User reviews

I can see the maddeningly inscrutable "Bright Future" serving as the subject for some poor film school student's dissertation in a course entitled "The Use of Enigma and Symbolism in Post-Modernist Cinema" or (if you prefer the vernacular) "What the Heck Was That Film All About Anyway?" For I am absolutely convinced that one could spend a full semester - at the very least - trying to fathom the various levels of meaning in this film and never come up with a thoroughly satisfactory answer at the end of that search. And here I've always thought Ingmar Bergman movies were a challenge!

Shot through with heavy doses of allegory and Magic Realism, "Bright Future" tells the story of a sullen, moody young man named Yuji, who works at a dull factory job with his close buddy, Mamoru. The latter owns a deadly Red Jellyfish that he keeps in a little tank at home. One day, he gives the jellyfish as a present to Yuji, telling him that he has decided to quit the job and move on to bigger and better things. But instead of doing that, Mamoru murders the boss and the boss' wife, with little or no explanation given as to motive. Mamoru is immediately arrested and charged with first degree murder. Meanwhile, in a fit of despair, Yuji turns over the tank, only to have the jellyfish slide through the cracks of the floor and somehow land in the Tokyo water system, where it miraculously proliferates to the point where the area is literally inundated with freshwater killer jellyfish. While all this is going on, Yuji begins to develop a close but tentative bond with Mamoru's father, who was pretty much estranged from his son before the murder. As Yuji gets more and more obsessed with finding the elusive jellyfish, he seems, paradoxically, to be coming to a greater sense of reality. Well, there's the "plot" in a nutshell; now it's your turn to try to figure it all out.

If none of this makes any sense to you, don't feel bad because it doesn't make any sense to me either. The best I can make of it is that Yuji is intended to represent the younger generation in modern day Japan - disconnected, rudderless, utterly lacking in motivation, purpose and goals, and prone to act out of ill-defined impulse rather than rationality and logic. And somehow, by committing the murder that Yuji is actually intending to do (though here again, we are given no preparation or motive to explain WHY he would do so), Mamoru sacrifices himself so that Yuji can be saved from his own spiritual ennui and set on the path towards a meaningful life, primarily by caring for this jellyfish, which is itself a symbol of tenacity and beauty.

Or perhaps not….

Despite the fact that the film will probably have you pulling your hair out in bewilderment and frustration, "Bright Future," for all its self-conscious pretentiousness, is actually a fairly intriguing film just on the level of its visuals and the relationships it develops among the various characters. It's very well directed and very well acted, and if you can get beyond the symbol-gazing, you may actually find yourself mesmerized by the experience.

And I will be expecting those dissertations on my desk bright and early tomorrow morning.

Whatever Kiyoshi Kurosawa is to the Japanese audience, for Americans he's distinctly an acquired taste. "Cure "struck me immediately however as haunting, creepy, and drably beautiful; it's just that one can't imagine a steady diet of such stuff. "Pulse", typically stylish and moody, is completely different (and too similar to the "Ringu" franchise), but the only other Kurosawa I've seen so far, "Bright Future," is something else again. Symbolic interpretations of the two aimless, dangerous boys as some kind of statement about Japan's youth seem simple-minded and naive, though surely the ironic title makes that possibility all too obvious. Anyway, the presence of young people both does and does not mean anything in Kurosawa's films. He works very loosely within genres that appeal to youth, but his approach is consistently indirect and enigmatic. What strikes me is the relationship between Nimura and Mamoru--roommates and buddies on the surface, but underneath slave and master, follower and sensei, or symbiotic zombie couple. Their lack of affect turns modern Japanese youth on its head because they're quietly terrifying and somehow also super cool, Nimura's ragged clothing a radical fashion statement and his wild hair and sculptured looks worthy of a fashion model.Mr Fujiwara is the ultimate bourgeois clueless work buddy jerk (he combines two or three different kinds of undesirable associate); but we don't usually kill them. Kurosawa films seem to usually go in the direction of some kind of muted apocalypse, but they proceed toward it casually, as if he didn't quite care where things were going.

