is actually intending to do (though here again, we are given no preparation or motive to explain WHY he would do so), Mamoru sacrifices himself so that Yuji can be saved from his own spiritual ennui and set on the path towards a meaningful life, primarily by caring for this jellyfish, which is itself a symbol of tenacity and beauty.

Or perhaps not….

Despite the fact that the film will probably have you pulling your hair out in bewilderment and frustration, "Bright Future," for all its self-conscious pretentiousness, is actually a fairly intriguing film just on the level of its visuals and the relationships it develops among the various characters. It's very well directed and very well acted, and if you can get beyond the symbol-gazing, you may actually find yourself mesmerized by the experience.

And I will be expecting those dissertations on my desk bright and early tomorrow morning.

Akarui Mirai has a lot going for it. Somewhere in the mess of metaphor and "art for art's sake" is a good story with a strong message and good images. Unfortunately things get typically nonsensical with the lesser Kurosawa behind the camera. Ok, that's harsh, but why can't this guy find a way to tell his story coherently AND make use of the positive aspects of his style. I like art-house movies, I like esoteric Japanese dramas, I like quirky filmmaking, but I don't like this movie. It's the type of movie I dislike most in fact, it's a badly made film pretending to be a good one. I trusted it, and it basically took me for a ride to nowhere and left me there.

I admit, the movie has it's moments, the lyrical beauty of the Jellyfish, one of the movie's most powerful images, are wonderful. The performance of the leads is good. There's some humor sprinkled here and there, but for what reason? I couldn't read the tone of the movie... Is this a fariytale? Is it a drama? There's just so much jammed onto that screen, and yet nothing. It's basically a bunch of nice ideas, presented in an incredibly lifeless manner. I can't imagine who would find any of this fulfilling?

Akarui mirai is a film that has one theme, despair. We see a Japanese society that offers little in the way of hope, prosperity, fun or happiness. A chance for a bright future is denied to the young and has already passed up the old. Our two main characters live lives that are pointless and dull. Our protagonist momentarily feels that at least he can claim being good as arcade games as an accomplishment, but soon sees that he is not even good at that. The two soon see that even their "successful" boss, who has a wife and child, has no life worth celebrating or enjoying. Such despair will cause one of the two friends to give up on a bright future and one to make one last attempt at finding hope for that bright future, but sadly, it appears very doubtful that that bright future will come.

Bright Future is about a plot to populate the sewers of Tokyo with a glowing, poisonous jellyfish. So far, so good. There aren't too many movies about plots to populate the sewers of Tokyo with glowing, poisonous jellyfish that I know about. Although the movie has much to commend it, it is ultimately frustrating because characters are constantly doing things not because they make sense but because the filmmaker wants them to in order to advance the plot. Also, the movie has no real ending; it just….ends.

On the one hand, you might say that the movie doesn't have to make sense because it follows a dream logic and dreams don't always make sense. However, the best movies that follow a dream logic, such as Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, have an internal consistency. Actions make sense within the context of the movie. Also, The Exterminating Angel has one of the best endings in all of cinema.

I liked the themes of Bright Future: loneliness, alienation, lack of connection between the generations. I also liked the poisonous jellyfish as a metaphor for disaffected, violent teenagers and 20-somethings. However, I had the feeling that the filmmaker wrote himself into a corner and didn't know how to get out of it. Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami does this with his novels. He starts a novel not knowing where it's going but then eventually has to end it, which he almost always does in an unsatisfying manner.

Nevertheless, I keep reading Murakami novels and I'm going to seek out other films by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Maybe some day all the ingredients will fall into place and he'll make a masterpiece.

I think this is not an easy film to grasp. Someone may well hate or disgust it, until he grasps what Mamoru represents and what is the theme of this movie.He doesn't look human at all. He never shows real emotion nor intention. So what is he? Is he a pure evil, or a ghost as in fact came back later in the movie? One way to understand him is not to see him as a real figure, but as question, question from the director Kurosawa. The question is double question. One is to the older generation, which is; Can you accept him and his generation? Another question is to the younger generation, which is; What do you do in the absence of an idealistic and convenient advocator like Mamoru?

In the case of the two, Yuji(Nimura) and Mamoru's father, things went well.They found them understandable and lovable. But, as known from the dialog of Mamoru's father, "I forgive you, I forgive you all," this is a question to all the individuals, younger or older.

Can we really accept the young so dangerous and sensitive like a jelly fish? Can we love them so much as to reach for them? Or, as a young, can we understand the elder so selfish and ugly but sometime has real love for the young?

What's implied in this movie is that the chances for the recovery of the relationship between two gegerations are still left and that the strragle goes on to forever.