InlanDimensions International Arts Festival Japanese Reviews Reviews

Film Review: Haruhara-san’s Recorder (2021) by Kiyoshi Sugita

An evocative and poetic meditation on loss.

In many ways, “Haruhara-san's Recorder”, Kyoshi Sugita's newest feature, is a continuation of the the themes and textures explored in his previous film “Listen to Light”. Just like the latter, “Haruhara-san's Recorder” is based on a tanka, this time by Naoko Higashi. The movie won the Grand Prize at FIDMarseille.

“Haruhara-san's Recorder” is screening as part of InlanDimensions International Arts Festival

Sachiko (), a twentysomething woman from Hokkaido, moves into a rented apartment somewhere in Tokyo. She got the place from a colleague from her new job at a small cafe in the city. She spends her days lazing around in her new apartment and working at the cafe. Sometimes, she is visited by friends and through her interactions with them, we learn that there is a reason why Sachiko lives like that.

“Haruhara-San's Recorder” is a film about  loss. How losing a friend, especially the way Sugita suggests Sachiko lost hers, defines the person for the rest of his life. Though she acts as if she's come to terms with Haruhara's hinted at suicide, she hasn't, nor she ever will. That is why she often gazes quietly from different windows, as if subconsciously trying to find her friend.

There are other subtle indications that neither Sachiko, nor any of the other characters is ready to accept the absence of their loved ones. For example, through a breathtakingly framed shot, we learn that Sachiko leaves her front door open whenever she's home. She might be doing it for a better ventilation, but at the same time, this open door functions both as an “invitation” to her gone friend to visit her and a symbol for the character's lack of acceptance of her friend's passing.

Photographs and other physical objects have a similar function for some of the other characters Sachiko meets at the cafe. Case in point is a lost woman whom the main character helps find the way to what seems an unassuming building. Seeing it, she breaks down crying and asks Sachiko to take her photo. Others do the same – asking Sacchan (as many call her) to pose for a photo, to shoot a video of her while eating. The recurring theme of eating and photography, again, can be read as a means of the quietly grieving characters to remember the one they've lost.

The previous paragraphs may create the wrong impression of “Haruhara-san's Recorder” being this overly dramatic experience. Quite the opposite. It's a very slow and seemingly uneventful film filled with subtle moments of excruciating sadness. We witness them when a character sees an empty plate and bursts out crying or another sees a recorder and starts playing it softly. But most of all, we experience it through the use of empty space. This is a type of emptiness that goes beyond the social isolation imposed on the world by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, the empty space is a negative one, defined by the definite absence of people gone forever. Or a single person, in particular – Haruhara.

The film is pleasing from a technical perspective too. The long static shots filled with lots of empty space and sparse movement evoke a complex feeling of loss and resignation. This is further strengthened by the fact that “Haruhara-san's Recorder” seems to have been shot during the COVID-19 pandemic and all of the characters wear masks and are rather cautious, awkward even, around one another. This, again, might be because due to the spreading disease or maybe because of the personal loss of the characters.

“Haruhara-san's Recorder” never tells us anything apart from the fact Sachiko is renting a new apartment and working at a cafe, for that matter. Just like the type of poetry it is based on, it only very subtly suggests what might have happened, making it at time difficult, but in the end, rewarding experience.

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