Happyend Review-Orwellian Japanese high school drama is brilliant mysterious | Films

NEO Sora is a Japanese filmmaker who directed Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, a documentary about his fatherThe renowned composer. Now he has made his feature debut with this complex, seductive and often brilliant film, co-produced by Anthony Chen; It succeeds in being partly futuristic satire, partly coming-of-age dramedy, partly high school Dystopia. It combines the spirit of The Breakfast Club by John Hughes with Lindsay Anderson’s If … and there can even be a spur reminder at the Mishima of Paul Schrader, only without the Seppuku.

In a high school in Kobe In the future, students are suppressed by the reactionary xenophobia of their elderly people; Periodic earthquake warnings and actual earthquakes themselves, create a widespread atmosphere of oppressed panic that, according to the authorities, a perpetual clamp. The prime minister has claimed that unwanted elements benefit from the earthquakes to enjoy lawlessness. In the school there is a almost non -relatively racist contempt for students who are not completely ethnically Japanese, as well as those who have unorthodox or rebellious views.

One morning the director (Shirô Sano) is furious to see that a joker has set up his shiny new yellow car on the school site, such as a Stonehenge monolith. For some reason, he suspects the cool-kid gang of the school who, encouraged by liberal teacher Mr Okada (Ayumu Nakajima), can hang around in the “Music Research Room”. They are Yuta (Hayato Kurihara), Fumi (Kilala Inori), Korean-Japanese cold (Yukito Hidaka), Chinese student Ming (Shina Peng), Afro-American student Tom (Araazi) (who is planning his family in Detroit in Detroit in Detroit in Detroit in Detroit in Detroit in Detroit in Detroit Hayashi).

However, the glowing director cannot prove anything, and the film itself does not show exactly who did this stunt or how on earth they have managed it. But in a hateful and retaliation spirit, he installs a video supervision and face registration system in the school, brand-mentioned panopty (clearly afterwards Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon Prison design) who spies every movement of the students. This Orwellian setup creates an enormous dysfunction in the school, such as a collective nervous breakdown, perhaps especially for Yuta and Cold, for whom the school’s disaster pudd perhaps may mean, even if they challenge this new suppression hero -high, they cannot recognize their feelings for each other.

This is a film that refuses to give our clear storylines, clear characterisations, clear meanings; Even the fierce director himself may not be as strict as all that. It is a very stylish, thoughtful, sincere film in which the warm heartache might be just as important as every political commentary.