Bright Future

In Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Bright Future (2003), Yuji (Jô Odagiri) and Mamoru (Asano Tadanobu) are wayward twentysomethings who find themselves struggling to maintain jobs and empathy in the world around them. Neither man can articulate the loss of order that he feels, save for a beautiful opening scene that Yuji narrates, and both instead seem bent on self-destruction. When Mamoru intervenes for an action that he knows Yuji will carry out, the murder of a family who were unable to connect with Yuji, we see elements of Albert Camus’ The Stranger find their way into the film’s philosophy. The idea of murder here retains a peculiar absence of meaning, yet Kurosawa is adept at building the film from that foundation and expanding it into an exploration on the nature of abandonment, guilt, and ultimately redemption.

Yet the film never feels forced. Mamoru is clearly pathological, but he’s loving to Yuji while retaining elements of psychopathology at the same time. This dualism fosters most of the fascinating aspects of the film in that director Kiyoshi Kurosawa frames the central struggle around Yuji’s attempt to nurture the red jellyfish that Mamoru bequeathed to him just before Mamoru went on the killing spree. The love and anger that are shown to the jellyfish tell of a displaced love, but such fragmented feelings soon develop into something more profound and concerned.

Perhaps only the film’s ending disappointed me, even as it also felt inevitable. Faced with the guilt over being unable to provide for his family after a divorce, Mamoru’s father befriends Yuji and tries to right him. Yet at the end he steps into a lake where the jellyfish is escaping into and is stung by the poisonous creature as he picks it up in a euphoric connection with his (now dead) son. While this action returns to an earlier idea of a father being stung by the son’s creature (remember the factory’s boss attempt to touch the jellyfish), the film had earned a more hopeful ending in my mind. As a result, though this scene depressed me a little, I was still very pleased with the film and will seek out other Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films in the future. Very enjoyable and touching.

Bright Future: 8/10