Japanese Story

[Roberta]

Well, I watched this film at the weekend and have now become obsessed! I searched desperately for reviews to confirm what I thought the plot was and how it was resolved, but there were none which hinted at the final denouement except Avril's. I honestly think most reviewers missed it completely.

Or am I wrong?

Avril- if you are listening- put me out of misery!

Cheers

[Aaron West]

I've seen it (5/10), was impressed by the cinematography and Collette's performance, but thought it was a little too melodramatic at the end, when it wasn't necessary.

I'm a little confused about your post. There didn't seem to be anything below a superficial level, so please do share your plot theories.

Aaron

[Avril]

Hi Roberta,

Not sure what you're asking!

[PigsnieLite]

Whuts the Ending!? PLite shrieks. The Japanese guy is killt by Godzilla & Colette cremates his body on top of Ayers Rock & she lives there forever believing shes Mary Magdalene ?

[Roberta]

The note from Hiromitsu at the end is a suicide note? This was his mission in Australia. He alludes to his business problems at one point. He is being a good husband and father by staging an honourable suicide. He can swim. Another reviewer misses his earlier swim in the bay. He was in fact a remarkably good swimmer. What was going on with these mobile calls? The suicide theory explains why he wanted to go further out in the desert and his reticence about being rescued. Did he give up on the idea of being bogged because it was too painful to die that way or because he had compassion on Sandy? Ah lots of other questions. Does Avril agree?

[Aaron West]

I would begin to contemplate such a theory if the incident itself wasn't filmed as such an accident. Spontanaety is what drove him to jump in the lake, and he had no foreknowledge of what lie beneath the water. Besides, who kills themselves by jumping into a lake? If he really wanted to die, he would not have worked from dawn in order to free their vehicle, compassion or not. If he planned to die, he would not have participated in a love affair with someone, knowing full well that his death would be traumatic for them. That's not compassion.

I think it's easy to create a theory about any film, but this one doesn't seem too likely. If anything, they showed Hiromitsu as having an insatiable lust for life, which resulted in possibly his greatest living moment before his final departure. The overall point I drew from the film had more to do with how others deal with death.

[Avril]

Originally Posted by Roberta

The note from Hiromitsu at the end is a suicide note? This was his mission in Australia. He alludes to his business problems at one point. He is being a good husband and father by staging an honourable suicide. He can swim. Another reviewer misses his earlier swim in the bay. He was in fact a remarkably good swimmer. What was going on with these mobile calls? The suicide theory explains why he wanted to go further out in the desert and his reticence about being rescued. Did he give up on the idea of being bogged because it was too painful to die that way or because he had compassion on Sandy? Ah lots of other questions. Does Avril agree?

SPOILERS!!!

I disagree that Hiromitsu committed suicide or intended to. The whole feel of the film is against this, even though it changes tone half way through.

Hiro is a man very much bound by what others think of him. He even does his hair in the desert, before taking his own picture! His phone calls are to Japanese colleagues where he is trying to keep a link to something familiar in a strange environment, but he usually does what's expected of him, even when he hates it (eg the karaoke).

He's searching for something which will allow him to let go of his fears. He's also trying to get away from the intensity of life in Japan's overcrowded cities, and all the demands and responsibilities that he feels he's not able to meet. The desert has a purity and is clean, empty space. All the things he wants to help him find joy and peace and an identity as a man. However, he doesn't see the hidden dangers in the stark beauty of the desert: the treacherously soft sand and the murky waters of a billabong where submerged trees and rocks are hidden below the surface. Even a good swimmer needs to be careful in an Australian billabong!

It's an ironic tragedy that at the very moment Hiro allows himself to dive in spontaneously, to let go his fear, he should have been cautious.

His note at the end was pre-written because he knew he was leaving soon to return to his wife. He was grateful to Sandy for the intimacy in which she had showed him herself and also enabled him to see things about himself.

