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Bright Future

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Many viewers look at Bright Future and throw up their hands in
confusion, even those who admire Kurosawa's style. I've thought a lot
about this movie and I don't think its intentions are that obscure,
though I confess it can be inaccessible. It's just that Kurosawa's
approach is VERY contrary to how Westerners understand film.

Bright Future examines the disillusionment of Japanese youth towards
their parents' generation, and, in turn, their parents' feelings of
failure towards their children. Throughout, a poisonous red jellyfish
symbolizes disaffected youth, drifting along silently, not threatening
unless you cross their path.

Namura and Arita are two 20-somethings working at an industrial
laundry. Namura is apathy itself. He cherishes his dreams of a "bright
future," but in his daily life, he barely registers much more than a
blank stare. He's such a loser he even sucks at his few hobbies; the
one time he goes out to an arcade with his upwardly-mobile sister and
her yuppie boyfriend, the boyfriend casually kicks Namura's ass at
games Namura plays constantly. On his lone trips to a nearby bowling
alley, Namura rolls mostly gutters.

Arita, Namura's only friend, is more mysterious, with a placid surface
underneath which lurks hints of menace. Arita's sole hobby is the care
of his pet jellyfish, which he is trying to acclimate to fresh water.

Arita gives the clueless Namura hand signals (thumb inward means
"wait," finger pointing means "go ahead") so he'll avoid doing anything
"crazy." Namura isn't sure what to make of this, but we get hints Arita
is more in tune with prevailing moods. "There's a storm coming," he
says ominously.

The boys' boss at the laundry lamely attempts to court their
friendship, borrowing a CD from Namura and popping up uninvited at
Arita's apartment. There he goes into a pathetic speech about "When I
was your age...", but loses his train of thought and gets caught up
watching cable. Namura and Arita view this middle-aged boy-man with
barely concealed contempt; you can tell they're thinking, "God, is this
what I have to look forward to when I'm 55?" When the boss sticks his
fingers in the jellyfish tank, Arita stops Namura from warning him
about the poison.

The boss, when he learns what could have happened, confronts Arita, who
quits his job the next day. The boss remains friendly to Namura,
throwing the socially inept young man into further confusion. That
night, Namura angrily goes to the boss's house to get his CD, only to
find Arita has been there earlier and murdered the man and his wife.

Arita is arrested but makes no particular attempt at a defense. In
jail, he cordially (but not warmly) greets his estranged father, and
only wants to talk about his jellyfish to Namura, in whom he has
entrusted its care. But when Namura, in a rare emotional outburst,
declares he will "wait 20 years" for Arita's release, Arita coldly
snubs him. Now even more bereft and confused, Namura angrily smashes
the jellyfish tank, inadvertently releasing it into the city canals.

Not long after, Arita hangs himself in his cell, his hand wired into
the "go ahead" signal. Namura regrets his rashness, and is overjoyed to
find the jellyfish still alive. He also strikes up a bond with Arita's
father, who makes a meager living salvaging discarded appliances (a
metaphor for pointlessly hanging onto the past). The father, who hadn't
seen Arita for 5 years before the murders, and who is held in such
disdain by his one other son that the boy has taken his mother's last
name, sees in Namura the chance for a real father-son relationship.

I've concluded that we're supposed to see Arita and Namura as two
different incarnations of the same person. This interpretation would be
consistent with Kurosawa's follow-up, Doppelgänger, whose hero
confronts an arrogant and violent duplicate of himself. Bright Future's
script hints that Kurosawa may have intended this:

At one point Namura says he thinks Arita killed the boss "before I
could do it"; indeed, right before Namura goes to the house, we see him
grab a metal pipe off the street and swing it in wild unfocused rage.
In another scene, we see Arita's ghost(?) watching his father and
Namura. Also, the way Arita's father cherishes his bond with Namura; a
reconciliation after an argument they have plays like the father is
really forgiving Arita and his other son for abandoning him (especially
the father's line "I forgive all of you for everything"). Finally,
Arita's rejection of Namura when Namura declares he'll wait for him in
prison; if Arita is really Namura's "evil doppelgänger," then the
rejection makes good thematic sense. It's Arita's way of saying, "You
idiot, don't you know that as long as you hang onto me, you'll always
be a loser?"

So is Arita the violent, acting-out side of Namura's personality made
flesh, who, once he commits the crime Namura fantasizes about, feels
it's time to give Namura the "go ahead" signal and bow out? An
intriguing possibility, and one certainly in keeping with Kurosawa's
magical realist approach.

