Permanent House Arrest With No Conviction
MOVIE REVIEW
Now, I... (2009)
chiyuw
In Japan, these young men are called hikikomori. They barricade themselves in their rooms, forbidding other family members from entering, leaving only late at night to use the bathroom or raid food from the fridge. Perhaps they’ll go outside, but only at a time when they’ll run into as few people as possible. The word means “acute social withdrawal” and is a trend that seems to be on the recent increase across Asian Pacific. It seems to affect mostly young men who are disinterested in the pressure cooker of the educational system, but too intelligent to be happy working the unskilled jobs left over for the dropouts. In Britain, such young people are called NEETs (not in education, employment or training), but this doesn’t imply being a shut-in as well. Yasutomo Chikuma certainly has tapped the zeitgeist by choosing this as the topic for his first film, "Now, I..."
It’s an appalling title, but what’s so appealing about the movie is that it builds a whole world for its cast of three, Satoru (Mr. Chikuma, who also wrote and produced), his mother (Masato Shiga) and her friend, Mr. Fujisawa (Yoshiharu Fujisawa), who coaxes Satoru into a janitorial job to repay a favor to his mother. There’s enough depth in their relationships that the film does not seem closed in, and enough settings – a baseball field, a convenience store and several scenes in Mr. Fujisawa’s car, as well as the apartment – to prevent the film from feeling claustrophobic.
What Mr. Chikuma does not surmount is how unpleasant a person Satoru is. At 20, he sulks and whines like a five-year-old being dragged empty-handed from a toy store. Satoru always keeps his head down, never makes eye contact, and has to be prompted into the most basic human interactions, such as greetings. Additionally, some of Chikuma’s directorial choices – most notably, a crucial scene towards the end staged with Satoru face down on the ground, preventing us from seeing his face – sabotage his intentions. The whole film was obviously shot with one hand-held camera, but there’s little inventiveness in the camera angles; mostly we skulk behind Satoru like a lollygagging tag-along. There’s hardly a shot where we see his whole face; instead we see the top of his head, the back of his head or the side of his face. It means we can’t tell what he’s really thinking.
If we’re meant to understand Satoru’s misery and isolation, then we need to be able to relate to him, or at least understand him. It would be difficult to pull off, even if Mr. Chikuma was a good actor. As it stands it’s almost impossible to have any sympathy for him, and we never learn enough to care whether his unhappiness is self-inflicted or in response to something larger. Your feelings were entirely with his mother, who leaves for work every morning leaving a carefully shrink-wrapped meal for Satoru on the small kitchen table. You want to reach into the screen and beat some sense into the ungrateful bastard. So it’s Mr. Fujisawa’s gentle and careful attempts to get through to him, not the final plot twist, which give the film its heart.
"Now, I..." stands up to the mumblecore films coming out of America such as "Nights and Weekends" and "Dance Party, USA" – low-key films shot with small casts, smaller budgets, and an ear for the nuances of up-to-the-minute social interaction. Behind the camera, Mr. Chikuma certainly has a future and will hopefully soon have the chance to demonstrate what he could do with a bigger budget. Hopefully he’ll pick a nicer character to revolve his next story around.
This film is showing as part of the Reality Fiction: Japanese Films Inspired by Actual Events season currently at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH, and shortly to tour Britain.
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