That's because the atmosphere and look of his films are the real subjects; like any great filmmaker he begins and ends with image and sound. Note the bland, cheerful music that pops up at the darnedest places. The relationship that develops between Nimura and Shin'ichirô, Mamoru's father after Mamoru is no more, and the scenes of Shin'ichirô's cluttered yet desolate workshop/dwelling recall Akira Kurosawa's Dodeskaden but also Italian neorealism and the clan of directionless but uniformed young bad boys who wander through the street in the long final tracking shot evokes Antonioni and the mute clowns in Blow-Up. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's framing, his use of empty urban long shots, is akin to the vision of Antonioni. If it's true that this cool stuff is all too appealing to film school dropouts ready to concoct a deep interpretation of every aimless sequence, it's also true that Kurosawa like no other living director creates his own haunting and disturbing moods, and it would be fun to compare this movie with Bong Joon-ho's boisterous "The Host."

Really an 8.5 at least, for originality.

Bright Future, another recent dark film from the great Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, focuses on working class folks whose future is anything but bright. The irony of the title is pounded home in scene after scene. Yuji and Mamoru, friends in their 20s who work at the same boring job in the same dull warehouse, are both frustrated with their lives. But there is a big difference.

While Mamoru looks around carefully and gives Yuji knowing glances, and tells Yuji when to Wait and when to Go Ahead (capital letters used on purpose), Yuji is content to live in his dreams in which, he says in a voice-over, he sees himself as having a bright future. Mamoru has a pet poisonous jellyfish, which he bequeaths to Yuji when something terrible happens and Mamoru lands in prison.

Their boss, a man of 55, is just as frustrated with his boring existence as his two workers, and Mamoru's father is, as well, a man who labors at a thankless job that keeps him confined to a small space; he fixes broken appliances in a salvage shop.

When the jellyfish escapes from Yuji, he panics, then relaxes when he realizes that it is, in essence, following him wherever he goes. Kurosawa always fuses fantasy with reality in his films and this one is no exception. Although an obvious symbol for escape from a humdrum existence, the jellyfish turns out to be something more than that as well. This is brought home later in the film when we see a flotilla of the things moving out to sea in the Tokyo canal...

KK, as I like to call him--to distinguish him from Akira Kurosawa--makes films like no one else today. It's easy and at the same time intriguing to read into his films more than what we see and chances are that the added meanings we find are right. I think we know this because his films resonate long after leaving the theater; the layers of meaning we find in them continue to make themselves apparent without much effort at all.

Bright Future is a film about significantly more than people who spend their time, their lives in futile activity. It's about whether or not we think about how to live our lives, about whether we value the time that we have, or how we value it, if we do at all. It's about how we try to move beyond what we have and how that usually fails. It's a sad film but one that upon reflection makes us think that maybe there is, after all, a chance for a bright future. Or maybe not.

They don't want to grow up...neither did I (do I). Growing up is tough: loss, alienation, angst. Bright Future highlights the fear of growing older, finding a direction for your life and incurring responsibility. One major plus to Bright Future is the amazing cast and all around good performances. Joe Odagiri as the lead, Yuji, turns in a very entertaining and heartfelt performance, alongside Japanese film heavyweight, Tadanobu Asano, and possibly the most exciting casting decision is Tatsuya Fuji, whose work with Nagisa Oshima in the late-70s with a Japanese essential, Empire of Passion and by far the most famous, or infamous, was Fuji's iconic role as Kichizo Ishida the insatiable lover of early 20th century true crime celebrity Sada Abe, in the highly erotic (rated X), politically tinged, twisted love/obsession story, In the Realm of the Senses. All of this withstanding, there is no kidding anyone; this is not Kiyoshi Kurosawa's best, but certainly an interesting film that you can get more out of than you originally think you can. If you peel back the layers there is more there than beautiful red CGI jellyfish.

