The film Adaptation of Keigo Higashino's novel of the same name, When the Prayer Ends, is the last film in the "Kyoichiro Kaga series".
As a suspenseful reasoning film, the film does not focus on rendering the tricks and clever techniques of the perpetrators, but focuses on using color and imagery to show the inner torment and struggle of the characters, and pays more attention to the portrayal of the characters and the depiction of the emotions of the characters. With the step-by-step advancement of the plot, while we get the pleasure of solving the case, we will also feel the complexity and contradictions of human nature.
Keigo Higashino's characters rarely have a flat good or bad distinction, and the deeper you go into the plot, the more you feel love and hate, and the more blurred the line between right and wrong becomes. As it is said in The Moon and the Sixpence: meanness and greatness, malice and goodness, hatred and love can coexist in the same heart without mutual exclusion.
Lift the curtain of tragedy
A highly decomposed female corpse was found in an apartment in Tokyo, strangled to death. According to the investigation, the identity of the female corpse is Michiko Oshiya, who lives in Hikone City, and the owner of the apartment and the biggest suspect in the case, Mutsuo Koshikawa, has turned into a charred corpse.
The police visited Okume City, Oshiya's hometown, and found that Oshiya had an argument with a woman living in Room 201 at a local nursing home. Michiko Oshiya claims that Ms. 201 is the mother of her junior high school friend Hiromi Asakai, but instead of admitting it, Ms. 201 goes crazy and drives Michiko Oshiya away.
Hiromi Asai is a well-known playwright and director in Tokyo who met police officer Kyoichiro Kaga in kendo class. In the face of the police investigation, Hiromi Asai answered smoothly and had a full alibi. The case has since reached an impasse, but with the advent of a calendar, the case took a turn for the better.
The police found a calendar in Muio Echikawa's apartment, and each month of the calendar was marked with the name of a bridge. Kyoichiro Kaga was surprised to find that his mother, who had been dead for many years, also had such a strange calendar, and the names of the bridges written on the two calendars were exactly the same, and the handwriting was exactly the same.
A heavy curtain has been lifted, and the dusty past of many years has gradually emerged in the sun. The fates of Kyoichiro Kaga and Hiromi Asami are also closely intertwined with the emergence of the truth.
The tragedy of two families
Neither Kyoichiro Kaga nor Hiromi Asakai had a happy childhood, so they spent half their lives in the shadow of their original families. These shadows will not fade with the passage of time, nor will they be lost because of their achievements and fame when they grow up, but will condense into deep obsessions that affect their lives.
Kaga's mother, Yuriko, ran away from home when Kaga was young. With his mother in mind, Kaga, as an adult, has been searching for her whereabouts, but seventeen years later, he waited for news that her mother had died alone in a deserted apartment.
Kaga blames his father's disregard for his family, and he comes to him with his mother's ashes in his arms and demands that he be responsible for all this. The father heard the deep groan for a long time before he slowly said to Kaga, "When I die, don't come to see me." ”
Mother is Kaga's obsession, the missing corner of Kaga's heart, which has been faintly painful for many years. Kaga desperately wanted to know how his mother had been all these years, why she had left him.
The only clue in Kaga's hand is an unusual calendar found in his mother's relic, with the name of a bridge written next to each month, all near the Nippon Bridge. To this end, Kaga gave up the opportunity for promotion and stubbornly stayed in the area near Nihonbashi as a policeman.
Unlike Kaga's Oedipus complex, Hiromi hates her mother to the bone. Forty-year-old Hiromi, who had an abortion, claimed that she had no motherhood because motherhood was passed on to her daughter by her mother, and she did not get it.
Hiromi Asakai had a childhood that could not be looked back on. Hiromi's mother was in debt to raise a small white face, resulting in the bankruptcy of the family, in order to avoid the debt collectors, Hiromi's father Tadao Asakai left the house with Hiromi and lived a wandering life.
During the escape, Hiromi is molested by a man who is plotting against him, and in the process of resisting, he accidentally kills the man. In order to cover for Hiromi, Asakai Tadao put his clothes on the man, and then threw the body into the sea, disguised as Ifaka Tadao had committed suicide, and then used the identity of the man to live.
The film portrays the separation of father and daughter into tears. In a dark and deep tunnel, Tadao Asami and Hiromi Asami are about to go in different directions, and the light and dark are intertwined, as if the evil and good of human nature are entangled. From then on, Tadao Asakai died, and Hiromi could no longer meet her father in a dignified manner.
The tunnel separated the father and daughter like a curse. Since then, the father can no longer protect his daughter in the sun, and the daughter cannot filial piety to the father on a sunny day, and their meetings and interactions can only take place in the tunnel where the sun is not seen.
Secret love
Years later, Hiromi, eager to experience a different life, became an actress and achieved career success. My father would often write letters to Hiromi as a friend, congratulating her on every step of her progress. The father and daughter agreed to meet at a different bridge every month, and because the two did not dare to meet in a hurry, they could only look at each other on the other side of the bridge across the crowd and talk by phone. This is why different bridge names are written on the calendar.
