Instigating feelings of nostalgia has always been a recipe for success for movies, although a number of filmmakers tend to go overboard resulting in films that become unnecessary melodramatic, a concept that is particularly evident in Hollywood productions. Chisaka Takuya manages to avoid the reef by also adding an abstract romance element in his 10 minute short.
“School Radio to Major Tom” screened at the 42nd PIA Film Festival
The story takes place during the summer of 1989. Eisuke Hoshi, a lonesome highschool student who is in charge of the morning section of the school radio, where he plays old radio dramas no one is listening to. One day, an unknown girl who attends classes at night starts recording her own parts as a character from David Bowie's “Space Oddity”. As Eisuke hears a female voice calling “ground control to Major Tom”, he decides to use her recording for a kind of space radio drama, which, in his imagination, starts taking place outside the Earth. Gradually, he begins to fall in love with the voice, but never attempts to actually communicate with the girl, an attitude she also shares. His hopes, however, of meeting her raise upon graduation, since all students are supposed to attend. The day before, he receives a recording with the girl finally addressing him.
The concept of two strangers recording a radio drama without ever meeting is rather romantic on itself, and Takuya intensifies it by placing it on the specific era, where the lack of social media made such connections possible. The dreams of the Eisuke, both in the way he shapes the opera in his head and the potential of a romance also work quite well in the narrative, as much as the twist in the end, that adds a very welcome sense of drama and teenage longing in the short.
The whole retro-essence the movie emits is intensified by the visuals, with the quality of the film and the coloring pointing directly to the 80s-90s, in a delightful approach that intensifies the nostalgia the movie emits through its retro-approach.
“School Radio to Major Tom” is an impressive short, particularly in the way Takuya has managed to incorporate elements of drama, teen romance, and nostalgia in the most economic fashion.
