Daihaichi Yoshida’s “Takei Cometh” is the first Japanese film to win the top prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 19 years. The win reflects the sense of optimism that pervades this year’s TIFF, as Japanese theaters bounce back from COVID-era lows and “Drive My Car” director Ryosuke Hamaguchi and “Godzilla Minus One” director Takashi Yamazaki. Just as Japanese filmmakers have received praise overseas. Yoshida has not yet achieved that kind of international recognition. But “Techie Cometh,” a darkly comic character study about an aging professor whose orderly life is disrupted by a series of terrifying spam emails, makes a good ambassador.
Yoshida made his debut nearly 20 years ago with his 2007 film “Funuke, Show Some Love You Losers!” , a dark comedy about a narcissistic actress and her emotionally abusive relationship with her manga-artist sister. Sumika (Eriko Sato) is a less sympathetic character than the “techie” professor Watanabe (Kyozo Nagatsuka) – Watanabe is deliberate and thoughtful, if a little oblivious to how the world is changing around him. But Yoshida approaches them both with patience and compassion, creating fully developed characters with histories and motivations and imaginations and emotional lives.
The same is true of all his characters: Take Yoshida’s 2014 drama “Pale Moon,” a story about greed set shortly after Japan’s economic bubble dramatically burst in the early ’90s. In that film, bank teller Rika (Rei Miyazawa) is tempted by both easy money and an extramarital affair. She makes some questionable decisions under the influence of both, but both she and her much younger boyfriend are portrayed as complex, confused people who are doing the best they can – a decision that makes the film exponentially more entertaining and thought-provoking. Makes.
All three of those films are based on novels. Most of Yoshida’s films help to bring to mind his complex characterizations and detailed inner worlds. “The thing I try to be very thoughtful about is how to translate that novel into film. [me] feel right after [I] Read it,” Yoshida says. “Takei” is based on the book by novelist Yasutaka Tsutsui, whose work also inspired the films “Paprika” and “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time”; following the world premiere of “Takei,” Yoshida joked that his personality was “70 percent” derived from Tsutsui’s work, in our interview he said this figure was exaggerated but “a complete lie. No”.
A highly curious, self-motivated artist who once wanted to be a punk rock musician—he’s currently studying under a Noh theater master, simply because he finds the discipline interesting—Yoshida says he’s pursuing his “political Praises Tsutsui for confronting taboos in “reading the novel.” [Tsutsui’s] Work, you know very well that imagination has no limits. And we’re very, very free in our imagination,” he says. “That seed was planted in me at an early age when I was reading his work. And for that I’m very grateful.”
Yoshida had read Tsutsui’s book “Teiki” — Japanese for “enemy” — about 30 years ago and revisited it during the 2020 COVID shutdown. “It hit a little closer to home the second time around,” says the director, who is currently 61. Of the novel. “There were details where I was saying, ‘Oh, this happened to me yesterday.'” The story begins by following Watanabe going about his normal daily routine as a retired man, living in his family home. is, a traditional Japanese-style house with a dry-stoked restoration and decades-old memories piled in the shed.
The film was shot in an actual, occupied 100-year-old wood and tatami house, with an aesthetic inspired by director Mikio Naruse’s classic Japanese films such as “The Sound of the Mountain” and Yasujiro Ozu’s “Late Spring.” “Of course, you can’t copy what Ozu did,” says Yoshida. “But it served as a good inspiration to remind once again how beautiful a Japanese home can be.” Then, over the course of 108 minutes, Professor Watanabe’s tidy reality is shattered as he begins to receive – and then, more importantly, believe – messages warning of an unnamed “enemy” coming from the North. Looks like.
That’s when another, more recent reference comes into play: Part 8 of “Twin Peaks: The Return,” whose coal-stained “Woodsman” serves as a visual reference for Watanabe’s dreams of the encroaching “enemy.” . At the film’s world premiere in Tokyo, Yoshida rejected the idea that “Takei” and “Takei Cometh” represent the onset of dementia, saying that the film’s smooth transitions between fantasy and reality are open to multiple interpretations. . They are also full of dark humor, some of which is quite controversial: “If anything has changed, I think [my sense of humor] Over the years it has become a little more on the nose, says Yoshida. “It worries me a little bit,” he says, laughing.
In American eyes, an otherwise smart, self-reliant veteran falling victim to online paranoia highlights the conspiracy theories that currently fuel our country’s politics. When asked about the connection, Yoshida said that, in the context of the original printing of “Teiki” in the 90s, “an enemy from the North” would automatically mean “Russia” to Japanese readers. However, today, “it could mean North Korea, it could mean China, but it depends on the generation.” [in Japan]In America, it could be Trump, it could be Mexican…”
In short, the metaphor is flexible. Yoshida adds: “It’s such a pregnant word that you can, especially in this day and age, have almost unlimited use of your imagination as to what the ‘enemy’ is… If there really is an enemy, he What’s that for you? We can think about it endlessly and it’s something that the audience thinks about after watching it. [my film]That would make me happy.”
The thoughtful pace, overt message and spare cinematography in “Takei Cometh” are all signs of the filmmaker’s maturing style, though Yoshida says there’s still some punk spirit left in him. “I’m that type of person [for whom] There’s a direct path from loving something to doing it,” he explains. “When I was a kid, if there was a manga I liked, I wanted to draw it… After a while I started watching movies. Started , but when I saw what I liked, I immediately wanted to shoot something on 8mm. As long as I have that attitude, I think I can keep doing what I do.”
“Techie Cometh” doesn’t fit into easy genre boxes. It’s subtle and innovative, the kind of work that international cinephiles say they crave in a film landscape ravaged by blockbuster franchises. Yoshida has yet to have his crossover moment: his 2012 high-school picture “The Kirishima Thing” (very loosely translated from its Japanese title “Kirishima, Bukatsu Yamarutteyo”) won Best Picture at the Japan Academy Awards, and Yoshida Won the Best Director Award. , But Yoshida’s work is rarely screened overseas – his last few films premiered domestically, as with “Takei Cometh.” But just as the film breaks down the boundaries between its main character’s inner and outer worlds, “Takei Cometh” could break down barriers for Yoshida too, if it finds the right international distributor. Yoshida’s “Enemies” may be many things, but this thoughtful film is not one of them.