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19 out of 29 people found the following review useful: Here's what I think it's all about (detailed analysis with spoilers), 6 June 2005 Author: Martin Wagner from Austin, TX
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
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.
5 out of 7 people found the following review useful: excellent insight into the two generations, 14 September 2008 Author: m-oki from Japan
I think this is not an easy film to grasp. Someone may well hate or disgust it, until he grasps what Mamoru represents and what is the theme of this movie.He doesn't look human at all. He never shows real emotion nor intention. So what is he? Is he a pure evil, or a ghost as in fact came back later in the movie? One way to understand him is not to see him as a real figure, but as question, question from the director Kurosawa. The question is double question. One is to the older generation, which is; Can you accept him and his generation? Another question is to the younger generation, which is; What do you do in the absence of an idealistic and convenient advocator like Mamoru?In the case of the two, Yuji(Nimura) and Mamoru's father, things went well.They found them understandable and lovable. But, as known from the dialog of Mamoru's father, "I forgive you, I forgive you all," this is a question to all the individuals, younger or older.Can we really accept the young so dangerous and sensitive like a jelly fish? Can we love them so much as to reach for them? Or, as a young, can we understand the elder so selfish and ugly but sometime has real love for the young?What's implied in this movie is that the chances for the recovery of the relationship between two gegerations are still left and that the strragle goes on to forever.
9 out of 17 people found the following review useful: Illuminating the darkness of the lower depths..., 19 August 2006 Author: David (davidals@msn.com) from Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Kyoshi Kurosawa is becoming one of my favorite current filmmakers, and the further he gets from conventional horror and shock, 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 Don Siegel can be a touchstone for further exploration.BRIGHT FUTURE is like an improved CHARISMA - more refined, less loony, and considerably more poetic, but K Kurosawa's many 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 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 is eclipsed by co-stars Joe Odagiri and Tatsuya Fuji, who both deliver dynamic performances of great range and control.Mysterious, poetic, open to many interpretations, and one of Kyoshi Kurosawa's finest.
16 out of 31 people found the following review useful: Delicate., 5 September 2005 Author: disgruntledwren from Elsewhere
The high vote I gave this movie is partly relative--there just isn't much on the shelves these days that isn't tiresome (so I tend to gravitate towards anything that isn't a sequel or remake). So if this film is guilty of anything, it's guilty of being delicate and intelligent. The characters are so subtle they almost escape one's grasp but this isn't a loss and shouldn't deter anyone from watching it. I enjoy thinking back on it now and pondering Yuji, the main character, and his relation to the jellyfish.It is also worthy to note that the visuals aren't overly stylized--they were incredibly detailed and balanced. I liked that I felt increasingly familiar with their world the further the movie went. That must have been very hard to pull off since most movies that re-use scenery like that turn out repetitious. The backgrounds here seem lived in, and judging from the part of the behind-the-scenes that I watched it was filmed in realistic locations.Asano is interesting in this one, not that he usually isn't, but his character seemed far more complex than I expected with each new line of dialog. This movie and the careful construction was so nicely stacked like a house of cards I was almost afraid to breathe in case I would miss something.
