Eureka

During its epic 3,5 hours of duration I managed to make some coffee, fry some eggs and let me assure you that I was a totally different man when it ended - It made me think about the real meaning of life, its beauty and subsequent horrors which we all go through at some point in our existence.

This is sophisticated film-making at its best.

Amazing film. The reviews posted - at the time of this writing - on the IMDb page are sad, because I don't think the writers were ready for what kind of movie it is. (Stephen Holden's pan in the New York Times is especially foolhardy and thoughtless.) It helped to have a little advanced word, in order to brace myself. As it stands, it should have defeated "Dancer in the Dark" at Cannes last year, handily. And if I see a better movie this year, it'll be something for the history books.

It's not for the faint of heart. It's three hours and thirty-seven minutes long, in black and white, and in Japanese. And it's very slow-moving. The cinematography is beautiful, but that may not be enough for folks to hack through nearly four hours.

But the extreme length and slowness is not unjustified. It opens with a horrifying, traumatic event that provides an emotional undercurrent that informs the remainder of the story, in much the same way as "Saving Private Ryan" did (let that not discourage the anti-Spielbergers), and as the film progresses, the event becomes a memory, part of the characters' and ours, too. And the slowness isn't really slowness - it's the playing out of events and interactions as they would happen in real time (the story spans a few months, I believe, perhaps even a year, and maybe more).

"What's the freaking story?" I hear you ask...well, here goes. The opening sequence, which will undoubtedly inspire comparisons and contrasts to "The Sweet Hereafter" (as will the entire film), shows the hijacking of a commuter bus by a businessman pushed over the edge. As the scene unfolds, he has already killed a few passengers, the police are surrounding the bus, and he has used newspapers to block all the windows.

Without revealing too much, the bus driver and two teens - a brother and a sister - survive the incident. The driver (Koji Yakusho, star of "Shall We Dance?" and "The Eel") is shaken deeply, and leaves his brother and parents to wander. The youths' mother runs off with another man, and their father dies soon after in an auto accident - with insurance payments, they can live, but there is no one to watch over them.

I could go into more of the plot - and most critics will, I'm sure - but that isn't really necessary. The key to the movie is that the events seem to be played out as they would in real life, and that the movie camera just "happens to be there" to catch them and tell the story. Sure, this is the goal of all narrative films, but with "Eureka," the process seems to have been reinvented and renewed. The film is longer than most, but not a moment is wasted; it's one of the most efficiently edited movies I've ever seen. Every shot, nuance, glance, spoken word, everything has a reason for being.

There are some who say the movie is too somber, too gloomy. It isn't really. It's somber, sure, but it doesn't strain for it. There is humor - deadpan, mostly - and great joy, too. And if you love great cinema, there is even greater joy!

Some people have a disliking for Japanese cinema because the movies tend to be slow paced, minimalistic. If you're one of them - skip EUREKA is all you need to know. The movie moves along at a snail's pace on Sunday - at 90 minutes most movies are just coming to their explosive and or dramatic climax, but at that point I was still wondering what Eureka was about. 2 hours later the movie finally finishes - and I was still wondering what it was all about.

EUREKA is a movie of epic length, that raises other challenging questions like "Why is it 3.5 hours long?", "Why is it black and white?", "Is this all going somewhere?" and "Is it nearly finished yet?". Clearly director Shinji Aoyama wants his movie to make us think. And in 3.5 hours of black and white imagery and minimal dialogue, your mind certainly does have ample opportunity to wander.

Maybe I should have checked the "Director's Statement" that is included on the UK DVD before watching the movie. Then I'd have known what he was trying to say, and could have spent my time deciding if he said it effectively instead. Whether that would have been more fun or less I don't know though.

Not to say that I didn't enjoy watching EUREKA - for most of the run time I did. It's very well acted, has some good cinematography and is generally quite unusual. I'd have preferred it to have been shorter though, or had more going on - even colour photography would have helped to keep my attention on the screen with a little less effort.

I do think it's a good movie though, but... it just didn't need to be 3.5 hours to make its point or build its characters. Or maybe it did need 3.5 hours to do that, but Shinji Aoyama used his time badly - because at the end I still didn't really have a grasp on who the characters were 'deep down', or what the point of sharing their story with us was. Perhaps it's just that it's a movie aimed for better minds than mine to truly appreciate though. Certainly the length and style are going to keep any hopes of mainstream appreciation at bay.

It has been almost 6 years since I saw this film, yet this film can stick with me and still offer me things.

After a tragic incident of violence, a bus driver tries to find two other teen-aged survivors, a brother and sister. The sparse black and white camera work provide an insight into the bleak emotional landscape as they just stumble through as "walking dead". Having lost a father, I can identify with the characters. What is touching is the lack of communication and dialogue between the actors (whic includes the lead of the Japanese "Shall We Dance" ). Yet there is love and communication made even by just the thumping on bus walls. Words fail them.

The camera work is bleak yet stunning in composition and texture. Minimal yet just enough to feel the principals trying to find meaning in life. One can also speak of the Japanese economic downturn and the resulting introspective dramatic films such as Hirokazu's "After Life". If have experienced grief or if you'd like to find some insight into it, this may be a film. It seemed shorter than the four hours, but you are forewarned.

I've seen EUREKA yesterday, and I really am impressed.

Along with those beautiful and sophisticated pictures in coloured black-and-white comes a great story; the movie takes both its time to roll out the plot and portrait the main characters. Each single scene is valuable, worth to be seen, contributes a lot to the whole, EUREKA is --despite its sheer enormity-- concentrated on the essentials and thus compact... and: the characters are authentic.

What else can I say? Go, see and feel it!