Review: I WISH (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda) 2011
well, “review” might be stretching it a little bit, but here be some quick thoughts on the latest work from Still Walking filmmaker and Mikio Naruse disciple, Hirokazu Kore-eda.
ostensibly a feature-length ad for the new JR Shinkansen (bullet train) line, I WISH is proof that Hirokazu Kore-eda working on commission is still better than most anyone else doing anything. something of an unlikely cross between NOBODY KNOWS and AIR DOLL (the latter of which is a fantastical fable in desperate need of Criterion’s attention), I WISH is the story of two young brothers who have each choose one of their parents to live with in the wake of their recent divorce. the older brother is a round little thing with a steely face and a vivid imagination, introduced on his Kagoshima balcony as he stares at the erupting volcano in the distance, a volcano he hopes will bury the city in lava so that he and his family will be forced to reunite and live together somewhere else. he leaves with his young but exasperated mother (read: any female lead in a Kore-eda film) who struggles to put a happy face on her fractured family.
every so often the older boy phones his indefatigably chipper younger brother who lives a few hundred miles to the south with Joe Odagiri, who plays the boys’ wannabe rock-star father (“indie means you have to work harder.”). the new Shinkansen line is due to open soon, and the boys buy into some silly proto-folklore that any wish might be granted if made at the exact time / place that two bullet trains are passing one another. adventure!
Kore-eda’s sensibilities are ideal for this sort of thing, his gentle sense of humor and nearly pathological wistfulness making for a yarn that is sweet but never saccharine, packing a wallop because of how intimately it understands the emotional world of children. the logic behind the boys’ quest is never questioned, and slight flecks of fanaticism ennoble the film’s commitment to optimism as a worthwhile pursuit. with a jangly score and casual but well-considered compositions that nudge this into a slightly less arch territory than his previous films, I WISH is a graceful study of family and distance… it made me think of what Makoto Shinkai might do with live-action, but it’s told with a rare sense of awed appreciation for how we actively allow the most important things in life to slip away from us. every bit as warm and jovial as a Kaurismaki film, and capped off with an extended sequence that’s as brilliantly understated as anything Kore-eda has ever made, I WISH is more than an ad for a monopolistic railway, it’s further testament to the fact that he is one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers, and someone whose work must be more consistently available to global audiences.
