A few days ago, the annual top ten movies list of Japan's "Movie Shunbao" was finally released.
This is a film list that many Japanese movie fans pay great attention to every year, and it is extremely weighty in terms of professionalism and authority.
In this year's film list, the first place was won by "Keiko, Gaze" sung by Miyake.
To say that it was Japan's brightest new work last year is by no means an exaggeration.
Previously, "Keiko, Gaze" has won several awards including Best Picture and Best Actress at the Shunbao Awards and the Mainichi Film Awards.
It is also the best film in the adventure section of the Berlin Film Festival, and at last year's Pingyao Film Festival, it also became a hit, and it was hard to find a ticket.
It is estimated that the timing of the release of the "Shunbao" film list was coincided, and the film was actually launched on the domestic Youku platform. But the launch of the domestic platform does not mean how "friendly" the film is to the audience.
Even audiences who are familiar with director Miyake Singing will be surprised by his change this time.
In recent years, a large number of young directors have emerged in Japan - Yuya Ishii, Riya Imaizumi, Yuki Yamato, Daigo Matsui... They also burst out with great creative power.
In his contemporaries' new works, Miyake is not satisfied with the theme polyphony of "Tokyo Modern Love" or "Youth Story".
From horror films, MVs to TV series and other genre attempts, he has always had a simple and keen image intuition, and the rebirth of "Keiko, Gaze" may be heralding the beginning of the next creative stage.
"Your Birds Can Sing"
Before entering this movie, it seems to have been labeled with a lot of old memes and labels.
Speaking of "boxing", it has always been a popular theme in Japan, and there have been excellent works such as "Ah! Wilderness" or "Hundred Dollar Love".
"Hundred Dollar Love"
And "hearing-impaired" has simply become the standard for recent topical works, and in "Jingxue", "First Love" and "Drive My Car", "sign language" has become a means of creating unfamiliarization.
"Quiet Snow"
And if you compare the Oscar-winning American family movie "Listening Girl", "Keiko, Gaze" is more intriguing.
The whole film is completely anti-climax, but also anti-genre, just like the situation of the hearing-impaired, it is a deep and vast silence like the sea.
From the beginning, the director took the lead in using subtitles to directly explain the general content of the story.
And the most common climax in this genre, "Boxing Match", also begins abruptly and ends hastily in the film.
Not only narrative, but also emotions, the film is deliberately resisting the straightforward pity or short-term empathy for the hearing-impaired.
In the passage where Keiko participates in the boxing match, the referee announces the final score and result, but she is congratulated by a pat on the shoulder for the victory, because she can't hear it, showing a dull expression.
This kind of involuntary stagnation is Keiko's world.
And director Takashi Miyake chose to abandon the original script and adapt Keiko Ogasawara's autobiography "Don't Lose! , probably attracted by the "state" presented by the characters.
Compared to people with disabilities, boxing or marginalization, it's really an experience that can be shared widely.
The film is set in 2020.
Keiko, a hearing-impaired girl, works as a hotel cleaner while training day in and day out to become a professional boxer.
However, due to the blow of the epidemic and the deteriorating health of the old curator played by Yukazu Miura, her gym is about to close.
Instead of describing a specific difficulty or showing the inconvenience of a hearing-impaired person, Miyake tries to use audiovisual to get us into Keiko's rhythm.
Much of the film's sound comes from the environment itself—the whip-like jump rope, the rubbing of boxing gloves, the sound of tram tracks, conversations, closing doors, sheets rubbing against covers.
They make a space boring, clean, and concise, but it is only known to the audience outside the picture.
Because she can only read lip language and sign language, everything that is outside Keiko's field of vision, such as the colliding pedestrian yelling behind the back, the friend pushing the door behind the back, and the conversation under the mask, can be said to be "non-existent".
The ambient sound gave us an idea of what's going on around us, but she couldn't.
Things outside of vision create Keiko's "ignorance," or "unsoundness" in the true sense.