I think this is not an easy film to grasp. Someone may well hate or disgust it, until he grasps what Mamoru represents and what is the theme of this movie.He doesn't look human at all. He never shows real emotion nor intention. So what is he? Is he a pure evil, or a ghost as in fact came back later in the movie? One way to understand him is not to see him as a real figure, but as question, question from the director Kurosawa. The question is double question. One is to the older generation, which is; Can you accept him and his generation? Another question is to the younger generation, which is; What do you do in the absence of an idealistic and convenient advocator like Mamoru?

In the case of the two, Yuji(Nimura) and Mamoru's father, things went well.They found them understandable and lovable. But, as known from the dialog of Mamoru's father, "I forgive you, I forgive you all," this is a question to all the individuals, younger or older.

Can we really accept the young so dangerous and sensitive like a jelly fish? Can we love them so much as to reach for them? Or, as a young, can we understand the elder so selfish and ugly but sometime has real love for the young?

What's implied in this movie is that the chances for the recovery of the relationship between two gegerations are still left and that the strragle goes on to forever.

Kyoshi Kurosawa is becoming one of my favorite current filmmakers, and the further he gets from conventional horror and shock, the better I think he is.

Deeper meanings mingle with absurdist humor, and the kind of chance occurrences that enliven the fiction of Paul Auster and Haruki Murakami also figure heavily in Kurosawa's films; cinematically, everything from Lynch or Fellini to Don Siegel can be a touchstone for further exploration.

BRIGHT FUTURE is like an improved CHARISMA - more refined, less loony, and considerably more poetic, but K Kurosawa's many concerns - trashing of the environment, a sense of depersonalization (and discreet nihilism) in younger/future generations, the erosion of a society's cohesiveness (especially when that erosion originates within, and not from some external source) - are handled very well - the last shot offers his darkest humor, with the cross-generational understanding becoming something quietly heroic evoking certain past masters of Japanese film. A sense that - if younger generations have drifted towards a nihilism that could destroy them or you, it is balanced by an equally withering take on the older generations that somehow let them down; this film in many ways visualizes the idea of getting over it, and moving on with life (after presenting some of the consequences for not doing so).

Tadanobu Asano's presence here is somewhat hyped (definitely on the DVD cover), undoubtedly due to his ascendant global stardom, but his performance is eclipsed by co-stars Joe Odagiri and Tatsuya Fuji, who both deliver dynamic performances of great range and control.

Mysterious, poetic, open to many interpretations, and one of Kyoshi Kurosawa's finest.

The high vote I gave this movie is partly relative--there just isn't much on the shelves these days that isn't tiresome (so I tend to gravitate towards anything that isn't a sequel or remake). So if this film is guilty of anything, it's guilty of being delicate and intelligent. The characters are so subtle they almost escape one's grasp but this isn't a loss and shouldn't deter anyone from watching it. I enjoy thinking back on it now and pondering Yuji, the main character, and his relation to the jellyfish.

It is also worthy to note that the visuals aren't overly stylized--they were incredibly detailed and balanced. I liked that I felt increasingly familiar with their world the further the movie went. That must have been very hard to pull off since most movies that re-use scenery like that turn out repetitious. The backgrounds here seem lived in, and judging from the part of the behind-the-scenes that I watched it was filmed in realistic locations.

Asano is interesting in this one, not that he usually isn't, but his character seemed far more complex than I expected with each new line of dialog. This movie and the careful construction was so nicely stacked like a house of cards I was almost afraid to breathe in case I would miss something.

In Tokyo, the dysfunctional friends Nimura (Jô Odagiri) and Mamoru (Tadanobu Asano) work in a laundry of towels in part time. Nimura sees a bright future only in dreams, and Mamoru is adapting a venom jellyfish in fresh water. Their boss likes them and gives a bonus and proposes a full time work for them. Mamoru kills the boss's family in a attack of rage without any reason and he is sentenced to death. Nimura keeps the jellyfish and releases it in a canal of Tokyo. Meanwhile, Mamoru's father comes to Tokyo for the funeral of his son, and Nimura stays with him, while the jellyfishes threatens the population of Tokyo.