10 out of 20 people found the following review useful: intriguing film, but what on earth is it about?, 24 April 2005 Author: Roland E. Zwick (magneteach@aol.com) from United States
I can see the maddeningly inscrutable "Bright Future" serving as the subject for some poor film school student's dissertation in a course entitled "The Use of Enigma and Symbolism in Post-Modernist Cinema" or (if you prefer the vernacular) "What the Heck Was That Film All About Anyway?" For I am absolutely convinced that one could spend a full semester - at the very least - trying to fathom the various levels of meaning in this film and never come up with a thoroughly satisfactory answer at the end of that search. And here I've always thought Ingmar Bergman movies were a challenge! Shot through with heavy doses of allegory and Magic Realism, "Bright Future" tells the story of a sullen, moody young man named Yuji, who works at a dull factory job with his close buddy, Mamoru. The latter owns a deadly Red Jellyfish that he keeps in a little tank at home. One day, he gives the jellyfish as a present to Yuji, telling him that he has decided to quit the job and move on to bigger and better things. But instead of doing that, Mamoru murders the boss and the boss' wife, with little or no explanation given as to motive. Mamoru is immediately arrested and charged with first degree murder. Meanwhile, in a fit of despair, Yuji turns over the tank, only to have the jellyfish slide through the cracks of the floor and somehow land in the Tokyo water system, where it miraculously proliferates to the point where the area is literally inundated with freshwater killer jellyfish. While all this is going on, Yuji begins to develop a close but tentative bond with Mamoru's father, who was pretty much estranged from his son before the murder. As Yuji gets more and more obsessed with finding the elusive jellyfish, he seems, paradoxically, to be coming to a greater sense of reality. Well, there's the "plot" in a nutshell; now it's your turn to try to figure it all out.If none of this makes any sense to you, don't feel bad because it doesn't make any sense to me either. The best I can make of it is that Yuji is intended to represent the younger generation in modern day Japan - disconnected, rudderless, utterly lacking in motivation, purpose and goals, and prone to act out of ill-defined impulse rather than rationality and logic. And somehow, by committing the murder that Yuji is actually intending to do (though here again, we are given no preparation or motive to explain WHY he would do so), Mamoru sacrifices himself so that Yuji can be saved from his own spiritual ennui and set on the path towards a meaningful life, primarily by caring for this jellyfish, which is itself a symbol of tenacity and beauty.Or perhaps not….Despite the fact that the film will probably have you pulling your hair out in bewilderment and frustration, "Bright Future," for all its self-conscious pretentiousness, is actually a fairly intriguing film just on the level of its visuals and the relationships it develops among the various characters. It's very well directed and very well acted, and if you can get beyond the symbol-gazing, you may actually find yourself mesmerized by the experience.And I will be expecting those dissertations on my desk bright and early tomorrow morning.
8 out of 17 people found the following review useful: Beautiful look on Japan youth's future, 14 March 2004 Author: Melvin from Tokyo, Japan
((Small Spoiler))Bright Future may be hard movie to understand...but not really so if u think of what future and dream, two main themes in the movie, mean to those who doesn't know what to hold on to anymore. Teenagers everywhere will have to rethink about there future once they realize that their dreams might not become true, may be not even close. Also, many old people will have to rethink about their future once they realize that they are alone with no one to share or continue their dreams. I think this movie try to portrait the complex feelings and relationship between these 2 groups of people...their loneliness, their longing for something, or better, somoeone to hold on to. Jellyfish are like teenagers who are jailed in the society they don't belong to...the society try to shape them to fit in with what the society expect from them, just like when Mamoru and Nimura try to make the jellyfish survive in normal water, but their success lasts only for a short time. Those teenagers will only become venomous to the society (like d jellyfish) if they cannot find the place where they belong (in the case of the jellyfish, the sea). They will have to realize that although their dreams might not come true but they can have a bright future if they come to face the reality and try to find their place in the world.All the deep messages in this film blend perfectly with the beautiful and haunting art directing; the image of the jellyfish are the perfect representative of loneliness and venomousity that lie within every lost teenagers (those who's still in between childhood and adulthood). All the casts played their role with hearts...and that make we care for all of them. Kurosawa has, once again, crafted an art for those who can look beyond the film's superficial beauty to understand its philosophical core. His script might be too open-ended with not enough explanations to satisfy every viewers, but that's also the beauty of it; everyone will at least got some messages from the graphical impact and in the end they can interpret the movie anyway they like. The final scenes in the movie, the image of teenagers walking in the street is no different from the jellyfish swimming in Tokyo's canal, some of them will sting innocent people who came in their ways, but I think Kurosawa, as he has most of those jellyfish find their way to the sea, hope that most of them will be able to find their bright future, eventhough it might be different from what they dreamed.
