dir: Shinji Aoyama
“I am going to see a three and a half hour, black and white, Japanese film where half of the major characters are mute.”
Insert puzzled look here.
EUREKA is long. Many showings provide an intermission. It is a needed break. There is not much in the way of physical action. Much of the film takes place in the minds of its four characters. Eureka is also a near masterpiece, albeit with flaws.
A man opens fire on a bus. There are three survivors. One is the bus driver Makoto (Koji Yakusho). The other two are junior-high school aged children Kozue (Aoi Miyazaki) and Naoki (Masaru Miyazaki), who are so traumatized by the event that they are left mute. EUREKA is the long journey toward recovery from such a traumatic event. The immediate comparison would be Atom Egoyan’s THE SWEET HEREAFTER. Unlike that film, EUREKA lacks the intense, if somewhat sensational, events. Rather, EUREKA concerns itself with the mind and with the way society treats survivors with discomfort and distance. Makoto packs up and leaves his hometown, his father, siblings, and wife. No explanation is given, but one feels that Makoto needs to right something in himself and to get away from the awkward sympathizers. Rumors of rape and other trauma haunt Kozue and Naoki. The children obviously cannot leave town. Instead, their family leaves them (one through death, one through abandonment), so they too are left alone. Jump ahead two years, Makoto returns. He gets a less than warm welcome from his family and eventually moves in with Kozue and Naoki. They are the only ones who can understand; they are survivors as well. The children’s cousin Akihiko (Yoichiro Saito) shows up. The four make a strained but functional family. However, since Makoto’s return, the town has been plagued with murders of young women. Makoto is the prime suspect.
Those expecting the thriller elements to be played with the usual pomp and circumstance will be disappointed. Like the rest of the film, the murders are handled with subtlety and unobtrusively. When Eureka becomes a road film in the second half (with Makoto, Kozue, Naoki, and Akihiko drifting across a nameless Japan), EUREKA strays from almost every road movie cliche. The landscape the film is most concerned with is the inner territory of the mind with the scars we carry with us everyday.
So, why would anyone want to see this film? Number one, EUREKA forces the viewer to care about its characters. We live with Makoto, Kozue, Naoki, and Akihiko; we share their highs and lows. The effect is devastating. They could be us.
On a technical level, the cinematography is incredible. Like many Japanese films, characters are framed as if in a painting. The tinted monochrome coloring gives the film a painter’s eye. The camera and editing movements places the viewer as an unobtrusive voyeur inside the scenes. There is a fascinating shot of Naoki amongst weeds. Naoki appears to be disappearing amongst his environment. The shot has an impressionist quality that is both stunning and chilling.
EUREKA appeared in competition at Cannes last year and was beat out by DANCER IN THE DARK. Also at Cannes was Edward Yang’s masterful family drama YI YI and Darren Aronofsky’s harrowing film about the ravages of drug addiction REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. All of these films have now been released to theaters in the United States. One wonders, with such a wide range of films dealing honestly with people and personal trauma, why the Cannes board voted for a film which was all style and no substance.
EUREKA is long in terms of running time, but not in interest. Except for the intermission, I never once felt the urge to stretch my legs, go to the rest-room, or seek physical substance. I sat in my chair and experienced a film that was trying to say something about loss and loneliness, about how we survive and how others are embarrassed for us. In other words, I saw a film about real people dealing with real problems, and I was more riveted to my chair than in THE MUMMY RETURNS which ran considerably shorter.