I bought the American DVD "Bright Future" full of expectations of an intriguing movie, based on the recommendation on the cover to fans of David Lynch and Luis Buñuel. The person that wrote this remark must be kidding! It is ridiculous the comparison of this senseless, pretentious and boring mess with the films of these two great directors. Just because the story does not make any sense, it does not mean that we, fans of David Lynch and Luis Buñuel, will enjoy any crap. In the end, I have never reach the target where director Kyioshi Kurosawa aimed and I found this flick a pure waste of time and money. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Bright Future is about a plot to populate the sewers of Tokyo with a glowing, poisonous jellyfish. So far, so good. There aren't too many movies about plots to populate the sewers of Tokyo with glowing, poisonous jellyfish that I know about. Although the movie has much to commend it, it is ultimately frustrating because characters are constantly doing things not because they make sense but because the filmmaker wants them to in order to advance the plot. Also, the movie has no real ending; it just….ends.

On the one hand, you might say that the movie doesn't have to make sense because it follows a dream logic and dreams don't always make sense. However, the best movies that follow a dream logic, such as Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, have an internal consistency. Actions make sense within the context of the movie. Also, The Exterminating Angel has one of the best endings in all of cinema.

I liked the themes of Bright Future: loneliness, alienation, lack of connection between the generations. I also liked the poisonous jellyfish as a metaphor for disaffected, violent teenagers and 20-somethings. However, I had the feeling that the filmmaker wrote himself into a corner and didn't know how to get out of it. Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami does this with his novels. He starts a novel not knowing where it's going but then eventually has to end it, which he almost always does in an unsatisfying manner.

Nevertheless, I keep reading Murakami novels and I'm going to seek out other films by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Maybe some day all the ingredients will fall into place and he'll make a masterpiece.

Akarui Mirai has a lot going for it. Somewhere in the mess of metaphor and "art for art's sake" is a good story with a strong message and good images. Unfortunately things get typically nonsensical with the lesser Kurosawa behind the camera. Ok, that's harsh, but why can't this guy find a way to tell his story coherently AND make use of the positive aspects of his style. I like art-house movies, I like esoteric Japanese dramas, I like quirky filmmaking, but I don't like this movie. It's the type of movie I dislike most in fact, it's a badly made film pretending to be a good one. I trusted it, and it basically took me for a ride to nowhere and left me there.

I admit, the movie has it's moments, the lyrical beauty of the Jellyfish, one of the movie's most powerful images, are wonderful. The performance of the leads is good. There's some humor sprinkled here and there, but for what reason? I couldn't read the tone of the movie... Is this a fariytale? Is it a drama? There's just so much jammed onto that screen, and yet nothing. It's basically a bunch of nice ideas, presented in an incredibly lifeless manner. I can't imagine who would find any of this fulfilling?

A rambling, disjointed, and uninspiring tale of: an impoverished electronic junk dealer; his two hapless and mentally unstable sons; and a mysterious and determined alpha jelly fish. Truth be told, the latter is one of the two real stars of this film; the other being the cinematographer (see below). Jelly fish when viewed from below (often the case here) can really look like they are not of this world (and were favorite space invaders in low-budget sci-fi movies in the 1950's and 1960's) with powers to terrorize earthlings (this time it's Tokyoites). What they really can do is deliver a nasty sting - considered fatal in the film. The other star of the film is cinematographer SHIBANUSHI Takahide. Shibanushi provides an ocular banquet of digital and analog tricks and techniques which are a pure pleasure to experience. These include adding emphasis by fading back and forth between black/white and color during a scene; the use of color as a highlight (like a color TV screen) when everything else in the frame is black/white; deep focus where foregrounds and backgrounds are both in focus; and what appears to be the longest noncomputerized tracking shot in the modern Japanese cinema (at the film's end). Directing is lackluster and often lacks imagination. Acting rarely raises above the amateurish melodramatic level. Music sounds like it was inserted at random. It is usually totally out of place and detached from what is happening on screen. Subtitles seem to be fine Except for the photography, definitely not recommended. Viewed at a JICC Virtual J-Film event. WILLIAM FLANIGAN.

