At the end of last February, I had the pleasure of interviewing Hamaguchi Ryūsuke about his Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, a movie that would debut at the Berlinale. The short interview was conducted on zoom and it was published in the Italian newspaper I usually write for, Il Manifesto.
In recent months, with the release and success of Drive My Car, many long and more in-depth interview with the Japanese director have been published around the world, but I decided nonetheless to translate my interview in English and post it here on the blog (even if it’s not really related to documentary). As said, the conversation was about Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and before the release of Drive My Car. In recent months, with the release and success of Drive My Car, many long and more in-depth interview with the Japanese director have been published around the world, but I decided nonetheless to translate my interview in English and post it here on the blog (even if it’s not really related to documentary). As said, the conversation was about Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and before the release of Drive My Car.
Interview with Hamaguchi Ryūsuke (February 27th, 2021)
Although you had already made short and medium length films in the past, this is the first time you have tackled the anthology film format, could you tell us more about this choice?
A few years ago, I made the medium length film Heaven Is Still Far Away, a project also born out of a collaboration with actresses and actors that for me worked partly as a sort of review of Happy Hour, and partly as preparation for my next film, Asako I & II. This experience was also very useful to me because I was able to find my own rhythm, so to speak, in alternating feature films and short or medium length films, something that I think I will continue to do in the future. However, one of the problems with short films is not having a real exhibition outlet, that is, it is very difficult to find a proper distribution for these kinds of works. The solution I tried this time was to combine three shorts into an anthology, making them into a feature film that thus could be distributed.
Compared to feature films, do you think the format you worked on this time opens up different expressive possibilities?
Of course. All works, whether long or short, must have an end, a point at which they stop and leave the viewer with a strong feeling of having seen a world. Having said that, short films have the possibility, in my opinion, to leave a more intense and vivid impression as they only offer a brief glimpse into a certain world. A shorter film can also show something rare, events whose existence is not certain, leaving everything in suspense and without going too deep into it.
In each of the three episodes that make up the film there are at least three scenes of strong aesthetic and emotional impact. In Magic (or Something Less Assuring), the first episode, the long initial part with the two women in a taxi, in Door Wide Open the scene where the female protagonist visits the professor and in the last episode, Once Again, the final part with the two women embracing. Each of these scenes uses very different acting styles, yet there are parts in them where the characters, within the narrative, are acting, and where the boundary between what is real in the story and what is acted is ambiguous and fluid. Could you tell us how you worked with the actors to create this ambiguous feeling?
I wanted to create this ambiguity, but I also tried to create a clear sense of ambiguity, so to speak. That is, I wanted to create something defined, but something that can be interpreted in different ways. The fascinating thing for me is that the act of acting itself is ambiguous, and in the three scenes you mentioned, the actresses themselves in the midst of their performances must surely have noticed the ambiguity of the question “what is real?”. One strategy I used to create this ambiguity was, first of all, to write it into the scenes themselves, by inserting the act of acting into the narrative. I could not ask the actors to emphasise the fact that they were acting, it was rather a matter of achieving a very light and thin performance that, as in the case of the two women in the taxi, could later be read differently in the continuation of the story, when more information is revealed to us. In addition, it is important that there is something hidden in the performance, as happens for example in the second episode where even the main character, Nao, realises that she does not know exactly why she is doing what she is doing, thus generating a sense of displacement in the scene.
The third episode is set in a world where a computer virus has made the internet unusable. Could you tell us more about the reasons for this choice?
I shot the first two segments in 2019 and the last one in 2020. I originally planned to shoot it in spring, but the pandemic disrupted all the plans and we ended up shooting it in summer. The script was already completed, but an event as big as the pandemic made me tweak it. I couldn’t avoid taking into account the effect the Corona virus had on all of us, so I decided to set it in a kind of parallel world where the internet is no longer usable, a world disrupted by a different kind of calamity.
One last question about the situation of independent cinemas (mini-theaters) in Japan at the time of the pandemic, a culture that is very close to your heart and for which you are fighting with various initiatives, such as Mini-Theater Aid (crowdfunding that helped these small cinemas survive last year and that is still active with various support initiatives). What is your relationship with these independent theatres?
For me, they have been an important place to discover films that are completely different from the Hollywood films or TV series I was used to, films that were “boring” compared to the ones I used to see. Seeing these “boring” films in the space of these small independent theatres, I discovered a new kind of feeling, my body changed and I learned to appreciate a different kind of cinema. Now my films are shown here in Japan, mainly in these independent theatres, and I am in contact with all the people working there, it is for these reasons that I have been actively participating and supporting projects like Mini-Theater Aid.
Asian Docs 