Left Field Cinema

Around a half dozen passengers travel on a public bus in rural Japan, a young man in a suit gets aboard. Clearly distressed and restless the man prompts our suspicions but none of the passengers around him. He takes passengers of the bus hostage and kills several of them, his motives are unclear but his misanthropic attitude is deadly and direct. The police arrive and surround the bus; snipers are primed and ready to kill the hostage taker as soon as an opportunity arises. The mad man swaps his clothes with the bus driver and steps outside the bus with driver in tow, they talk as the mad man waits for the snipers to kill the hostage by mistake. Before they do the driver drops to the floor in terror, the mad man points his gun at the driver but is gunned down by the invisible sniper before he has the chance. The police approach but the mad man is still alive, he shoots an officer and runs back into the bus, killing more passengers before being shot in the back by a detective. The mad man falls onto a seat he raises his gun once more, aiming for two children sat at the back, before he can take their lives the detective puts another round in the madman’s head – ending his life and ending the siege. As described this is the opening minutes of the film - Shinji Aoyama’s seventh film as director. A relatively unknown Japanese film maker whose work has rarely secured international distribution beyond the US and Japan with this one notable exception. Although this opening sequence of events might sound on the surface like the opening to some hyped and pumped up Hollywood actioner, it is in fact the beginning of a three and a half hour exploration of trauma, guilt and grief. But the opening minutes are far from unrepresentative of the remaining film in terms of tone or pitch. The action of hostage taking, murder by firearm, and police siege are shot, edited and directed in a style which initially seems at odds with the content. The impact of bullets are never depicted gratuitously, in fact most of the deaths take place off screen on account of an edit or wide shot. The sequence has little in the way of dialogue and a full fifteen minutes is allotted to a very simple series of events which could just have easily been shown in one quarter of the time had Aoyama so desired. This is representative of the rest of the film in terms of tone, pitch, style and pace. Aoyama uses one set of apparatus for this multi-facetted film - the film is Eureka.

From this inciting incident, there are three survivors, the bus driver Makoto Sawai as played by Koji Yakusho, the two children Kozue and Naoki brother and sister played by real life brother and sister Aoi and Masaru Miyazaki. The young girl Aoi and the teenage boy Naoki are silent, they’ve stopped talking altogether, their experience on the bus is made worse by first their mother leaving them and then their father dying in a drink related car accident. The children are by themselves, Makoto decides to move in with the children and clean up their house which has become as messy and disorganised as their frightened minds. Soon after the siblings older cousin arrives as well, Akihiko played by Yoichiro Saito who doesn’t seem to understand the trio’s unusual ways as he has not shared in the specific trauma. Meanwhile local young women are being murdered by a serial killer and Makoto is the prime suspect in the case. Makoto decides to go on a road trip across Japan with Kozue, Naoki, and Akihiko, living in a mini bus and going where ever the wind takes them so to speak. Hoping to find some sort of closure on the way...

It is difficult to classify Eureka; it can hardly be called a road movie as the central characters don’t even leave the house until over two hours into the film (it is worth noting now however that the film is three and half hours long). Eureka is not a serial killer film, we don’t actively follow any police investigation and the killings themselves are never seen on screen (instead Aoyama handles the film in a subtler way with a dead girls foot appearing from behind a reed or a single ladies shoe floating down the river). The concentration is definitely not on the act of murder, but rather the consequences of violence, the trauma it creates within the human condition. So what sort of film is Eureka? It avoids most genre considerations in terms of style and substance, to class this merely as a drama would seem unhelpful but it is the only term that is broad enough to fit the film in any case.

Eureka on the surface has two points of instant interest – sound and vision. Aoyama has exceeded preconceptions of what cinema “should” look like and has redefined what cinema “can” look like. Almost the entire film is shot in gorgeous sepia tones, giving everything the rustic appearance of an old style photograph. Going beyond merely black and white, the sepia appearance makes the film unforgettable as it is a technique rarely used these days - even rarer than black and white. Sepia adds to the rich textured imagery; rain falls, smoke blows, lines on faces appear clearer, the sepia tone exposes every detail, every grain, every surface in a way that colour can not. Sepia allows you to see details in the image that you would otherwise miss, it focuses the concentration on composition and detail rather than colour pallets and movement. Eureka boasts altogether stunning composition; every shot is composed to near perfect exactness of the level that any of histories greatest cinematographers would be proud to call their own. The film features the most beautifully shot interrogation scene ever committed to film… the stunning use of silhouettes and piercing lighting would make even Fritz Lang blush. Of course it helps matters that this was all filmed in an area of Japan rarely photographed, areas of extreme beauty comparable to the work that Masahiro Shinoda did in his 1970’s film Silence which also used great stretches of untapped Japanese landscape. The final shot of Eureka is jaw droopingly stunning not so much for it’s composition but for it’s remarkable location which appears effortlessly beautiful on screen. Like Shinoda, like his other famous countryman Yasjiro Ozu, Aoyama achieves a great sense of stillness throughout the film, as you might imagine (given the films length) events unfold rather slowly with numerous extended static shots and longer-than-average scenes. Aoyama’s film does demand patience from its viewers, but no more so than the the films of Theo Angelopoulos, Bela Tarr or Andrei Tarkovsky.

The second point of instant interest is the sound design, whilst the film is light on score and music in general, audio is still at the films heart with the constant sound of birds and insects outside the bus or the house, the ambient noise is more noticeable because of the lack of music. This is also offset by great stretches of silence to match the stillness of the films images. Eureka’s meticulous sonic ebb and flow are of paramount concern. The film turns even quieter towards the end as characters fall by the wayside and we’re left with two of the quieter souls on the bus who communicates by means other than words, as this occurs the balance is restored as the gentle score begins to dominate.

