Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Barren Illusion

Sometimes it's fun (read: when you want to mess around) to associate a movie with a hypothetical musical genre it might belong to if it were an album. Thus, Béla Tarr's films become the cinematic version of drone, certain Refn cinema is electro-pop, Kubrick is prog, Tsukamoto is industrial, and Vanzina is Neapolitan neomelodic.

In front of "Barren Illusion" by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, however, even this little game becomes impossible: it could just as easily be dark-ambient or harsh noise.

With a film like this, you lose your bearings. It's impossible to describe it in words, just as it's almost impossible to watch it.

Imagine Mr. O__O at the age of twelve or thirteen, the period when he enjoyed making mash-ups of Britney Spears and Naked City - translated: the age of silliness (it continues to this day, but those are details).

He can't sleep and thus turns on the TV in his bedroom hoping to fall asleep. Total darkness and the volume turned down almost to a whisper. They are showing this strange Japanese film with subtitles where people wander or commit suicide aimlessly. No extradiegetic music, few dialogues, vast fields and roads of rare desolation, actors with a will to live akin to Ghezzi talking off-sync about a Czechoslovak film where an iron is filmed for twenty minutes, musical bands that convey a desolation that makes you want to slash your wrists...

The first thought that flashes through his mind is: "What the hell am I watching?". And how can we blame him? Even now that "Barren Illusion" is one of his favorite films, he often asks himself that.

Yes, my dear friends, this film has grown on me over the years and has entered my hypothetical list of unmissable masterpieces. If you ever encounter this mysterious unidentified object, know that 99% of you will think it's crap. Don't worry: it's normal.

To an average person, a film like this would be repulsive.

Because it's a film that completely repudiates the viewer, rejecting any type of target audience (I don't think it could even appeal to festivals or the most radical chic intellectuals, maybe it was designed specifically for O__O) and showcasing an alternative reality made of depression and agony, where an atypical love story leads to a slow approach to death.

I imagine your thoughts upon reaching this last line:

1- "What a bore! I'm closing Debaser and going to do some crochet" (you are normal people)

2- "This sounds like a colossal piece of crap, but I'll keep reading because I have nothing better to do" (you're normal too)

3- "Mmmh...this O__O has sparked a morbid curiosity in me" (Start to worry)

Most of those in group 3 will rightly wonder, "but what is this film about?".

I'll try, just for you.

"Barren Illusion" supposedly talks about this young couple: Haru and Michi. We are in Tokyo of 2005 (the film is from 1999) and a storm of pollen is causing incurable allergic reactions. Medicine has developed an antidote capable of surviving this mysterious ailment, and it's our two protagonists who undergo the experiment, despite knowing that one of the vaccine's side effects is sterility (which is a bit like: if you don't want to suffer, don't love).

He's a musician bored with life and obsessed with the fear of disappearing, she works as an office clerk and seems unable to bear the weight of death.

If the plot makes you think of an interesting dystopian sci-fi film, you're off track. The genius of the Japanese director lies in conveying the apocalyptic atmosphere of a Tokyo identical to the contemporary one through small inputs: there is no way to make the ongoing destruction concrete and effective, except for the occasional pollen storms, which seem more poetic than dangerous. And what about the (gorgeous) scene where the two find a map of the world missing Japan, which they promptly draw with a crayon?

He's interested in the relationship between the two protagonists, alienated in an alienated world, with their romantic yet conflictual relationship based on an obsessive search for love in a context of certain death.

Misunderstanding and uncertainty even in the face of the tangible: a skeleton is washed ashore and abandoned on the beach. She is shaken: it's the end of everything.

He holds her, saying: "I'm here."
She replies: "Here where?"
He: "Here, here with you."
She: "Where's Here?"

The apocalypse is near. Evil has been born, and there is nothing more to be done except to act without reasoning: conflict, crime, unmotivated suicide...

From then on, the film will take an even more irrational, incomprehensible turn, where even the final twist (yes, there is one!) is passively received. Through "Barren Illusion," Kurosawa turns us into alienated amoebas without a future, immerses us totally in a climate of death even though he rejects us a priori, and manages to be hated and, gradually, loved to madness.

Yes, it is one of those growing films, almost impossible to judge except after several days, months, or even years after viewing.

We are faced with a film extremely slow and cryptic, hypnotic in its continuous descent into absolute coldness, where even the most emotional scenes (not exciting) like the already mentioned finding of the skeleton are directed with a glacial and mechanical eye.  Shot together with his students (Kurosawa is a professor at the Tokyo Film University) and with a minimal budget, "Barren Illusion" is a film from the beyond: impossible to imitate and devoid of specific similarities with other films produced before or after (fortunately?). A totally unknown film, even to lovers of Oriental cinema, of the more niche kind in general, and even to Kurosawa's own admirers... one of those films you are happy to know and love to madness, but you already know you'll never recommend to anyone because you already expect others' responses (which promptly come true).

Of the many films about alienation, this is probably the greatest ever made: it is truly alienated and alienating in every aspect that composes it.

Chilling, terrifying, mystical, at times heartbreaking. Definitely unsettling. 

Now it's up to you to decide whether to undergo the experiment or not.  I'll just tell you that you shouldn't venture into the film with a compass: it won't help you at all.