One of the best Japanese independent films of the past few years finally hits U.S. theaters this weekend. The second director Kei Chikaura great absenceThe film debuted to rave reviews at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival, and its star, Japanese screen icon Tatsuya Fuji, subsequently won the San Sebastian Award for Best Actor (in the sensory realm), opens in New York on Friday and in Los Angeles on July 26, with a nationwide rollout to follow.
great absence The series centers on Takashi (Mirai Moriyama), an ambitious stage and screen actor who gets back into the orbit of his estranged father (Fuji) after receiving a jarring phone call from the police. His father’s second wife has disappeared, and the old man, once a respected physics professor, appears to be suffering from late-stage acute dementia. As Takashi and his new wife (Yōko Maki) quickly escape to their father’s home on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, the film shifts into a mesmerizing and heartbreaking suspense formula as the young man slowly grasps the truth. The wife and life of a long-absent father.
As the film’s official synopsis elegantly puts it: “At some point in life, we often have to face a past that was thought to be forgotten, lost forever, only for it to resurface, accompanied by unwanted absences, All the emotional embarrassment arising from the memory.
Photographed by renowned Japanese cinematographer Yu Yamazaki (known for his work with art world favorites Hirokazu Kore-eda and Naomi Kawase) great absence Shot on 35mm film, mostly in classic fixed camera setups, the story transitions gracefully from flashbacks to the present day, taking on the richness and majesty of chaotic yet vivid memory.
before great absenceUS Premiere, hollywood reporter Connected with Chika-ura via Zoom to discuss the film’s deeply personal roots and its implicit commentary on the changing nature of the role of marriage in Japan.
Tell me about the origin of creativity great absence.
Well, I have to get back to my debut novel, accomplice. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018, but since it was an independent film, I had some difficulty finding a distributor in Japan, so it wasn’t released in our country until 2020. The full script for my second feature is ready to go into production. But then the world came to a halt due to COVID-19, and around the same time, I got a call from the Fukuoka police telling me that my father was being “protected.” They didn’t say he was arrested; just that he was arrested. They said he was protected. I was shocked and didn’t understand what this meant. What actually happened was that my father sent out a distress call saying that he and his wife were being held hostage by a man with a gun. Of course, this isn’t true. My father began to suffer from acute dementia—and I had no idea. I was very surprised because my father is a retired university professor, and although I don’t like him very much, on the surface he is a very reliable member of society. Everyone living around his home was upset as a large number of armed police officers rushed into the neighborhood in response to his emergency call. This is a big event. I immediately boarded the Shinkansen and headed from Tokyo to Fukuoka [on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu], and then I started traveling monthly to spend time with him. Considering all the paralyzing experiences brought about by the pandemic, as well as the personal crisis I was having with my father, I decided to abandon the project I was about to shoot. I needed to write something that resonated with my current state of mind and what the world at large was going through. It’s a fictional film, but it was inspired by my experiences with my father.
Was the movie you gave up on something completely different? What is it like?
Yes, things are very different. This is a genre film, a suspense film. but great absence There are also elements of suspense movies, so maybe I inherited some of that.
Beyond that exciting event, in what other ways have you drawn on your own experiences in your writing and creative process? great absence?
One is the character of the protagonist. He is a very reserved person and doesn’t like to express his feelings─I am basically the same. When I first discussed the character of Takuya with Mirai Moriyama, he said that he didn’t quite understand what was going on in the film because the character had no clearly articulated motivations and no clear emotional movement. He wasn’t quite sure how he would play the role. I told him that Takuya was basically based on my personality—Moriyama started watching and studying me, and I think that helped him figure out how to play the protagonist. Moriyama is a very unique actor in Japan. In addition to his many film roles, he is also a well-known stage actor and contemporary dancer. But because of his extraordinary physical attributes, he was often asked to play eccentric roles in Japanese films. So I was happy to see him act in a very restrained, restrained way, and I thought his performance was outstanding.
Coping with dementia, either personally or through loved ones, is becoming an increasingly common experience in Japan and other countries with aging populations. But as I watched the film, I wondered if you were also striving for a more general form of universality. The circumstances your character finds himself in are pretty extreme (he’s been estranged from his father for 20 years), but I still found myself connected to the film’s central mystery – the somewhat uncanny question of who your parents really are. who are, or were, human beings and are forced to re-evaluate their entire lives as they approach the final chapter.
This is a very interesting point. This reminds me of a scene in the movie – the third confrontation between father and son in the nursing home. This is the scene where a father pleads with his son to forgive him. The son was reluctant, but eventually gave in and said, “Okay, I forgive you.” Some viewers interpreted this as their reconciliation. To me, this is not reconciliation; This is their relationship – the inversion of protector and protected. Shortly thereafter, in a very symbolic moment, the son handed the belt to his father and helped him put it on. So, the film is a mystery – it’s also about the role of Japanese husbands and wives – but on an important level it’s a story about a man growing up and becoming more than his father.
Was making this film part of the process for you?
Well, the reason I love movies is entirely about my dad. My father took me to the theater every weekend during my childhood. I grew up in West Berlin before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 because that’s where my father worked. Growing up, my dad always told me that the first movie I saw in the theater was everyone for themselves Jean Luc Godard.
Wow, this isn’t a kids movie…
(Laughs) Yeah, I was four or five years old at the time, so I don’t remember it at all. But he would take me to see these kinds of movies, and he would always remind me that it was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. So that became a very important fact to me. But that’s not what I remember in my mind or heart. It only really exists in his mind – which, in 2020, is fading away. So, during this crisis, I thought I needed to bring the true meaning of this memory into my body. It’s a very abstract idea, but it’s the real reason I felt I had to make this film before I could move on to other projects.
Japanese screen icon Fujitatsu also won an award for his performance as the deteriorating patriarch in “The Great Absence.”
you mentioned great absence It is also a story about the changing nature of marriage in Japanese society.
Well, for the relationship between the father and his wife Naomi, I pictured the older generation where the woman stood behind the man and her life was about supporting her husband. That’s how my parents were. Through this story, I tried to free Naomi—to let her find her own path in the rest of her life. But it’s not just about her personal journey, I also want to express my hope for a more ideal situation between men and women in Japan. This young couple reflects the current situation of men and women in Japan. It’s flat, there’s no hierarchy, they see each other and support each other.
So I wanted to ask about casting and working with Tatsuya Fuji. He had such a brilliant career. Why was he needed to play this role?
Fuji is undoubtedly one of Japan’s legendary actors and I have deep admiration for his work, especially his films with Nagisa Oshima in the 1970s. Ever since I started making my first short film, I had dreamed of creating a feature that could be considered one of Fuji’s signature works. You know, he won the Best Actor Award at last year’s San Sebastian Film Festival for this movie. So I’m happy that I can say that I achieved one of my biggest dreams as a filmmaker. I didn’t cast him in this movie. Instead, I made the entire movie just to work with him. I want to be part of his history. What was it like working with him? He’s always great. I don’t direct him on set at all. I do nothing. There he is. He showed up and delivered – just like you see in the movie. This is our relationship. It’s all about trusting each other.
near Puqing
