A Scene at the Sea

Takeshi Kitano has made his reputation through a string of splendid Yakuza films, whose stylised violence is tempered with humour. All the more of a surprise, then, to come across this early Kitano in a totally different style. The storyline is minimal. A young deaf-mute garbage collector finds a broken surfboard, repairs it and becomes obsessed with surfing. His devoted girlfriend follows him - literally - everywhere, six paces behind him, dutifully folding up his discarded clothes while he is surfing.

Surely you can't make a film with so little action and no dialogue from the main characters! Kitano does, triumphantly. This is a heart-warming film, without being cloying. The relationship between the two central characters is drawn beautifully, using only their eyes and occasional smiles. They hardly ever even touch. But by the end of the film you feel that you know them and your heart goes out to them, in a film with touches of the great Japanese master Ozu. The music complements the film's moods superbly, and augments the atmospheric stillness that pervades this Japanese masterpiece. A must-see movie.

Having recently seen and loved Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman, I became interested in seeing his other work. So I started with this movie, which had been praised to the sky.

Slow? Measured pacing? Grass grows faster. And why doesn't a contemporary Japanese deaf couple know sign language? This film's emotion is so subtle that white bread seems interesting.

I am a lover of foreign and independent films. But the high praise that this one has received has me stumped. It seems to me that the director has tried too hard to create something unusual.

Incredible from the get-go.

Oh, well, I'll keep trying. I shall now watch Kids Return.

I'm a big fan of Takeshi Kitano's work, and I feel this film is his best. Whilst films like Hana-bi, Kids return, and Sonatine may have all the idiosyncratic traits that have made Takeshi so critically acclaimed, they all rely on extremities to convey their message. In the case of 'Ano natsu, ichiban shizukana umi', the director has excelled himself by retaining all the interesting and original traits of his more graphic films, yet managing to tell a story that is just as deep and provocative, only to a more subtle degree.

The story tells of a young, deaf, disenchanted garbage-collector who one day finds a ruined surf-board lying amidst some rubbish. This inspires the boy to become a great surfer, and with the help of a young deaf girl, he gradually becomes more skillful as time progresses, their love blossoming during the course of the movie.

The camera work is extremely sedate and enveloping, managing to capture the calmness of the sea. The characters do not speak, yet the story never seems to drag at all, with each scene drawing the viewer steadily into this very attractive and insular world that they inhabit. The music, scored by Joe Hisiashi, has a very static, timeless quality to it - a mixture of marimba, synthesisers, piano & string instruments manage to convey the atmosphere of the film exceedingly well, with the main theme song capturing the extremely melancholy feel of the film.

This is one of the most beautiful, haunting films you will ever see.

The silence is beautiful and poetic. The wave of the sea is the heartbeats of the hearing-impaired young couple, that only the people with beautiful mind can hear. The audience view the story from a distance but is consciously involved with things go. This is the best film from Japanese comedian/director Takeshi Kitano.

Really impressive! It might alienate those, who want constant action and dialog's but for those who like Kitano movies in general will also love this movie.

In each Kitano movie you can feel this quiet and meditative atmosphere; like in Dolls and Hanabi for example.

But i have to say that i am again quite astonished how different Kitano appears in television, as a comedy-punk, in contrast to his own directed and very contemplative movies.

Some adjectives might be able to describe my impression of this movie: quiet, meditative, sad .. and beautiful