And as Aaron said above, it's about people's attitudes to death. It's also about their fear of living and fear of loss, getting through that fear and going on past loss.

Incidentally, the distributors made all media sign an agreement not to divulge the plot twist in this movie, hence my SPOILER warning above. It might also explain why reviewers have not been very clear about what happens in this very subtle and layered film.

[Roberta]

Well, if I had been 100% certain, I would never have bothered writing in here. I guess if 99 out of 100 don't see it then it doesn't exist. But wait- one other reviewer did have a suicide theory too- so perhaps that makes 2 out of a 100! That's a significant mass...

The other reviewer explained the suicide as Hiromitsu diving in when he couldn't swim, however he had been shown swimming extremely well in a rather gratuitous early scene.

OK, so please explain the mobile phone when Sandy and Hiromitsu get stuck. On the dirt road Hiromitsu is talking on his mobile phone to a colleague. Or is he? Later, after they get stuck, when Sandy asks Hiromitsu to provide his mobile in order to make an emergency call, he is extremely reluctant. Sandy puts it down to Hiromitsu's reluctance to look stupid by getting stuck in the desert, and she carefully explains that this is a serious situation and they might die. After some time, Hiromitsu finally gives Sandy the phone. She cannot get a signal, even standing on top of the Landcruiser! What was going on? This demands an explanation. Was Hiromitsu faking the call earlier? Possibly, the explanation being that he needed to feel important, very stereotypical of Japanese to some minds... but unlikely. Or perhaps he was checking to see that they were now out of mobile range and had been trying to make Sandy feel reassured that they were still within range! When Sandy tells Hiromitsu there is actually no signal, he looks at the phone incredibly disingenuously and says its broken, with an air of feigned surprise. Has he actually tampered with it, to make sure it won't work or were they already out of range? As Sandy tries to dig the Landcruiser out of the bog, he is completely useless and seems to be the most incapable Japanese tourist you have ever come across.

Just after Hiromitsu had been "on the phone", as Sandy and Hiromitsu were driving along the dirt track, Hiromitsu actually asked Sandy to slow down, when it was very evident that Sandy was trying desperately to keep the Landcruiser from bogging. Naivety or calculation?

After camping all night, the temperature has plunged very low and Hiromitsu and Sandy are back-to-back at dawn, their fires having burned out. Sandy is asleep, but as the camera pans over Hiromitsu's face, it is clear he is awake with a stark intensity on his face. He has no doubt not slept all night. Perhaps he just can't sleep because of the cold, but he is not depicted with chattering teeth or any of the usual symbols of being chilled to the bone. Perhaps he is wrestling with demons of some kind.

He seems to have come to a decision. Suddenly, the next scene is of Hiromitsu, like a scene from Bridge over the River Kwai, except he is the prisoner. The shirt is off. He has dug out 12 ft tracks behind the Landcruiser, and laid in lots of brush. It looks totally professional. In addition, he has done all this before Sandy even is awake! She is pleased when she awakes. They then make their escape.

Several unexplained issues there? What was his decision?

At the Billabong, Hiromitsu is shown with black swimming trunks on and loose shirt on top. Sandy is still in trousers and bra, just like she was in the earlier swimming scene, when Hiromitsu was swimming and she stayed on the beach reading. The explanation could be that they are both in the process of stripping- or it could be that Hiromitsu had already been in the water. Remember he was an excellent swimmer. He would have been aware of dangers such as those posed by shallow pools. If he had already been in the water, he probably knew exactly where the shallow rocks were. A good swimmer would not dive 8 or 10 ft. into a black pool like that!

It does all fit with a suicide theory.

He mentions his business problems at one point.

The note at the end did read like it could have been a departing note to a lover. But Hiromitsu would have been very careful. He would have phoned home to make sure that people didn't think anything was wrong. He would have taken photos of himself just like normal. He wouldn't leave a note incriminating himself. But what did he write? Something about "by the time you read this I will be on the plane home" (just as his coffin has gone on to the plane!) and something about him now being able to be "a better husband to his wife and father to his children"... That fits with a suicide, the purpose of which was to enable his wife and family to benefit from his death. An honourable suicide, one of the greatest stereotypes of the Japanese of all... and completely beyond suspicion.