2 out of 6 people found the following review useful: Despair, 14 August 2008 Author: Tecun_Uman from United States
Akarui mirai is a film that has one theme, despair. We see a Japanese society that offers little in the way of hope, prosperity, fun or happiness. A chance for a bright future is denied to the young and has already passed up the old. Our two main characters live lives that are pointless and dull. Our protagonist momentarily feels that at least he can claim being good as arcade games as an accomplishment, but soon sees that he is not even good at that. The two soon see that even their "successful" boss, who has a wife and child, has no life worth celebrating or enjoying. Such despair will cause one of the two friends to give up on a bright future and one to make one last attempt at finding hope for that bright future, but sadly, it appears very doubtful that that bright future will come.
4 out of 10 people found the following review useful: The elusive invertebrate, 16 January 2008 Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California
Whatever Kiyoshi Kurosawa is to the Japanese audience, for Americans he's distinctly an acquired taste. "Cure "struck me immediately however as haunting, creepy, and drably beautiful; it's just that one can't imagine a steady diet of such stuff. "Pulse", typically stylish and moody, is completely different (and too similar to the "Ringu" franchise), but the only other Kurosawa I've seen so far, "Bright Future," is something else again. Symbolic interpretations of the two aimless, dangerous boys as some kind of statement about Japan's youth seem simple-minded and naive, though surely the ironic title makes that possibility all too obvious. Anyway, the presence of young people both does and does not mean anything in Kurosawa's films. He works very loosely within genres that appeal to youth, but his approach is consistently indirect and enigmatic. What strikes me is the relationship between Nimura and Mamoru--roommates and buddies on the surface, but underneath slave and master, follower and sensei, or symbiotic zombie couple. Their lack of affect turns modern Japanese youth on its head because they're quietly terrifying and somehow also super cool, Nimura's ragged clothing a radical fashion statement and his wild hair and sculptured looks worthy of a fashion model.Mr Fujiwara is the ultimate bourgeois clueless work buddy jerk (he combines two or three different kinds of undesirable associate); but we don't usually kill them. Kurosawa films seem to usually go in the direction of some kind of muted apocalypse, but they proceed toward it casually, as if he didn't quite care where things were going.That's because the atmosphere and look of his films are the real subjects; like any great filmmaker he begins and ends with image and sound. Note the bland, cheerful music that pops up at the darnedest places. The relationship that develops between Nimura and Shin'ichirô, Mamoru's father after Mamoru is no more, and the scenes of Shin'ichirô's cluttered yet desolate workshop/dwelling recall Akira Kurosawa's Dodeskaden but also Italian neorealism and the clan of directionless but uniformed young bad boys who wander through the street in the long final tracking shot evokes Antonioni and the mute clowns in Blow-Up. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's framing, his use of empty urban long shots, is akin to the vision of Antonioni. If it's true that this cool stuff is all too appealing to film school dropouts ready to concoct a deep interpretation of every aimless sequence, it's also true that Kurosawa like no other living director creates his own haunting and disturbing moods, and it would be fun to compare this movie with Bong Joon-ho's boisterous "The Host."Really an 8.5 at least, for originality.
4 out of 10 people found the following review useful: A slow moving (yet good), symbolically rich piece of surrealism, 5 January 2007 Author: Neil Howie from United States
To me, this film seemed to be harshly critical of the youth of Japan. There are distinct parallels between the deadly Jellyfish, and the destructive kids in their Che Guevara shirts. In this film, I believe Kiyoshi Kurosawa may be making the statement that young people in Japan are becoming as passive and destructive as Jellyfish. If you are not used to slow pacing in films, you may not like this movie, or Kiyoshi Kurosawa's other work for that matter, (or many Japanese films). But if you allow yourself to be immersed in the dreamlike qualities of the film, and pay close attention to its symbols and their underlying social message, you may get something out of the experience. Also, the film's final shot is amazing, mysterious, elegiac, and a bunch of other good adjectives. If you like this film, you should also see the same director's "Charisma."
11 out of 24 people found the following review useful: Time past, life wasted, 13 December 2004 Author: Lawrence (LGwriter49@aol.com) from Astoria, NY
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 voice-over, 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.
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