Akarui mirai is a film that has one theme, despair. We see a Japanese society that offers little in the way of hope, prosperity, fun or happiness. A chance for a bright future is denied to the young and has already passed up the old. Our two main characters live lives that are pointless and dull. Our protagonist momentarily feels that at least he can claim being good as arcade games as an accomplishment, but soon sees that he is not even good at that. The two soon see that even their "successful" boss, who has a wife and child, has no life worth celebrating or enjoying. Such despair will cause one of the two friends to give up on a bright future and one to make one last attempt at finding hope for that bright future, but sadly, it appears very doubtful that that bright future will come.

You'd be hard pressed to find a film as dull as this one. Seriously, the film is all about how the youth of Japan are becoming apathetic and direction-less, and the film succeeds in showing this. However, nothing happening in a film does not equal high art, as nothing happening in a film equals nothing happening in a film. The first time we tried to watch this, we switched it off after fifteen minutes and didn't touch it for years. Bored one day, I decided to give it another go. I didn't know what bored was until I watched this film.

Two moody, unemotional actors representing the youth of Tokyo in a moody, unemotional way (i.e staring into space, mumbling, etc) work in some factory for an over-friendly boss. After moving a wardrobe for him, then having dinner and talking about their pet jellyfish, as well as lounging about in chairs and going out for a boring night out, the boss invites himself to their flat to watch Ping Pong (don't get too excited as they get back to that damn jellyfish again).

To cut a very boring story short, one of the guys kills his boss and his wife (offscreen), getting himself arrested. The other guy takes charge of the jellyfish and meets the murderer's dad. Not much happens unless you like talk about water desalination and people standing on roofs, staring into the distance.

Full of heavy handed dialogue, long stretches of nothing, people staring at each other and having awkward conversations, plus all that jellyfish action (they get it to take to fresh water where it breeds and multiplier's, resulting in a really exciting part where the jellyfish leave Tokyo, a not very subtle reference to them finding the freedom the youth crave, or something). I mean, the film ends with five minutes of a gang of youths walking down the street, bored.

If you're a chin stroking type who has to advertise to the world that your taste in film is superior to theirs, then you'll have a field day picking apart this film's subtext and imagery while the rest of the human race has fun doing something else. This is the most ponderous, boring Japanese film I've suffered through.

From one film to the next the only thing we can be reasonably certain of with Kurosawa Kiyoshi is that it's going to be weird and offbeat. Plot synopses aren't always helpful, either, when the man is at his most far-flung, and in his case that usually means an outward lack of plot, if not core substance that really is just inscrutable. There's also a gulf between those of his pictures that are polished, with solid contemporary production values, and those boasting a more carefree attitude, and a glaringly barefaced, unrefined appearance. Moreover, just as some of Kurosawa's works are terrific, others are decidedly less sure-footed and worthy, if not arguably questionable. I sat to watch 'Bright future' with mixed expectations and no foreknowledge, and - well, mark this as another instance where I'm clearly not on the same wavelength as the filmmaker. I'm unsure what it is that he was trying to do here, and I can't especially get on board with it.

This is the variety of Kurosawa picture with lower production values, but that's fine. Everyone involved, cast and crew, ably played their part. There is a story here, but even as some beats are plainly more dramatic than others, it just sort of trundles along somewhat indifferently. What should I be taking away from this? What are its themes? What is the vision that the man had in writing and directing it? I can hardly do more than guess. There are kernels here of what could have been overarching notions: an aimless young man eventually finding some direction in life, and real support, though his past actions still reverberate. I don't think they come together in any particularly fruitful manner, however, instead feeling half-formed. No doubt there are other folks who watch this and find it very meaningful, and a treasure; I find it to be so indistinct that it hovers somewhere between 2001's 'Pulse' (big on atmosphere, very vague in its ideas) and 1999's 'Barren illusions' (no atmosphere, perfectly enigmatic and unintelligible in its detached ideas). I suppose 'Bright future' is duly well made, such as it is, but with its driving force being kind of half-baked at best, and cloaked in mystery at worst, and as it fails to really make any impression at all, I don't know why I should care about it.

