Bright Future

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?