Not all the critics enjoyed Eureka; it has taken heavy criticism from the likes of the New York Times and Sight and Sound. Sight and Sound accused critics who praised the film of mistaking length with depth, Tony Rayns described the film as “ludicrously over praised”, they also accused the film of over-egging the family crisis and tragedy – it’s not enough that the two children are witnesses to a massacre they must lose their parents as well, what Sight and Sound seemed to miss in this assessment is the abandonment the children suffer is a direct result of the initial incident rather than separate events, they refuse to speak causing unhappiness in the home, the mother leaves, the father can’t take it and so drinks too much and eventually crashes his car – thus everything is linked back to the inciting incident in a more traditional fashion. On a more subjective note a friend of my family once lost his mother, father and wife in one year and eventually killed himself due to unbearable depression – in reality personal tragedy doesn’t always manifest itself in singular blows – so why should it in fiction? Rayns also questioned the motives of Aoyama in making the film, quoting the films producer who recalled that Aoyama initially wanted to make a three plus hour film in black and white and whatever the film is came later. Do the ends justify the means? Does it matter what the director set out to make if the film itself remains excellent? Is Eureka not unintended genius perhaps? If the motives were unknown would they not then be better disposed to judge a film, after all there are a huge number of film makers in the world who are only in the business to make money (this may seem artistically dubious to me, but if the end result is an excellent film then what difference does it make? All sequels for example are ultimately only produced to make money, if the original hadn’t made money at the box office then the film wouldn’t have been produced – so by Rayns’ rationale are all sequels worthless?).

Seemingly The New York Times and Sight and Sound felt that audiences and critics had been conned into thinking this was a great film through a combination of beautiful cinematography and a slow pace. Critics who praised the film failed to take into account Aoyama’s previous works which are described by Ryans as “damp squids”, to this point I’m forced to concede that the only other Aoyama film I’ve viewed to date is his 1997 feature film Wild Life which like the cinema of Jean-Lu Goddard is crushed by the weight of it’s own intellectual ambitions, in attempting to defy every genre rule, Wild Life ends up strangling its own potential. But once again, we can look to other film makers who’ve produced many sub-par films in between the occasional classic, Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Rainer Fassbinder for example, a critic is not expected to invoke Topaz as damnation for the film Psycho, or use Chinese Roulette as evidence against Fear Eats the Soul – one film has nothing to do with the other.

These critics have also overlooked several other key ingredients; the film won the FIPRESCI Prize at Canne in 2000, this was the reason they gave: “For its penetrating insights into the lives of survivors of tragedy, for the formal beauty of the photography, and for the moving performances”. So let us now examine those “moving performances”. Yakusho in the role of Mokato is remarkable, the character has problems which stem from a troubled childhood, after leaving his bus driving profession he becomes a manual labourer but obviously harbours a desire to do greater things, to become a greater man. Makoto must deal with the guilt he feels for surviving the ordeal when others did not, the guilt he feels as the man responsible for the safety of those on his bus who perished at the hands of the deranged lunatic. This is a matter of honour for him, in Japanese cultural traditions it would have been a happier outcome if Makoto had died protecting his passengers. This guilt is arguably charged with more pain than the trauma the children have suffered, when someone questions his motives in helping the children, Makoto points out it is the children who are helping him – once revealed it is clear to see. In one of the films stand-out scenes Makoto is meeting with his wife to finalise their divorce, this short sequence is loaded with an overwhelming emotional subtext, conveying more depth in a few minutes than most films could hope for in their entirety as without a single word it is clear that the pair still love each other but can not go on together. “Is it possible to live soley for others?” Makoto asks, his wife replies: “You couldn’t live just for me”.

Brother and sister are also excellent, there is never a moment of self consciousness in their performances, and despite remaining wordless throughout the entire film both children provide a wealth of emotion and gather our empathy in a stealthy fashion. Kozue eventually manages to express herself by picking up a Polaroid camera and taking pictures, in the best scene of the film Kozue sits at the end of the bus, points the camera at Makoto who kneels waiting for the shot: “click” the camera whirs – the change in Kozue is visible for everyone to see.

When the cousin shows up he provides desperately needed comedy and dialogue. The others are laconic, unable or unwilling to speak. He is the opposite and as a result offsets the films sense of tragedy with broad comedy, his haphazard attitude contrasts with everyone else (wearing a frilly apron or comically collapsing after running around after Kozue). Despite his immaturity, the cousin actually provides the voice of reason throughout the film (although this voice is mostly unheard) he is the only one who picks holes in Makoto’s sometimes questionable logic.

Moving onto “penetrating insights into the lives of survivors of tragedy”, the road trip doesn’t release their demons; the demons are released in more mysterious ways (if they’re released at all, not every plot strands is totally resolved. As in reality there aren’t always easy solutions to complex trauma). But for some the trauma is slowly worn away through the passage of time. Makoto and the children begin communicating through rhythmic knocking as they try to sleep under the violent shadows cast from a wind rustled tree sat above them. No words are spoken but the message is clear. A dialogue is opened, with no understanding beyond that revelation required, that it is open is enough, what is said is immaterial.

The examination of trauma is not restricted to how it is caused, it is explored in relation to it’s manifestations within the individual man woman or child. These reactions can be wildly different as in the case of our three survivors. Aoyama’s Eureka is a paradoxically dreamlike realistic examination of grief, remorse, guilt, violence, despair, human connections and the frailty of existence. The film delves into the psyche of these three troubled human beings, but does so through broad stokes and extended pauses, moments of silence and tenderness, moments of thoughtful expression or blunt intervention. Whatever the problem is, wherever the problem stems from, Eureka takes its time and therapeutically draws us to its own conclusions naturally and organically.

M.Dawson