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Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021): What the Words Do
Hamaguchi’s “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” features three interlinked stories exploring misrecognition through language rather than chance. Each episode reveals unexpected emotional connections shaped by spoken words. The film emphasizes the transformative power of dialogue, highlighting how characters confront and redefine their identities in intimate exchanges, particularly among women.
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Drive My Car (2021): The Method He Cannot Use on Himself
Hamaguchi’s film Drive My Car centers on theatre director Yusuke Kafuku, who teaches actors to express emotionless dialogue while struggling with his own grief for two years. His method, intended for clarity, masks his inability to confront loss, culminating in a profound realization during rehearsals of Uncle Vanya through the voice of his deceased wife.
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Every Institution Says This Family Isn’t Real. Look at Them.
They eat together. This is the first thing you need to know about the family in Shoplifters, and it is the thing Hirokazu Kore-eda returns to again and again, because it is the foundation of everything he is arguing. They sit around a low table in a house too small for all of them, and…
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Nobody Tells the Truth in Rashomon. That’s Not the Point.
It is raining. Three men sit beneath a ruined gate. The gate is enormous, crumbling, a relic of something that was once grand. The rain falls in sheets. The men have nowhere to go. They have time. And one of them says he does not understand what happened. This is the frame. This is where…
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Every Institution Takes Your Name. Spirited Away Is About Getting It Back.
A girl walks through a tunnel. She’s ten years old. She’s sulking. Her parents are moving to a new town and she doesn’t want to go. She clutches a bouquet of flowers someone gave her as a going-away gift, and she slumps in the back seat, and her face is the universal face of a…