The accidents we encounter in life will become inevitable, and the film can turn all the imagination, all those exits of the soul into reality, and this is also a kind of magic.
I like that director Ryusuke Hamaguchi photographs each dialogue in Chance and Imagination like a dance—or, to be precise, like a small dance floor itself that has enough room to change the center of gravity; when we say, "The director is very good at making dialogues," we are actually saying that he captures the subtle flow of atmosphere between people.
What makes me feel particularly incredible in the whole play is that in addition to the people under the camera, the director even accurately grasps the distance between the film itself and the audience:
In Magic and Again, we are immersed in the protagonist's conversation and interaction without looking at anything, while the line in Open Doors is slightly crossed, and the viewer is trapped in the situation but comfortable with the door that remains open at all times.
Although this kind of non-voyeuristic and inoffensive viewing method may not be applicable to all stories, in this film, the designed techniques are flattened, and the possibilities of people and the world are comfortable.
The three stories can certainly be considered as separate short films, but many details can also be found that echo each other.
The two girls talk "as if caressed by conversation", the passage between the professor and the female student is reproduced in a strange way, and their tacit understanding is reversed by an email, and the next story begins with the failure of network contact. At its core, there may be a theme that has existed since the previous work: a certain kind of sharing through subtle dislocation, and its almost random consequences.
Magic is like a triangle, but it is shaped not by three dots but by three sides.
Nawa and Jimi share a sweet friendship and intimate conversation in the car, Jimei and Ah He share that magical night, and Ah He and Na Yizi share a memory that has not stopped running. The relationship between people is itself a tension, and suddenly understanding the three edges of the bud clothes has the possibility of choosing.
But perhaps her choices are only imaginary. Ah Ho praises her for being honest, and she chooses not to be honest in the end, as if to preserve all the more illusory moments than magic in "Another Night". At the moment when reality and imagination meet, the director designed a very exaggerated zoom-in shot, which is the moment when the film enters. Only we and Bud Yizi know that the wheel of fate has since rolled in the other direction.
The story itself is also made up of long conversations.
Without the use of flashy filming or the route of golden sentences, the audience will willingly follow them in the back seat of a taxi or in the office at night, watching them dance. Naruko "impulsively" runs back to Ah He's life, but even if she doesn't know what she wants to do, the other party doesn't know what she wants to do, they don't need to explain their points of contention to each other, the two are like she said, "We quarrel and have a tacit understanding", such a line is magic in itself.
Let me start with my favorite short story, "Open Doors," although the ending is a little weaker.
The open door is surprisingly ambiguous, as mentioned above, maintaining the sense of space and distance of viewing; and, for the professor engaged in writing, he keeps his life open and flowing, and others come and go with different appearances, and more words and sounds can enter; and in his interaction with the female student Nai, it is a summary: Nai Has always wanted to close the door and determine the various emotions or emotions flowing in the air, but the professor will open the door again and dissolve this possibility.
And the whole story does unfold under the subtle difference in the two people's understanding of the current situation.
The information that Nai Xuan secretly released was missed, but at the same time, the desire in her heart that needed to be affirmed was well received. And the professor, too, from the temptations he could not perceive correctly (like ordinary social people) gained an outlet of desire that had never been identified. But this almost accomplice rendezvous is inevitably short, and the last mistake is not so much accidental as it may be more like this misidentification always has to be closed, but we are lucky to get a glimpse of this beautiful moment.
Interestingly, Hamaguchi seems to have put some self-referentiality in the story: when Natsumi asks the professor how to write the lustful passages in the book, he replies that it is structurally important because it can attract the reader to look down— as if it were a silent film of his own. Later, when a university student flirts and says, "Literary people are boring," is this also something that Hamaguchi, a native of the Faculty of Literature at UTokyo, is laughing at himself (but I think fans will agree that he and the professor are not bored at all).
"Again": What if the first encounter between the two is a reunion?
Natsuko has a person in her heart who wants to see, but she goes to the classmates' association and doesn't see it, but is recognized by another classmate who says, "You haven't changed." I don't think she knows if she's really "unchanged" because the person who can make her sure isn't there. So the chance encounter was a more special situation, and she didn't have to face the question of whether to change, and she could finally say what she hadn't been able to say.
Natsuko says that Cai is what she imagined the other person would become. This rendezvous, which should not have existed, is based on an imagination that brings things that were once in the past back to the present, and the possibility of the "present" unfolds. Because each other is the person in the past but not, the two must face themselves in order to continue the dialogue.
This is the process of walking from a moving escalator to a smooth road bridge. One person plays the other person in his imagination, and the other person plays the self reflected by the other party, but after this subtle dislocation, it is the sincere feeling of facing the hole in his heart.
Maybe this is out of the mood of a period of time, may never see each other again and no one can say again, but after the other party's "name" is remembered, the contact may not be broken. In the dialogue, the director quietly hinted at another possibility related to the deceased: Cai's husband wrote to his ex-girlfriend saying that he wanted to meet but could not see him, and Cai accidentally saw the letter but did not deal with it much. She was noncommittal about "forgiveness," and it later occurred to her that it might be an understanding, even if she didn't know it at the time.
Enjoy the 3 stories in "Chance and Imagination" and experience the themes that the director wants to express.
After all, this is very vulgar, but I really feel that Hamaguchi Ryusuke loves human beings very much, and it is necessary to love people so that they can know the weaknesses of people and the cruelty of the world. There are sad people in every story in Chance and Imagination, but they all still try to go to the next place as much as possible.
"I probably can't say I'm fine so quickly", the director doesn't say that this is going to get better, but says that there will always be someone like you and he will see it, just as we see Nagisa, Jimi, Awa, Setkawa, Sasaki, Natsuko, Sasuke, Andi and Ximi and Mika.