There is no easy way to express my opinions on this film, so I will explain it.
There may be spoilers in here.
Background: I was sceptical when I started watching this movie. There used to be a time when I was captured by the hype and forced myself to believe slow Japanese movies simply have to be good. Anyone who does not like them, simply does not get it. Yet lately, I have come to understand that many of those movies really are just boring, shallow, and expressionless. Japanese movies are not great in general because of their nationality, just like American or German films are not. I just recently saw Dark Water and Tomie and thought they were very dull. I did not really expect this to be very different. Luckily, I was positively suprised. Right at the beginning I noticed how incredibly beautifully this film was shot. Towards the middle of it though, it seemed to me as if this would be just another bad Japanese movie. It developed all the signs of that. E.g. charachters that are unnaturally introverted, even for a Japanese; that don't talk about the things, that happen to them. You can't really connect to those charachters, they don't have much of a charachter development. We've got a lot of atmosphere shots, but nothing really happens. Just what I feared. This kind of movie is not arty or culturaly meaningful. Its just shallow. Yet, as the film went on, I noticed this one is different. It seems to criticize the japanese culture for this lack of communication. What I thought would be a bad charachteristic of it, is actually the central point of it. It seems like the director consiously displayed the charachters, the way I described before, not because this is just another boring japanese movie, but because he tries to criticize this charachteristic of the Japanese society. At some point in the movie it is being said that the ghosts attempt to capture the people in their eternal loneliness. This may be a very strong hint. In the end it seems like this movie does not merely inherit the same bad aspects of other movies but analyzes them and more so the society behind it. In the end it is being said that there seem to be people alive in Latin America. Guess why: because they talk! They communicate, talk about the ghosts and don't let themselves become lonely that easy. None of the Japanese charachters in this movie seem to have friends. The main charachter tells the girl with the car that he had one friend who he did not really know. He also said earlier that he maybe got an internet connection to meet people. I think this does all support my theory. What do you think?
There may be spoilers in here.
Background: I was sceptical when I started watching this movie. There used to be a time when I was captured by the hype and forced myself to believe slow Japanese movies simply have to be good. Anyone who does not like them, simply does not get it. Yet lately, I have come to understand that many of those movies really are just boring, shallow, and expressionless. Japanese movies are not great in general because of their nationality, just like American or German films are not. I just recently saw Dark Water and Tomie and thought they were very dull. I did not really expect this to be very different. Luckily, I was positively suprised. Right at the beginning I noticed how incredibly beautifully this film was shot. Towards the middle of it though, it seemed to me as if this would be just another bad Japanese movie. It developed all the signs of that. E.g. charachters that are unnaturally introverted, even for a Japanese; that don't talk about the things, that happen to them. You can't really connect to those charachters, they don't have much of a charachter development. We've got a lot of atmosphere shots, but nothing really happens. Just what I feared. This kind of movie is not arty or culturaly meaningful. Its just shallow. Yet, as the film went on, I noticed this one is different. It seems to criticize the japanese culture for this lack of communication. What I thought would be a bad charachteristic of it, is actually the central point of it. It seems like the director consiously displayed the charachters, the way I described before, not because this is just another boring japanese movie, but because he tries to criticize this charachteristic of the Japanese society. At some point in the movie it is being said that the ghosts attempt to capture the people in their eternal loneliness. This may be a very strong hint. In the end it seems like this movie does not merely inherit the same bad aspects of other movies but analyzes them and more so the society behind it. In the end it is being said that there seem to be people alive in Latin America. Guess why: because they talk! They communicate, talk about the ghosts and don't let themselves become lonely that easy. None of the Japanese charachters in this movie seem to have friends. The main charachter tells the girl with the car that he had one friend who he did not really know. He also said earlier that he maybe got an internet connection to meet people. I think this does all support my theory. What do you think?