I'm not a big fan of young Japanese director Yuya Ishii, so I usually don't go to watch his movies. I have an image of Yuya Ishii as a commercial movie director, so actually, I haven't seen much of his movies. The only movie I had seen directed by him was Our Family (Bokutachi no kazoku), and it was not something memorable although I enjoyed it.
http://www.yozora-movie.com/sp/index.html
I went to see Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue (Yozora wa itsudemo saiko mitsudo no aoiro da) directed by Ishii because the general manager of movie theatre Eurospace recommended me this film. Without his recommendation, I would have not gone to see it.
It turned out as one of the most memorable Japanese films I've seen in the past a few years.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/tokyo-night-sky-is-densest-shade-blue-review-974919
The film goes on mostly with monologues of two main characters, and it sounds like novel or poem. I normally don't like monologue or narration in films as monologue or narration tends to explain the things too much. In fact, I've seen so many Japanese films with monologue or narration recently. Most of them disappoint me as it often destroys the cinematic world being created. It is also very strange to hear that the characters suddenly start talking by himself like novel or stage play in film. I'm sick of monologue or narration in Japanese films.
However, this time, I felt very comfortable listening the monologues in this film. First of all, the characters are very strange although the film sets in real modern Tokyo. I think the strange atmosphere makes the monologues natural while the film is describing real true things about Tokyo now.
Another reason I like this film is that I really empathyze with the characters and with what the film wants to say.
Old apartments the characters living are similar to where I live now. This is a story of people living in the shade of metropolis Tokyo, but they choose to be there.
I do empathyze with those people a lot as I was working for a big company and living in a fancy apartment until a few years ago. Now my income is almost nothing, and I live in a shitty apartment no one wants to live. However, which is better? Living in a shitty place is not bad at all.
Since I started living in the shitty place, I've neen getting away from noise such as gothips, politics, human relationshops, etc. as I don't have TV and don't meet people everyday like before. Instead, I start noticing about something else.
I still get noise from Facebook and Twitter, and I hope I can get away from those too.
TV is gone, but Facebook and Twitter are getting worse nowadays. People talk about Trump, the conspiracy bill in Japan, etc.. If we don't hear any news about those things at all, does that change my life?
This film is trying to describe the same feeling I have as long as I understand. There are something more important than Trump or the conspiracy bill around me. I just don't realize about those things if there are too much noise around.
After watching this film, I really felt relaxed and relieved.
And another Japanese film I watched recently was Radiance (Hikari) directed by Naomi Kawase. This film also uses a lot of monologues as the film is about a girl who is a writer of audio descriptions for the visually impaired. I also liked this film a lot as it was interesting to see how those writers approach the film, the director, and the audience when the film is basically made for visual experience...