The final scenes, in which Namura - saying "I got my go-ahead signal
long ago" - finally decides to stop drifting aimlessly (like the
jellyfish in the tank) and set himself towards the "bright future" he
used to dream of (like the loose jellyfish, now "escaping" from Tokyo
and drifting toward the sea), brings the movie's theme full circle. The
climactic shot of hordes of glowing jellyfish floating down a canal is
a truly stunning image. (And one thematically underscored by its
juxtaposition with the very last shot, of a gang of kids Namura briefly
falls in with, drifting aimlessly down the sidewalk to nowhere in
particular.) The title turns out to be not ironic at all. The young can
have a bright future, but sometimes, you have to know when to wait, and
when to go ahead.

Working at a large laundry cleaning service, Nimura Yuji spends most of his days sorting through clothing and transferring loads of clothing from washers to dryers. While this is not the most mentally stimulating or satisfying work, Nimura is at least accompanied by his best friend Arita Mamoru during his days of drudgery. While his life might be quite dull Nimura is able to escape his humdrum world by entering the realm of dreams where the future is bright. However, in the waking world Nimura seems to be a bit at a loss. He gets into fight over the smallest things such as the pieces of fried chicken in his lunch box were a bit small and it seems that without the guidance of Mamoru Yuji would not be able to survive.

Content hanging out at Mamoru's apartment, where he likes to feed Mamoru's pet jellyfish, and listening to music, Nimura's isolated world is invaded when his boss, Mr. Fujiwara, begins to wedge his way into his life. It begins small. Mr. Fujiwara asks the two young men to help him move his daughter's new desk upstairs and asks them to stay afterwards for dinner, but soon he is asking the two young to become fulltime employees and offers them large bonuses. Not sure if they want to accept the bonuses and the fulltime employment, Mamoru and Nimura try to avoid Mr. Fujiwara, but the older man invites himself over to Mamoru's home where he makes himself at home by plopping in front of the TV. Nimura is quite upset at the intrusion, but it is Mamoru who upsets the boss by not warning him when he sticks his hand in the poisonous jellyfish's tank. When accused by his boss, Mamoru quits his job. Left alone at work, Nimura's hatred towards his boss grows until one night, gripping a steel pipe; he is determined to kill his boss. However, when he arrives at his boss's house he finds the bloody corpses of his boss and his boss's wife in their bedroom. Mamoru is soon arrested and put in prison. Although Nimura visits his friend in prison, he is soon left alone and the divide between his reality and his world of dreams soon begins to erode.

Bright Future is the first film that I have watched by Kurosawa Kiyoshi. A quiet work, filled with light, whimsical music, Bright Future is a visual delight, especially when the red jellyfish are on screen. Odagiri Jo, Nimura, and Asano Tadanobu, Mamoru, both do excellent jobs of acting and one can truly feel how much Odagiri's character depends on Asano's. However, my favorite bit of acting within the film was performed by Fuji Tatsuya, the actor who starred in Oshima Nagisa's Realm of the Senses. There is one scene that is truly heartbreaking when Fuji's character is searching for Nimura's. A good film overall, but one I believe needs repeated viewing in order to figure out its multifaceted nuances.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is becoming one of my favorite current filmmakers, and the further he gets from by-the-book J-horror (preferring to reach further into less categorizable reaches of his own cinematic imagination), the better I think he is.

Deeper meanings mingle with absurdist humor, and the kind of chance occurrences that enliven the fiction of Paul Auster and Haruki Murakami also figure heavily in Kurosawa's films; cinematically, everything from Lynch or Fellini to "Dirty Harry" can be a touchstone for further exploration.

BRIGHT FUTURE is like an improved CHARISMA - more refined, less loony, and considerably more poetic, but Kiyoshi Kurosawa's many thematic concerns - trashing of the environment, a sense of depersonalization (and discreet nihilism) in younger/future generations, the erosion of a society's cohesiveness (especially when that erosion originates within, and not from some external source) - are handled very well - the last shot offers his darkest and most ironic humor, with the cross-generational understanding becoming something quietly heroic evoking certain past masters of Japanese film. A sense that - if younger generations have drifted towards a nihilism that could destroy them or you, it is balanced by an equally withering take on the older generations that somehow let them down; this film in many ways visualizes the idea of getting over it, and moving on with life (after presenting some of the consequences for not doing so).

Tadanobu Asano's presence here is somewhat hyped (definitely on the DVD cover), undoubtedly due to his ascendant global stardom, but his performance here is eclipsed by co-stars Joe Odagiri and Tatsuya Fuji, who both deliver dynamic performances of great range and control.

Mysterious, poetic, beautifully shot (on DV), open to many interpretations, and one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's finest.

-David Alston

Kurosawa shows the inner struggle of young men and a conflict between the young and the old. This film reflects the modern Japanese society's revealed but not dealt problems. Symbolization and metaphors are poetic, cruel, and straightforward. It is worth watching to learn about the postmodern generation.

