I saw this film as part of the Rotterdam Film Festival 2012. Remarkable film on a subject that looks so uninviting for a film script. A bit of extra background information about Japanese traditions would have improved our experience, however. Still, worth seeing, possibly with some help of below paragraphs.
We were lucky that the announcement text told us about the underlying dilemma that makes up the story line of this film. It struck me that it takes about half an hour before this explanation appears on screen. Unprepared viewers are bound to have problems with that, this information being necessary to get a grip on what the main characters binds together.
Some important details were revealed during the final Q&A, all of them having to do with local traditions. The apparent problems that Yoko prevents from marrying Yusuke, were left unexplained in the movie. It has to do with their rules for inheriting family names. It would leave Yoko's former family without a son and heir when she decides to re-marry, hence they would have no one to carry forth their name. This may seem a minor problem from our viewpoint, but for Yoko it is like a mill stone around her neck.
Also very traditional was the travel to the sunrise around New Year, as undertaken by the whole family. It was obviously a yearly routine within the family, never missed before. An important part of the film is devoted to preparations for this excursion, hence nice to know what it is all about.
Also interesting was the location choice in the form of a dairy farm. Any other family business could have served as a stage for similar dilemmas between a future that fits someone's talents versus doing what is expected from an eldest son to continue his father's business when the latter is unable to. It turns out that the choice was merely accidental, coming forth from the perfect location for shooting this film, namely between two noisy highways. A follow-up question about why Yusuke was a musician and not (for example) a film maker, was not answered clearly, maybe because this was also by random choice.
Some other things that I learned from the Q&A were about how much of the story was invented or autobiographic (all invented), and about the choice of actors (mostly local people, obtained from auditions). This film was not widely distributed in Japan, since everything that is "not from Tokyo" gets easily ignored there. The director hoped that an international audience might help in spreading the word.
The title of the film contains the word "sound" for obvious reasons, with a would-be musician as the main character. It has also the word "light" in it, to be interpreted as "life" which is all-around on a farm. On the other hand, this interpretation was not carved in stone, and we were invited to our own by the director.