I'm glad for those who appreciate the daydreaming side of Kurosawa and get more out of this flick than I do. In fairness, the last 30-40 minutes or so find some footing that the preceding length lacked, so by that measure, maybe I'm being too harsh. I want to like it more than I do. Be that as it may, I need something more concrete, no matter how amorphous, and moreover, I don't know how I could give a recommendation for a movie whose substance I cannot firmly grasp onto. My gut reaction is to suggest just not bothering with 'Bright future' in the first place, but if you do watch, may you enjoy it more than me.

if your an American over 30 you won't get this unless you know about young Japanese culture. Likewise, if you are intelligent, and under this "age limit" you will get this movie. Its a real interesting expose about the aimlessness youth society has taken, I found the Jellyfish metaphor intriguing. The soft spoken characters urge you to want to know more about them, yet, at the same time, you begin to think you understand them. I have really become a fan of the more "intelligent" movies that japan has to offer as of lately (as opposed to the slasher and samurai movies), and they do not disappoint. If you enjoyed Kikujiro, you will like this movie, likewise if you enjoyed this movie, be sure to check out Kikujiro. While Akarui mirai is not the best film I have ever seen, it is defiantly something i would recommend.

"Bright Future (Akarui mirai)" feels very much like a Sam Shephard play, with its themes of stifling fathers and rebelling sons and sibling responsibility between brothers, all suffused with irrational violence.

There's even a continuing leitmotif of a cowboy Western musical riff when magic realism takes over from the unrelieved quotidian of men who work with the detritus of an almost post-apocalyptic-seeming society, from a laundry to an appliance recycling workshop, and condescended to by their biological and putative family members with more money and much nicer apartments.

The characters seem to need to strike out with either Raskolnikov-ian or manipulative acts of violence as existential acts to affect their environment ("acclimating to Tokyo" is how one character metaphorically puts it) to be sure they're alive or having an impact on the living.

The main characters, well-matched by Tadanobu Asano as the scarily manipulative brother figure and Jô Odagiri as his even more depressed acolyte, are so alienated that the rigid others around them assume they are developmentally disabled.

I'm quite sure I didn't get anywhere near all the Goddard-ian symbolism, from the production design of the characters' seedy living arrangements to the phosphorescent beauty of poisonous jellyfish, which are used beyond the frogs in "Magnolia" in entrancing and haunting images like Conrad's fascination of the abomination.

The conclusion seems hopeless in a clouded fade into "A Clockwork Orange"-like, thrill-seeking gang of aimless young men wearing Che T-shirts, with a brightly hypocritical pop song about the future playing on the soundtrack.

I never knew that Tokyo had so many interesting bridges and canals.

I haven't seen any other films written or directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa to know if I just saw a bad print or if the washed out, almost black-and-white, fuzzy digital-video-seeming look was intentional.

Yes, this movie is very beautiful because of its image especially when you see the movements of the jellyfish(es), very colourful and calm. There is a lot of philosophy (intelligence, meaning - call it the way you like it) in the whole movie. BUT (yes there's always a "but") I didn't like that. I think the movie tries to force to be unique/special which it isn't. There were a lot of things I haven't understood in that movie. Of course you can think now that I'm stupid or so. Because I don't want to spoil anything I'll describe it like that - there were many things (especially at the beginning and at the end) which aren't explained any deeper and after the movie I thought "hmm...what was it about?". Also the people's personality, relationship, their past, ... etc. - no real hints for them.

So in the end I think only people who love Kurosawa's (I don't mean Akira Kurosawa) movies should watch it, also people who like this calm and deep philosophy which you have to explain yourself and Asian movie junkies who watch every damn movie just because it's Asian (like me), too.