"Bright Future" is creepy, cryptic, post-modern, eerie, intense, spooky, ambiguous, slow-paced, intense and INCREDIBLE. It portrays the sort of quiet desperation that can start to sneak into our everyday lives. It's the sort of movie that stays with you, borderline haunting and I mean that in the best way possible. And besides, it has a really cool jellyfish. :)

"Bright Future" fascinated the Japanese. It was named Best Film and its director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, (who is not related to the classic director Akira Kurosawa), won Best Director from the Japanese Professional Movie Awards (JPMA). The film was nominated for the Golden Palm @ Cannes in 2003. Tadanobu Asano who was interesting in Last Life in the Universe plays Mamoru Arita. His buddy is Yuji Nimura, played by Jo Odagiri who tied with Tatsuya Fuji for the Best Actor Award from the JPMA. Mamoru' father is played by Tatsuya Fuji.

"Bright Future" is a mystical film. I use that term in the sense that something other than logic is driving events. The film has a contingent plot structure with Mamoru's murder of his former boss seemingly coming abruptly and without explanation. The visual effects with the iridescent jellyfish are visually stunning. Perhaps Mamoru identifies with the jellyfish because they are beautiful & lethal. The ending sequence raised questions for me.

This film is well-paced, visually stunning, with strong performances and relationships between the main characters. Enjoy!

Bright Future, another recent dark film from the great Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, focuses on working class folks whose future is anything but bright. The irony of the title is pounded home in scene after scene. Yuji and Mamoru, friends in their 20s who work at the same boring job in the same dull warehouse, are both frustrated with their lives. But there is a big difference.

While Mamoru looks around carefully and gives Yuji knowing glances, and tells Yuji when to Wait and when to Go Ahead (capital letters used on purpose), Yuji is content to live in his dreams in which, he says in a voiceover, he sees himself as having a bright future. Mamoru has a pet poisonous jellyfish, which he bequeaths to Yuji when something terrible happens and Mamoru lands in prison.

Their boss, a man of 55, is just as frustrated with his boring existence as his two workers, and Mamoru's father is, as well, a man who labors at a thankless job that keeps him confined to a small space; he fixes broken appliances in a salvage shop.

When the jellyfish escapes from Yuji, he panics, then relaxes when he realizes that it is, in essence, following him wherever he goes. Kurosawa always fuses fantasy with reality in his films and this one is no exception. Although an obvious symbol for escape from a humdrum existence, the jellyfish turns out to be something more than that as well. This is brought home later in the film when we see a flotilla of the things moving out to sea in the Tokyo canal...

KK, as I like to call him--to distinguish him from Akira Kurosawa--makes films like no one else today. It's easy and at the same time intriguing to read into his films more than what we see and chances are that the added meanings we find are right. I think we know this because his films resonate long after leaving the theater; the layers of meaning we find in them continue to make themselves apparent without much effort at all.

Bright Future is a film about significantly more than people who spend their time, their lives in futile activity. It's about whether or not we think about how to live our lives, about whether we value the time that we have, or how we value it, if we do at all. It's about how we try to move beyond what we have and how that usually fails. It's a sad film but one that upon reflection makes us think that maybe there is, after all, a chance for a bright future. Or maybe not.

Bright Future (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2002)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa gets away from the niche he's carved out in the atmospheric-horror genre for this odd little comedy/drama that features a seriously loaded cast and a truly absurd premise. Fans of Kurosawa should be warned that there aren't any ghosts, serial killers, or creepy crawling children to be found here, though you do get some poisonous jellyfish and a bit of senseless (and completely offscreen) violence. Also, those who come to this because of critics' likening it to the films of David Lynch might be best warned that this is not the best entrance point into the world of Kurosawa, despite its Palme d'Or nomination; the (justly) internationally-renowned Cure is a great place to start. Come back to this one, but make sure you do.

Nimura (Azumi's Jo Odagiri) and Arita (The Last Life in the Universe's Tadanobu Asano) are brothers who spend their time slacking off in arcades when not working at a towel factory. Their boss, Fujiwara (The Hidden Blade's Takashi Sasano) is a well-meaning guy, if a bit obnoxious. He certainly doesn't deserve to have his entire family slaughtered, but Arita does so, for no reason that anyone can discern, and goes to prison for life. He passes the care of the only thing in the world that matters to him-- a poisonous jellyfish he's trying to adapt to life in fresh water-- to Nimura. Their father Shinichiro (Tatuya Fuji, recently seen in The Man in White), shaken by Arita's act, attempts to heal the rift that's developed between Nimura and him.

