To the Ends of the Earth (2019)

 

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Screenplay: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Cast: Atsuko Maeda as Yoko, Shota Sometani as Yoshioka, Tokio Emoto as Sasaki, Adiz Rajabov as Temur, Ryo Kase as Iwao

Canon Fodder

I am going to make a wild prediction that this film will be held as an obscure tangent from the director who broke through, after an already long career, with Cure (1997) and carried on by hard work (and prolificness) gained a reputation for cineastes. I hope it is not buried under the celluloid carpet, but it was unexpected to have a very conventional "stranger in a foreign land" narrative from him with abrupt musical moments where the lead Atsuko Maeda bursts into song. If anything, I have softened my initial reaction to the film. It shows, thankfully, Kurosawa has a light side, which considering his career has tackled a lot of bleak content, might suggest other life to his creative ideas. It is also not surprising as, from pink cinema to horror, he belongs to a wave of directors from Japan, given auteur status or just admired, who came from an industry of having to continually working; this work ethic means Kiyoshi decided to take any opportunity here, an Uzbekistan-Japan co-production, commemorates 25 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries and the 70th anniversary of the Navoi Theater in the capital Tashkent¹, and at a least a try.

Shot in Uzbekistan, this is a country which is not greatly seen in cinema at all; in mind to its history under the Soviet Union, they do have a Soviet Union-era cinema history and a post-Soviet Union cinematic history in the modern day as well that would be fascinating to see. Sadly, an inherent problem with To the Ends of the Earth, whilst I will compliment the moments this succeeds, is that it is solipsistic. Following a Japanese TV documentary crew, filming the sights of the country as eccentric backwater, with Atsuko Maeda as the put upon host Yoko, it does feel like a Japanese film entirely about its Japanese characters rather than trying to engage with its environment. It has an obvious premise which can still work - with a language barrier and being forced to work with a contrived scenario, Yoko stuck in this "cute" and very empty documentary where they are not getting any decent footage - but it really does not feel fleshed out. It is to the point that, even thought Kiyoshi Kurosawa is not a director known for a distinct visual style, even the presentation feels lacksidasical especially with the potential of the environment, a sea-less world of Uzbekistan with its hilled countryside and a different culture entirely from Japan squandered.

Virtues are found. When Kurosawa is trying to analysis his environment fully a few times, he still manages some things of note. The initial project of the production crew is shown as empty; not really engaging with the locals beyond their interest in cuisine or trying to catch a fabled fish, leaving the potential for a deeper context to be found. Some of it plays as a clash of cultures even within Uzbekistan, where a fisherman suggests the fish is being scared away by Yoko as a woman being there, but the Japanese are not engaging either, as Yoko herself finds when, in her first attempt to break from the suffocating position she is in, she encourages them to buy and release a domesticated goat back into the wilderness.

The best scene is when, as much exploited by the director of the TV documentary, she is forced to ride the same theme park attraction over and over in succession, spinning her repeatedly vertically. It is to the point even the amusement park owner, despite being an older man who demandingly thinks she is actually a child by mistake, is right to be as concerned as onlookers are about the foreigners exploiting their own. It is a scene that shows Kiyoshi Kurosawa's talent, the scene that redeems a lot of the failings of the film in one perfect sequence, as with its length deliberately dragged on, to the point I wondered who (if not a fake stand-in) was forced to ride the actual machine. In its real time you see the agony of the experience as Yoko eventually has to go throw up, only to switch back on her "cute" excited female presenter character, all to pretend for a take she has only just finished the ride once, not suffered it at least three times beforehand.

The best character as well is their translator Temur (Adiz Rajabov), a local who became obsessed with Japanese culture and tries particularly with Yoko to be the most gracious of hosts to these people to his land. In fact, part of his back-story to his fascination with Japanese culture, it potentially sets up a great finale involving the Navoi Theater, part of the reason the film was made, even if Yoko has already been there before midway through, a building which was built with the help of forced labour of Japanese prisoners of war after World War II, a landmark which could have had a greater emphasis on in terms of these countries interacting for this film. What little you get of this film trying to stretch further out to the country it occupies is engaging, including when Yoko gets given a small personal camera to film whatever she finds, leading to shaky handycam footage of market stores which is engaging. Unfortunately, the film does not do this often enough.

Instead, To the Ends of the Earth feels stiff, sadly as much due to it being pivoted on the lead character Yoko, who is not that engaging at all. A stranger in a strange land, actress Atsuko Maeda does however feel like she is in her own bubble, despite large portions of the film being her character wandering around the cityscape even at night, separate from her crew in her own existential crisis. Even her plot feels thin, including a piece of a boyfriend back in Japan who is  a fireman, a random melodramatic point he may have been killed in a huge fire seen on television not fleshed out to impact.

The two musical segments are abrupt and peculiar. They are interesting if anything, for they do break the reality of the film and feel unpredictable with a burst of creativity; like Kurosawa's abrupt jump into martial arts action cinema, for the short film Beautiful New Bay Area Project (2013), what he does here offers a tantalising sense that, yes, a man most known in the West for thrillers, horror films and dramas could actually pull off a musical in his own logic and we would all wish to see it. The first is literally within a dream, in the Navoi Theater mentioned before when an orchestra suddenly materialises and Atsuko Maeda starts to sing, but the last for the final scene of the film does place itself into the musical realist world as a sudden, swift jolt with her singing directly to the camera too but more pointedly done. Does this add anything to the film however? Not necessarily, even if Yoko's original dream to become a singer is brought up for her character, and the scenes done are executed well, they feel like fragments of plot which does not use the musical sequences fully and leave them segments in their own separate reality.

I would like to see the film again, in spite of these harsh criticisms. I have become more interested in films more as art through the people who created them, so I can see myself warm to this more in spite of all these comments I have make being very true and unfortunate. To the Ends of the Earth as a result, if you envision this a gamble like rolling dice at the craps table, is a case of the director of Pulse (2001) trying but failing on this roll. It does not mean he has not succeeded before with risks, and he is capable of further risks in his career as a veteran which will likely succeed. As in the first paragraph, I will see this film quickly become an obscurity in his career to ponder over.

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1) HERE