The Big Empty

Air Doll (2009) - Kore-eda Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll appears to be tackling the modern society's illness - urban loneliness and soullessness, the themes explored by by other prominent Japanese auteurs of its time, namely, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sion Sono and Shinji Aoyama, with Korean actress Bae Doona (Linda, Linda, Linda, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Host). The result is a mixed bag.

Adapted from a manga, about a blow-up sex doll, Air Doll is an odd choice for Kore-eda in his mid-career, because he had always been regarded as a Ozu's heir apparent with his gentle, life affirming, if not death obsessed films. It concerns a middle-aged man living alone with his sex doll (Bae), named after his ex-girlfriend Nozomi, as a companion. He talks to her and bathes her and has sex with her. While he is out working as a waiter at a restaurant, Nozomi comes to life and walks around the town. She even gets a job at a video rental store. People around her are unbothered by her demeanor or she has seam lines around her body. With her big eyes and blank expression, Bae approaches the role with pure wonder and innocence of a new born child.

Nozomi's accented Japanese narration serves well as an inanimate object which came to life and just gained a heart. Walking around and meeting people, observing and experiencing human conditions, she learns that there are others out there that compliment you and complete you to have a full life, that people need one another. She has an accident at the job and punctures her arm and deflates and her colleague Junichi (Arata) puts a plastic tape on her arm and blows air back into her navel. The romance begins. He says she and he are not unlike. He feels empty inside as well. He says many feel that way. She then experiences heartbreak, realizing that she is someone else's mere substitution.

She even tracks down her maker (Joe Odagiri). He philosophically explains that human life is both sad and beautiful. But when all is said and done, we are either burnable (humans) or unburnable (sex dolls, because of environmental restrictions) garbage. Yes, once it gets dark, it never lets up.

The film is closer to Spielberg's A.I- Dark yet saccharine. There are secondary stories of other characters we get only glimpses of, and don't quite resonate as it should. Air Doll is not quite the right fit for genteel filmmaker.

Reach Out and Touch Faith

Distance (2001) - Kore-eda Hirokazu Kore-eda paints a complex picture in the aftermath of unspeakable acts of terrorism and contemplates on the collective responsibility in Distance, inspired by Aum Shinrikyo Sarin Gas Attack in Tokyo Subways in 1995. But in true Kore-eda fashion, the film is not about the carnage or condemnation of the soulless society, but a plea for us to reach out and take care of each other, even though understanding one another can be hard.

It's been three years since the Ark of Truth cult sabotaged Tokyo's water supply system that killed hundreds and injured thousands, we are informed by the TV broadcast. After the act, the members of the cult committed suicide, and their bodies burned and the ashes scattered. Four family members of the cultists, still grappling with the fact that their loved ones committed such a heinous act, get together and pay a visit to the lake in the countryside where the ashes are supposedly scattered. It is revealed that they've been doing this annually, making the trips together to pay respects to the dead.

On the way to the lake, they encounter a surviving cult member Sakata (Tadanobu Asano), who abandoned the group at the last minute, there as well. He keeps his distance. After the visit to the lake and paying respects in various forms, (laying flowers in the water, praying and just saying a few words) they turn back, only to find their car stolen. It's getting late and the rain storm is brewing in the distance, they have no choice but follow Sakata into a cabin which was home for cult members.

Talking to each other and asking Sakata as they spend the night together, they find out the insights and thinking behind their estranged family members. In the beginning, Kore-eda unhurriedly shows the four living their lives, doing their jobs - a swimming instructor, a teacher, a salaryman and a florist. In a series of flashbacks, we get to witness their interactions with their family members who became cult members. Something is missing in their lives, they want to start over, they want to heal their souls...

Just like his previous films - Maborosi and Afterlife, Kore-eda plays the pivotal memories of each character- their final goodbyes, losing them forever to the cult - things get violent for some, not understanding their family, some uneventful and more contemplative. However, that was the last interaction they have had with their loved ones.

Like all his other films, Kore-eda concentrates on the concept of a family in Distance. That it is our duty to shorten the distance between us before it becomes too far and unreachable. With the poetic visuals and contemplative nature, Distance is closer to his earlier films than family dramas of his later films. Unlike the Japanese cinema of disaffected in the late 90s and 2000s by filmmakers like Kiyoshi Kurosawa and others, Kore-eda wants to give us a glimpse of hope in human interactions and advocate reaching out and understanding each other with Distance.