Sum it up I’d say the lasting impact of Kiyoshi Kurosawa films are the ones that delve into evil.
My latest take on Cloud (2024, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is that it’s a nasty mean cinematic evil that hacks into your morality and corrupts you. Before you even realize it’s too late.
It starts off this cool serene even calming slice of life everyman tale about an online reseller. I actually love this. Making the mundane compelling dynamic for me is the highest echelons of cinematic alchemy. Think neorealism. Dude everything about this world I know nothing about in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s hands becomes mesmerizing.
YOSHII back at his flat with the three point lighting setup white background dslr shooting the item for his online product listing somehow engulfs me in genuine curiosity interest. Magic. His hovering over that videogame like a honey badger. When his bitch gets home she is of secondary importance. I know I shouldn’t say bitch but if you’ve seen this you know the character AKIKO is a diabolical treacherous ho I’m sorry. Anyways when Yoshii’s finger hovers over that mouse is the most suspenseful moment in the film for me maybe more than anything else I’ve seen in a while.
Then this capitalist horror turns into an action movie. Bait and switch as audience punishment. A way of luring us into a trap which mirrors the downfall of the film’s protagonist. The downfall of society. Because what happened? How did we go from a character driven story into a gunfight that lasts an hour? Evil.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with action movies. But in Cloud there is a distinct moment when everyone Yoshii’s slighted wronged shows up to enact their vengeance that we have to ask ourselves wait what happened? It’s one of the most abrupt tonal shifts in cinema. We’ve been shanghaied. Can you still say shanghaied? From being immersed in this character driven narrative we are enjoying effortlessly we are blindsided by some pretty big asks. As in asking us to believe all these losers have resorted to 80s action movie revenge because they lost some money on ebay.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Cloud for doing this either. My favorite part about this whole thing is the guy with the lynch mask. I have this strong conviction about technology’s effect on society specifically what I feel like starts with the automobile how that bubble of anonymity facilitates the means whereby people honk or flip off really rude behavior because of it. Web even worse. Dark stuff.
And Cloud has yet another big ask when you have to decide how you feel about Yoshii in the end. There’s this disavowal mechanism where the characters he harms turn out to be the greater evil. Or so the film flexibly allows such an interpretation. Cloud even splits the shadow half into SANO. Tempting us even more with the excuse maybe Yoshii isn’t all bad.
Hell I don’t think he is. If the theorem of Cloud is integration of shadow + ethical compromise = success. And we can visibly read the remorse in the Yoshii character. Then we can only assume we are presented with the question of him being good right as he asks himself the same thing. We don’t know what he does after all this goes down. And the films wisely leaves it unanswered.
But if there’s one thing Kiyoshi Kurosawa has consistently used in so many other of his films it’s the expressionist process. When I say process I don’t mean to sound didactic or condescending but for the sake of clarity I mean in film production whenever you shoot a shot of an automobile and in reality it isn’t being driven by the person behind the wheel but is supposed to look like it is on camera it’s called poor man’s process. Some special effects person or a grip might say push the car a little. Or it can be pulled out on the road then it’s called a process trailer.
Anyway Kiyoshi Kurosawa almost always shoots poor man’s process with an opaque transparency serving as an ambiguous soft light for the window behind often a passenger or passengers on a bus. Think Cure. But later he also uses a process with artificial what I mean when I say expressionistic skies. The thunderstorms golden mixing with dark in the final scene in Cloud suggests the apocalypse. Or again the downfall of society. So in that sense it does answer the question for us.
It starts off this cool serene even calming slice of life everyman tale about an online reseller. I actually love this. Making the mundane compelling dynamic for me is the highest echelons of cinematic alchemy. Think neorealism. Dude everything about this world I know nothing about in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s hands becomes mesmerizing.
YOSHII back at his flat with the three point lighting setup white background dslr shooting the item for his online product listing somehow engulfs me in genuine curiosity interest. Magic. His hovering over that videogame like a honey badger. When his bitch gets home she is of secondary importance. I know I shouldn’t say bitch but if you’ve seen this you know the character AKIKO is a diabolical treacherous ho I’m sorry. Anyways when Yoshii’s finger hovers over that mouse is the most suspenseful moment in the film for me maybe more than anything else I’ve seen in a while.
Then this capitalist horror turns into an action movie. Bait and switch as audience punishment. A way of luring us into a trap which mirrors the downfall of the film’s protagonist. The downfall of society. Because what happened? How did we go from a character driven story into a gunfight that lasts an hour? Evil.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with action movies. But in Cloud there is a distinct moment when everyone Yoshii’s slighted wronged shows up to enact their vengeance that we have to ask ourselves wait what happened? It’s one of the most abrupt tonal shifts in cinema. We’ve been shanghaied. Can you still say shanghaied? From being immersed in this character driven narrative we are enjoying effortlessly we are blindsided by some pretty big asks. As in asking us to believe all these losers have resorted to 80s action movie revenge because they lost some money on ebay.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Cloud for doing this either. My favorite part about this whole thing is the guy with the lynch mask. I have this strong conviction about technology’s effect on society specifically what I feel like starts with the automobile how that bubble of anonymity facilitates the means whereby people honk or flip off really rude behavior because of it. Web even worse. Dark stuff.
And Cloud has yet another big ask when you have to decide how you feel about Yoshii in the end. There’s this disavowal mechanism where the characters he harms turn out to be the greater evil. Or so the film flexibly allows such an interpretation. Cloud even splits the shadow half into SANO. Tempting us even more with the excuse maybe Yoshii isn’t all bad.
Hell I don’t think he is. If the theorem of Cloud is integration of shadow + ethical compromise = success. And we can visibly read the remorse in the Yoshii character. Then we can only assume we are presented with the question of him being good right as he asks himself the same thing. We don’t know what he does after all this goes down. And the films wisely leaves it unanswered.
But if there’s one thing Kiyoshi Kurosawa has consistently used in so many other of his films it’s the expressionist process. When I say process I don’t mean to sound didactic or condescending but for the sake of clarity I mean in film production whenever you shoot a shot of an automobile and in reality it isn’t being driven by the person behind the wheel but is supposed to look like it is on camera it’s called poor man’s process. Some special effects person or a grip might say push the car a little. Or it can be pulled out on the road then it’s called a process trailer.
Anyway Kiyoshi Kurosawa almost always shoots poor man’s process with an opaque transparency serving as an ambiguous soft light for the window behind often a passenger or passengers on a bus. Think Cure. But later he also uses a process with artificial what I mean when I say expressionistic skies. The thunderstorms golden mixing with dark in the final scene in Cloud suggests the apocalypse. Or again the downfall of society. So in that sense it does answer the question for us.
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