Japanese Story
On Saturday, I went to the theater to see Japanese Story. Surprisingly, there was a good sized crowd gathered to see the film. The crowd was an interesting mixture of Nisei couples, Japanese students from U of H, Sansei girlfriends, and a broad mixture of lone moviegoers like myself.
I hadn’t heard anything about the movie, but the trailer for the film intrigued me. While the plot of the story had potential, it seems to me the film missed on what exactly it wanted to say. The story touched on a number of issues, but never delved beyond the surface of those issues nor expanding character development to pull the viewer in. Even when tragedy strikes, there were no sniffles and fallen tears in the audience as the scene leaves the viewer with a feeling of separation without emotion. The film had tear-potential, but instead it left me with a disappointing numbness.
It’s true that Japanese Story is filmed in Australia and does have a principle character that is from Japan. But in my opinion, beyond the ethnicity of the character, the story shows very little as to why it is a Japanese story. The character could have been from any country outside of Australia, and the story would have changed very little.