source: To the Ends of the Earth

After a slow start, film builds to a SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) like ending. Principal actress Atsuko Maeda plays a strong women with conviction (Maeda is also a former J-pop singer and can really sing!). Some comedy and lots of suspense (mostly imaged) when Atsuko's character takes a self-guided tour by herself of some scary parts of a foreign city. This includes a run in with the local police (apparently using real police officers). Unfortunately, sound mix of Maeda and full orchestra is not great - orchestra drowns out the singer! Direction and acting (including locals) is fine. Production value is high. Subtitles are good enough. Viewed at JICC J-Film event. WILLIAM FLANIGAN

A japanese film crew in uzbekistan. on the cheap. making a travelogue. the "star" of the show, is a young japanese woman, with a lot of moxie. for reasons i could not comprehend, she keeps wandering off by herself in a totally unfamiliar country, with no language skills or smarts. anyway this seems to be a message movie. we're all the same, all we need is dialog between us to make a better world. or something like that. it didn't move me.

Hands down my most favorite film I've seen this year on Mubi. Truly honest cinema. I know I say this every time I watch anything exceptional, but this here is a very special film I want you all to experience in the theater before it leaves. Following a naive Japanese woman reporter and her crew in Uzbekistan, we get to accompany a trip in which everything never goes according to plan and the locals never seem to appreciate their presence. It tells a story of how a failed effort to produce a typical shallow travel variety show turns into a journey of self-realization and genuine human contact. A treatise on the diminishing possibility of meaningful intercultural exchange under the current stage of global capitalism, but also its precious value. Kurosawa's meta-travel documentary piece masterfully dissects the superficiality of globalization, the culture of tourism made possible by the elimination of space through time-that flexible intercontinental mobility of air travel and the instantaneity of digital media-which should serve to bring cultures together, yet paradoxically, ultimately pulls them apart. Sitting in front of TVs and computers, we screen alien cultures in the comfort of our couch, oblivious to the unimaginable life that goes on behind the colorful scenes. It's a profound meditation on what it means to be a traveller rather than a tourist, to be a participant rather than a spectator, to look past the shiny surface of capitalism's reductive mediatization of differences. It's an invitation to get lost and then, from those in-between places of otherness, stumble upon a way. As Shuji Terayama would have said: throw away your maps, wander in the bazaars!

It's rare that quirky films are slowburners which gives 'To the Ends of the Earth' its own footprint. I'm glad that was in a patient mood and in a quiet space otherwise I may not have become hypnotised. Desiring to see Uzbekistan in a movie for the first time helped my motivation, Yoko is the presenter for a Japanese television show. The all-male film crew are seemingly indifferent to her as they stutter from one scene to the next, shooting meaningless footage the director thinks is important. That installs the theme of feeling disconnected, and that is how the viewer may feel at the start as a film. When on set, Yoko is more a prop than a person. After hours, she continually escapes on bizarre sightseeing trips that provide more real insight into the country and herself. Despite repeatedly getting lost and scared, she's driven to do so again. The metaphor's are powerful. Her misadventures express her fear of being emotionally lost and out of place in this world. But the truth is that she's afraid of herself, and had walled herself off from the joys around her. The goat she finds and wants to set free is surely herself. It's a delightful, sad and sweet film for intelligent viewers, making it easy for me to forgive its melodramatic singing moment. It's two stars better than director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 'Before We Vanish' and one star better than 'Journey to the Shore'. I'm going to seek his 'Tokyo Sonata'. I fear that the title 'To the Ends of the Earth' will limit the audience reach. Oddball films for the arty crowds need something catchier like 'Song of the Goat of Uzbekistan'.

As soaring as Atsuko Maeda's rendition of Edith Piaf's Hymne à l'Amour is to the backdrop of the mountains surrounding Tashkent, Uzbekistan, this is a rather flat film. Maeda plays a TV journalist traveling with a small crew to capture a travelogue of sorts. In some of the film's best moments, we see her flip her TV personality on like a light switch and become animated, which is quite a contrast to the pensive person she is while not on camera. We also see how she's treated a bit like a prop by the crew, certainly not being in control and forced, for example, to ride a nausea-inducing rickety deathtrap of an amusement park ride more than once, with little regard for what it was doing to her. As a young woman, she's also eyed warily by the locals, but we ultimately see that they are reasonable and kind, which was probably part of the film's larger goal, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relationship between Japan and Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, director (and writer) Kiyoshi Kurosawa just didn't put together a compelling enough story, or to expand on its numerous subplots in a satisfying way. The forced labor to build the Navoi Theater by Japanese POW's after WWII was mentioned but undeveloped further, and other incidents like the young woman's boyfriend being at risk because of a fire in Tokyo she sees on the TV felt the same way, just failed attempts at plot escalation. She wanders aimlessly and awkwardly (if not recklessly) through markets, perhaps a metaphor for her character aimlessly moving through life in a job she doesn't enjoy when her real passion is singing, but I didn't feel any real soul searching here. It's unfortunate because being transported to Uzbekistan, the culture clash, the window into the artificiality of tourism, and the main character's personal crisis were all of interest to me, and I feel the film could have been so much better. It had its moments though.

Yes, there's no denying it, the Japanese are the modern masters of schmaltz, and this film is a perfect example. Yoko is a 'reporter' for a low-rent Japanese travel show whose talent consists of reeling off inane comments to camera in a squeaky, excitable voice, often after having been subjected to low-grade torture by her uninspired director. The film's ostensible narrative thrust concerns Yoko's artistic awakening as she finally manages to connect with her true emotions. Yes, it's that bad, and the final payoff is supremely unconvincing. The film's one redeeming quality comes from a couple of subtexts concerning Japanese xenophobia and the gross inanity of the pop-culture ethos. Yoko blithely wanders into a restricted area and is so scared of the locals that she runs from the police when they approach her to check what she had been filming. The director is obsessed with filming a rare fish, but merrily waltzes right past the glories of Samarkand's Registan Square. But these aren't enough to redeem the film as a whole.

Through the heroine Yoko's traveling, movie shows how self-centered and empty the way humans relate to a strange world. The protagonist Yoko's job is a reporter, and this job forces her to show exaggerated and ridiculous acting in front of camera. The relationship with all humans on the film location is awkward and strange, whether it is a co-worker or a filming subject. The human beauty that audience expects exists only in the video edited for broadcast. This is not only a reporter job problem, This is how new human beings are related to the world these days, and the movie sarcastically twisting it. Everything is only beautiful to be seen on the broadcast, SNS. However, the reality is inhuman emptiness that leaves only footprints. There is no human relationship, no conversation, no effort for mutual understanding. The protagonist travels all over the place, but refuses to relate to humans everywhere. Only in a place there are no human beings, She can rest in peace. and there she drowned in her own imagination and her own happiness. We don't know even if a boyfriend is a real person because he is only heard over the phone. All the relationships surrounding her is a world of lies, disguise, pretense, and void. In the last scene, her song resonates on the hill without any audience. The way new humans relate to the world is as empty and sad as a song sung in a field without an audience.

After a slow start, film builds to a SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) like ending. Principal actress Atsuko Maeda plays a strong women with conviction (Maeda is also a former J-pop singer and can really sing!). Some comedy and lots of suspense (mostly imaged) when Atsuko's character takes a self-guided tour by herself of some scary parts of a foreign city. This includes a run in with the local police (apparently using real police officers). Unfortunately, sound mix of Maeda and full orchestra is not great - orchestra drowns out the singer! Direction and acting (including locals) is fine. Production value is high. Subtitles are good enough. Viewed at JICC J-Film event. WILLIAM FLANIGAN