How about the sex? Does Hiromitsu look like he is enjoying it? He has no involvement in it whatsoever. He looks petrified, is the only word. That also needs a little explanation.

The final scene is masterly, for many reasons. Just one- as the plane taxis along the runway, picking up speed, we never see it take off. This is perhaps a parable for the Director's refusal to reveal exactly what is going on in this film!

Remember that the Writer started off with the premise that the opening image of the movie was to be of a Japanese man driving through the outback. The mystery of the movie was to be why he was there...

The film is like one of those 80's Why? riddles.

You know;

"A man is in a restaurant, and he sees that seagull is on the menu. One man orders it. After it arrives, he has one mouthful, then he looks stricken and runs out of the restaurant and runs in front of a truck to certain death."

Why?

You have twenty questions to ask, and I can only answer yes or no. If you can decipher the truth in 20 questions you've won, if not I've won...

But I don't want to spoil that riddle for you...

[Avril]

(That's all right, I know that one. He had been stranded/castaway on an island, had been told he was eating seagull but discovered in the restaurant because of the different taste that the flesh he had eaten must have been human, making him an inadvertent cannibal. Enough reason to commit suicide under a speeding truck. Do you know the one about the woman who goes to a house and asks for a book and when the guy at the door comes back with it after leaving her in his hallway in the meantime, she shoots him? Why, who was he and what was the book...? Heheh.)

I thought the phone thing a bit weird but put it down to different networks - satellite vs analog or digital or something like that. He had been speaking to Japan - but I don't know enough about mobile phone technology to say for sure what might have been going on there. I do know that local relay stations for mobile phone networks in Oz are a nightmare - affected by huge areas of sandstone quartz, haematite and, where there are eucalypts, volatile gum resin, among other things.

The sex business where he looked scared - no problem, often the best sex is when we are on the edge of being petrified.

Telling Sandy to slow down in the sand - it was about fear and control, not about trying to get bogged. The brush under the wheel business - he had been studying the Outback Survival Guide the night before. He could have read about it there but not read about billabongs and snags under the water. (Another section away from desert survival, perhaps?) He was in too good spirits at that point to be careful, and much too good to be planning suicide. His energy wasn't right for it. And anyway, if he had been planning suicide, he could far more easily have just driven his car down a track earlier, when he was on his own, without enough water or petrol to survive. It happens to tourists in the Outback all the time. And, come to think of it, there is an astounding number of Aussies who suffer from serious spinal injuries after diving into billabongs, waterholes, creeks and quarries full of water.

I still don't see enough evidence to support a suicide theory, but it is an interesting exercise!

[Roberta]

C'mon, you can't just ignore the extremely strange business with the mobile, unless you accept that random things happen with films. Although you can ignore my paragraph about sex- a mistake. Yeah, y're right- petrification comes with the territory.

What about Hiro's rather mystifying attitude to the desert and getting bogged down, not worried in the slightest, let alone his mysterious mobile calls- at least one of which he made up - and the fact that he seemed totally disinterested in the geological software he was supposed to be viewing or the mines he was visiting. C'mon- why was he there? Why was he in Australia?

Is it all just a matter of inexperienced and confusing writing/direction or am I just obtuse? Perhaps Hiromitsu was contemplating suicide in Australia but having been landed with Sandy, so to speak, and then experiencing a new kind of freedom with her and the outback, he then changed his mind and decided to live life to the full. However, rather ironically, he then died anyway through the diving accident in the Billabong.

We may never know without asking the writer. Do you happen to have her email?

By the way, I need to know the answer to the riddle of the man and the book. Question 1 of 20. Did they know each other before?

Bye, and thanks for replying,

Roberta