MOVIE: SUKIDA
2005
DIRECTED BY
Hiroshi Ishikawa
WRITTEN BY
Hiroshi Ishikawa
PRODUCED BY
Hiroshi Ishikawa
CAST
Young Yu: Aoi Miyazaki
Adult Yu: Hiromi Nagasaki
Young Yosuke: Eita Nagayama
Adult Yosuke: Hidetoshi Nishijima
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZBJyfKmN5Y
Japanese culture has come to take up more waves of my bandwidth every year of the 21st. century.
My 2001 obsession with Ichiro Suzuki blossomed into the reading of Robert Whiting’s SLUGGING IT OUT IN JAPAN about MLB star Warren Cromartie’s stay with the Yorimuri Giants of the NPB. Mr. Whiting’s YOU GOTTA HAVE WA was a gift from my brother Peter and opened a window into how the game of baseball in Japan could be both so similar and dissimilar to MLB here in the U.S.
Japanese pop music first blipped on my radar screen at the Boston-Boston disco with Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “Computer Games,” which became “Firecracker” in its 7″ 45 RPM incarnation.
In 2014 my Hewlett Packard Pavilion 23 computer brought superior sound and vision to its 23″ inch screen thus enabling
…the kawaii antics of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu…
…the motion capture digital dancing of Miss Monochrome/Yurie Horie …
…and the viral phenomena of Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love.”
Japanese movies followed. The high resolution of my new computer enabled watching movies I had only heard of; Yasujiro Ozu’s LATE SPRING and the epic serial of INFERNAL AFFAIRS among them.
SUKIDA was recommended over the bar by a guest of mine who told me it was her “favorite artsy movie.”
SUKIDA
PLOT SYNOPSIS
Yosuke(Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a high school student who has quit the baseball team, grown out his hair and aspires to be a musician. Yosuke plays the same short instrumental:
“Dear Blue” by Yoko Kanno
on his guitar repeatedly above a river spillway.
Yosuke is joined by Yu(Aoi Miyazaki) a girl from one of his classes. Yu lives with her older sister, who goes unnamed, and her mother, who is not seen.
Yu hums the tune to her sister who is mourning a tragedy. Yu arranges a meeting between Yosuke and her sister. A tragedy ensues.
17 years later Yosuke and Yu meet again under completely different AND very similar circumstances…events unfold.
SUKIDA
opens abruptly with nary a hint of back story or expository dialog. This conceptual sleight-of- hand braced this viewer for an accelerated pace. This expectation was immediately and slowly defied by the appearance of the visual motifs that run through both halves of this movie.
SUKIDA
is muted. The sound is quiet, as opposed to the digital din that has become the new normal of the 21st. century. Yet, sound is prominent and skillfully used as the sparse murmuring of Yu and Yosuke as Yosuke plays guitar is at the same volume as the cascading water and the crickets of the grass.
SUKIDA
uses subtitles via YouTube’s ‘Settings’. Ordinarily this viewer prefers even the most inexpert dubbing to subtitles as subtitles move the eye to the bottom of the screen; thus focusing on dialog rather than visual information. Additionally, this brain’s literary bandwidth and the visual bandwidth are far from the same.
However, on this occasion the subtitles work as the sparse and often monosyllabic voices of Yu and Yosuke provide the murmurs of meaning and the written words are merely minimal clues.
SUKIDA
manipulates the viewer’s musical expectations. Yosuke’s guitar is heard before his figure, let alone face, is viewed. This lends a certain voyeuristic aura to the goings on yet the sight of the guitar always lets you know that the sound is coming from a specific source and is not merely a soundtrack strategy.
SUKIDA
projects a grayish monochromatic palette. The dirt, grass and sky are almost one in color in both image and motif. The tumbling clouds above the heads of Yu and Yosuke call to mind nothing so much as the cumulus choreography of Francis Ford Coppola’s RUMBLEFISH
SUKIDA
has a certain sly sensuality. An uplifted jaw, and a middy dress billowing in the wind prepare one for the almost intimate actions of the adult phase of the saga.
SUKIDA
has a narrative taking off from unlikely coincidences that become inevitabilities. This is more pronounced in the 2nd. half of the movie when Yu and Yosuke reconnect. This is foreshadowed by Yu saying “Let me hear it when it is finished,” and the gentle shock of Yosuke’s 1st. initiating dialog.
The railroad station scene in the reconnection of the 1/2 half of the film is in real time and the 2 minute sequence feels much longer. As unlikely as the reconnection is it feels right as the theme of predestination has now grown in the viewer’s mind. Not to be overly pretentious but this tale has a strongly deterministic bent.
SUKIDA
changes its visual palette when Yu and Yosuke reconnect some 17 years after their meeting. The shades of pinkish highlighting the 2 incidents bonding the adult Yu and Yosuke are much richer than the previous cinematography. Yes, ‘less truly is more’ as these departures from the preceding minimalism shock the eye and lead the viewer into the actions of Yu and Yosuke as adults.
Kudos to Hiromi Nagasaki as the adult Yu and Hitoshi Nishijima as the adult Yosuke for using very much the same gestures; Yu’s fidgeting hands and Yosuke’s downward glances, as in the adolescent 1st. 1/ of the movie. This physicality gives the story a credibility that it otherwise would not have.
SUKIDA
becomes marginally more colorful in the 2nd. 1/2 as the splash of pinkish flesh in both of the criminalistic scenes foreshadow the intensity of the of the latter stages of the story.
Indeed, the teen yearning of the beginning becomes the adult desire as both Yu and Yosuke are now employed on the fringe of the “big plate” of the music industry.
Yu has an undefined administrative job in the music industry as Yosuke to struggles to get his 17 year old song recorded when Yu happens into the recording studio of Yosuke’s company and plays while Yosuke watches Yu in the CCTV monitor.
This meeting sets the stage for the doppelganger events of the 2nd. half of our saga.
Gentle readers, the ending will not be revealed.
SUKIDA
…Static in action, yet leaping 17 years…
…quiet and musical, cruel and romantic…
SUKIDA
unites contradictions to the enhancement of all themes and the diminishment of none.
Yes, A.R. this might be my favorite “artsy movie”.
SUKIDA and the theme can be heard on the links above and on my Facebook page.