Over the years, Asami Tadao has always been anonymous and opened his heart to anyone. He stayed away from the crowd and lived at different times as Mutsuo Koshikawa, Shunichi Nabe, and Kazutoshi Yokoyama, supporting and encouraging his daughter's career in the shadows.
Hiromi did not disappoint her father, not only became an excellent actor, but also successfully directed her debut film. At the time of the release of Hiromi's debut film, Tadao Asakai specially set off for Tokyo to see his daughter's work, but he did not want to be bumped into by michiko Oshiya.
Many years ago, Asakai Hiromi's partner, Sensei Naemura, recognized Tadao Asakai, and in order to protect his and his daughter's secrets, Asakai Tadao did not hesitate to kill Sensei Naemura. This time, Tadao Asakai also chose to kill Michiko Oshitani.
In order to maintain his daughter's hard-won success and happiness, so that her life will not be disturbed, Asakai Tadao kills people again and again, falling into the vortex of evil again and again.
Love and protection based on sin are pathological, the victims are innocent, and the perpetrators, even if they have a thousand helplessness and all the reasons, cannot change the facts of this sin.
As time went on, Tadao Asakai became more and more eager for liberation. Hiromi is acutely aware of her father's intentions, and at nightfall, she arrives at her father's shack and finds himself trying to set himself on fire.
The curse of fate
On the back of the novel "When the Prayer Ends" is written a sentence: Watching your growth and success is the whole meaning of my life, and the more you grow up and succeed, the more it is a curse on my fate.
In the name of love, Tadao Asami fell deeper and deeper into this curse.
The daughter has grown up, the mission as a father has been completed, and For the future, Asai Tadao can no longer see any meaning in his existence. As a murderer with blood on his hands, Asakai Tadao knew that he could not escape the police, and in order not to drag his daughter down, he chose to self-immolate, because the person who was burned to death was beyond recognition, and no one could distinguish his identity.
Tadao Asakai asks his daughter to leave quickly, which is the last thing he does to protect her.
Hiromi suddenly remembered that her father had said that being burned to death was a terrible thing, so Hiromi turned back to her father, strangled her father's neck, and said to her father, "This time, I will protect my father." ”
After nearly thirty years of anonymity, nearly thirty years of loneliness and pain, Tadao Asami, who had prayed for his daughter for thirty years, was finally liberated in the hands of his daughter.
Maybe this is the ultimate in love, giving everything to protect the loved one, including the name, including the life.
Keigo Higashino's other work, White Night, has a similar core. Because of a childhood tragedy, Ryoji Kirihara killed his father in order to protect his beloved Karasawa Yukiho, and from then on, their lives were imprisoned in darkness, and although they lived together, they never dared to hold hands in the sun. In the end, Ryoji Kirihara chose to use his death to guard his secret with Yukiho.
Snow Spike said, "There is no sun in my life, but it is not dark, because something has replaced the sun, and with this light I can turn night into day." For Hiromi Asami, isn't her father the only light in her dark life?
Two works, two tragedies, two guardians, one from love, one from family affection, the same helplessness, the same cruelty, the same moving. The image of each of the characters in Keigo Higashino's works is so full that the words right and wrong, right and wrong, good and evil pale in the face of complex human nature. The more delicately we dissect human nature, the more difficult it is for us to condemn them with universal morality.
Silent prayer
The film uses a two-line parallel approach to tell the story of Hiromi Asai while telling the story of the Kaga family.
Kaga's mother, Yuriko, has been working in a bar in a foreign country since she left. She is quiet and her only partner is Tadao Asami.
Before committing suicide, Asakai Tadao sent Kaga a letter detailing Yuriko's life after she left home and the reasons for leaving home. It turns out that Yuriko suffered from depression before leaving home, and one night, in confusion in her mind, she picked up the knife, but she didn't know whether she wanted to kill herself or the child. Afraid of hurting her children and fearing that her illness would affect her family, Yuriko reluctantly chose to run away from home.
One obliterates their own existence for the sake of the child, the other goes away for the sake of the child, they love the child deeply, but they cannot watch the child grow up with their own eyes, and they cannot stay with the child. Such love is so heavy and cruel that they would rather transform themselves into shadows in the night than guard their children who walk in the sun.
Yuriko and Tadao Asakai are similar, neither of them is a good parent in the traditional sense, but their love for their children is equally great. They pray for the end of the curtain, because they have already lost all their thoughts, and the meaning of supporting their life is to watch their children grow up, except for their children, their lives are free. When children become famous, it is also the day when the curtain of their lives sinks.
For Kaga and Hiromi, they also prayed for the end of the curtain. It is impossible for a person to deal with the truth in an escaped way all his life, and the moment the truth comes out is the beginning of the redemption of Hiromi and Kaga, who can finally reconcile with the past and finally say goodbye to the past calmly.
The curtain falls, all the hustle and bustle abruptly stops, and those who struggle in pain finally gain eternal peace.
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