But interestingly, such "unsoundness" is sometimes actively blocked, helping her block out ugly arguments, awkward socializing, and noisy city noise.
Between "knowing and not knowing", Keiko can only grasp the literal "in front of the eyes", which is an uneasiness that normal people cannot understand.
In the film, when her brother persuades her to talk about her troubles, she replies:
"Having said that, you have to face it alone."
This dilemma is unquantifiable, nor is it a loneliness that can be resolved by sharing.
It is the sense of betrayal when the world does not unfold the whole picture to you, and she deeply appreciates the "imperfection" at the level of a worldview, and then makes up for it in her own way and keeps up.
So, Why does Keiko box?
It is not so much the so-called "talent for fighting", but in fact, she does not have enough arm span and is not tall, but just constructs her own "voice" in the strike.
The caller is vibrating, and the alarm clock that wakes up is the blowing of the fan's timing - Keiko's way of learning about the world is physical, purely seen, visited, and felt.
And punching, hitting and being hit, silently accepting and creating flesh vibrations, must be said to be a happy and stable experience, which is her internal rhythm and rhythm.
Because I don't know "behind", I can only grasp the sincerity and concentration in front of me, which is a kind of secret fearlessness that occurs in the daily life of the individual.
This is the experience that Keiko can share with us.
In this sense, she even becomes an allegorical projection of the pandemic. That silent loss of speech and ignorance is also the state of "people" in the epidemic dilemma.
The real crisis in the film, tracing back to the origin, is actually a reversal of the times.
In the superposition of sign language, whiteboards, silent film subtitles, diary texts, and more, Keiko is first deprived of her ears, and then the mask covers our mouths.
Like the police and photographer in the film, they learn that Keiko is disabled, but only raise her voice and forget to take off her mask.
But the old curator, who does not know sign language and does not use words, can resonate with Keiko at the same frequency.
On the one hand, we not only "see", but also gaze at Keiko, and we also follow Keiko's gaze to see another kind of Tokyo, another possibility of connection and communication.
In an interview, Miyake said that "Arakawa is Tokyo's boxing ring" in the story, and he refers to the change of time and land, the friction and collision between geography and terroir every minute.
"Ah! Wilderness
And landing on ordinary people, if the old curator represents, it is the generation of clumps who fight to rationalize hatred written by Shuji Terayama.
Keiko, on the other hand, is a deeper form of self-resistance.
In the repeated repetition of the picture, the film gradually diffuses a subtle fighting spirit.
It has no purpose, it is continuous and stable, and this is the resistance of the weak alone.
Train daily, control your body, take advantage of the time to wake up in the morning, and distinguish between rest days and working days. Like an ascetic marching under the bridge of the city, how many steps or ten kilometers, with or without weight, the pace of the combined fist, the softness of the tendons.
None of this is great, just keep alive.
So, when her mother asked Keiko, "Isn't it enough to become a professional player?" ”
But in reality, she has no goals, no deadlines, and no specific wins and losses.
It's just the relaxation that comes with daily training, and the sense of control that is not intellectually or rationally, sinking deep into the body.
Outside the ring, Keiko's bout has already begun, and the dust in the air, the hairballs on her coat, and the guitar plucking strings she can't hear all suggest a match against time itself.
Of course, the final presentation of this texture would not have been possible without the interpretation of the heroine Yukino Kishii.
She has been playing various sweet girls and supporting roles all the way, and this time, she has undergone a rebirth from her figure to her eyes.
The "amateur feeling" presented by Kishii Yukino and the ruthlessness of silence give real weight to the incomparably simple image.
The English title of "Keiko, Gaze" translates as "small, slow but steady", which accurately conveys the film's so-called "private heroism".
Continuous living is also great.
Adjust your breathing, focus, maintain your speed, control your body, and gaze at what is in front of you.
It is exactly the same as Chekhov wrote in "The Three Sisters":
To live, you must live. One day, everyone will know what all this is for, what this suffering is for, but now, you must live.