Kurosawa is a fine director; if any of the new crop of young Japanese autuers deserves to carry the Kurosawa name, it's Kiyoshi (though he is no relation to the more famous filmmaker to bear that surname). His movies are sparse, understated affairs where far more goes on between the lines than in them, and Bright Future is no exception to this. Expect a slow, deliberate drama, and there's a lot to be gotten out of this; Kurosawa gets top performances out of his actors every time, and he retains cinematographer Takahide Shimanushi (Séance) , who's done fine work for him previously. The Lynch comparison comes in not only in the absurdity of the basic premise, but in the way Kurosawa and Shimanushi shot this film; Kurosawa knows chiaroscuro, and exploits it, much as Lynch (or, more recently, David Fincher) does. More stuff happens in David Lynch pictures, though. Here, you're just supposed to watch it, then spend a lot of time thinking about it. The payoff is great, though "understated" is perhaps not strong enough a word. A lovely little film. *** ½

Best known for films like 'Cure' and 'Pulse' that chill the spine more than warm the heart, Kurosawa is the dark prince of the Japanese new wave.After the series of horror quick videos,he emerged onto the film scene with the psycho-thriller, Cure(1997),then made this film before the state-of-the- nation masterpiece, 'Tokyo Sonata'.Dilapidated buildings,cold barren landscapes,the disaffected,drifting young with no future,shot on digital video by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.The use of luminous symbolism,the acclimatising of a pet red glowing jellyfish to fresh water.This is a movie about a charismatic killer,Mamoru, who through his friend sends a swarm of home-bred mutant beasts into the world to continue doing his murderous bidding after he sheds his mortal coil.Characters that are bored to death,who have nohope. They have inherited miserable lives.Mamoru(Asano Tadanobu) having been imprisoned for killing his complacent boss's family and his boss, advances Yuji(Joe Odagiri) towards his destiny.Yuji's acclimatization of the jellyfish to freshwater is symbolic of Yuji's adjustment to the world and coming to grips with it,finalized by the accidental release of the jellyfish into the city system of sewers and waterways.They metaphorically force their environment to accept their demands instead of the other way around.Some beautiful imagery here.

Sometimes the narrative surface, aided by long takes and a static camera,is submerged by the subtext,where interesting ideas and effective moments do not quite gel into a fully satisfying whole.The representation of the generation gaps as well as the dreary disillusionment captured by the cinematography are excellent.Kurosawa - no relation to Akira - is one of the best directors out there at withholding information in a dramatically interesting way; he sucks almost all traditional personality from his characters, leaving only the most poignant and potent core ideas.The focus of the story becomes Yuji's emergence from his bubble of aimless disaffection into finding purpose and direction through learned responsibility. The failed father(Tatsua Fuji) and the not much more successful surrogate son devote all their energy to raising a colony of little creatures, which they have the hardest time letting go of,refusing to acknowledge that the critters are old enough to take care of themselves,but discovering a sense of gratification when the young do finally swim out to sea.The film's ending with an army of neon-head-phoned thrillseekers marching along to a popular song walking out onto the road with an army of followers was ambiguous but superb,leaving you to draw your own conclusions about the `Bright Future'.

This film ends with one of the most ironic shots I have ever seen. I won't spoil it here, only I'll say that those who are optimistic about our future should check out this film. The film deals with two men who attempt to create a freshwater jellyfish. Do they do it for any specific scientific purpose? No, just to keep busy. In that respect this film has a close cousin in "Primer," as that film dealt with another group of men who were pretty much cogs in The Man's machine. Both films show these men striving for greatness and in the end being truly great at messing up the world. In this film the title implies that we all want a bright future. Nobody wants to be stuck at dead end jobs until the end of time, least of all these characters. And while living in a capitalistic society may well encourage that kind of behavior this film has reservations about it. To do so makes it so that you have to dump on other people's lives too and proclaim them insignificant. Also, and more importantly, just because you are doing something doesn't mean the world is better off because of it. In today's world we can have people who do nothing more that cook books and shuffle papers but they are declared important because they have a "real job" and thus can show their face at the family reunions. Meanwhile, their work is cheating Americans out of their pensions. On the other hand food service workers do nothing but make people lunch. They (in general) aren't out to destroy anybody, and even if they were they wouldn't have the means of going about it. However, they cannot show their face around their family because they are not successful enough. So for attacking our mind set in this country and in Japan (where this film is from) I applaud them. On the downside this film bought into the idea that the slower a film moves the more profound it is. As with so many of today's Asian films nothing really happens. I understand they like mood over narrative, I just don't understand why they like boredom over narrative. Also, I don't think that the film dug as deep as it possibly could have. Why not use the murder in the beginning in a more purposeful way? Why are the hooligans necessary? It is because of those reasons that I will not recommend this film, although I was very close. The cinematography was also very beautiful. The film has a feel all its own, and the jellyfish is a wonder to behold. ***