Jun Ichikawa manages to successfully adapt to screen the short and delicate story of Haruki Murakami.
For those familiar to Murakami, the story will unwrap the constant themes of love an loneliness. The hero is an isolated man with a sea of emptiness inside. Not being able to connect to the outside world he manages to vanish among the crowd of people minutely perfecting a job without and drop of passion.
Still, one day he falls in love and once he steps out of his solitude he fears to the point of obsession that he might loose the one he loves.
Yet, no one is plain and each one has a sort of baggage which he/she carries from one life experience to the other.
The woman which he has fallen in love with, Eiko, is a shopaholic or maybe, depending on the way one chooses to understand her irresistible impulse, a collector. What one projects in the outer world or things is to me just an attempt to fill the void inside.
I should know it, since I am a woman (who, from time to time, buys lots of shoes and dresses)...
The woman which he has fallen in love with, Eiko, is a shopaholic or maybe, depending on the way one chooses to understand her irresistible impulse, a collector. What one projects in the outer world or things is to me just an attempt to fill the void inside.
I should know it, since I am a woman (who, from time to time, buys lots of shoes and dresses)...
Anyway, she dies and clothes are left behind as shadows. There is an empty room in which Tony weeps and somehow we step inside this room as we would enter his poem to loneliness.
There is a symbolic image of father (an older Tony, playing jazz in everyday life) and son in fetal posture. Both are caught in closed spaces: a prison, a closet.
One night, Tony can almost feel that his father's performance is somehow different. Yet, they don't talk about it. He never asks. He never tells.
So,when his father dies too, things become unbearable.
There is a symbolic image of father (an older Tony, playing jazz in everyday life) and son in fetal posture. Both are caught in closed spaces: a prison, a closet.
One night, Tony can almost feel that his father's performance is somehow different. Yet, they don't talk about it. He never asks. He never tells.
So,when his father dies too, things become unbearable.
Eiko (and her double, Hisako) are merely projections. Although Hisako might be for some viewers a ray of hope. Are we, humans recreating patterns of lost love and affection?
Will next time be more courageous? More fortunate?
Will next time be more courageous? More fortunate?
The movie is subtle, sad and lyrical. The colours are faded, the music is perfect.
I only managed to find the version below ( with Italian subtitles), but still it was a brilliantly capture of Murakami's world.
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