Ako

This is a short film by Hiroshi Teshigahara about teenagers (16 years) in Japan in the mid 60's, what they do and what matters to them. It is in black and white, which enhances the film, as you see young people just being themselves. It stars Miki Irie, who played the young lady who was scarred by the atom bomb in "The Face Of Another". She presumably gave up acting after that, though I thought she was good in that film. This film is part of the three films by Teshigahara box set of "Pitfall", "Woman In The Dunes" and "The Face Of Another". He was a maverick, uncompromising film director. Think an edgier version of the Coen Brothers. This film isn't a masterpiece but its always interesting to see an admirable director's other work. So, buy the box set, which I recommend, and you'll get this also. Nothing special, but it should have been elongated to a feature film with more character development. We'll make do with this.

Morning dreams come through... Evening dreams never come through.

I'm definitely witnessing one of my favorite directors of all-time unfold before me eyes. This short, Ako (also called White Morning), is the only fictional short Hiroshi Teshigahara made in his career (all his other shorts are documentaries), and what he paints us is a beautiful dream of a day in the life of a 16 year-old girl and her friends who work at a bakery and go out on the town.

Plot-wise you don't get anything out of this piece, and that's ok. This is more like one of those films you treat like a piece of art where you throw it up on the wall and let it evoke emotions out from you.

Teshigahara gives us some beautiful black and white camera work plus some incredibly artsy sequences of filtering images on top of other images. The use of sound is the true highlight of this piece for me though, that in ways evokes the spirit of David Lynch before Lynch was even a household name.

It's just about a girl named Ako, as she goes about her day, and it's both realistic and kind of experimental. That contrast was the most interesting thing it had going for it. There was one part where the editing and voiceover made me wonder whether Terrence Malick ever saw this was influenced by it, particularly when it came to Days of Heaven and the way that film used narration in that esoteric/abstract way. I guess Badlands too, a little, but really in Days of Heaven.

Otherwise, honestly, Ako is kind of boring. Maybe that's the point. Life is boring, and Ako is about life. A few striking shots and some of those offbeat creative choices make it more than a total cinematic flatline, but there's also not a great deal to it, in the end.

Glad it was as short as it was for sure, but I also wonder whether it could've been made even shorter and maintained the stuff that worked coherently enough.