A Pale View Of Hills

Bluesky

Even viewed at this remove, so long after he burst onto the literary scene, there is a freshness about Kazuo Ishiguro’s work, a lightness in spite of the dark subjects he explores. It’s a quality that demands a certain crispness when transferred to the screen, for all its sensuality, and this is the trait most notable about Kei Ishikawa’s adaptation, thanks to cinematographer Piotr Niemyjski. Together with Akira Maguchi and Lee Tolley’s evocative production design, and some wonderful costuming, it makes the film a visual treat. Fans of the novel will find it beguiling, even if other aspects of this version slightly miss the mark.

The story is framed through a series of conversations between middle-aged Japanese woman Etsuko (Suzu Hirose) and her adult daughter Niki (Camilla Aiko), who has grown up in England and is completely English in her style, speech and manner. There is a further frame – Etsuko in old age, remembering this when she wakes up, like a half-remembered dream – which points the lingering ambiguity of the original. Etsujo and Niki’s conversation takes place in the 1980s, when the former is packing things away in preparation for the sale of the family home, but it centres on the early 1950s, with old photographs, letters and Niki’s impending writing assignment prompting discussion of the past.

Why haven’t they discussed these things before, bit by bit, as most families do? Every reflection on the past is complicated by the presence of a third character whom we never meet: Etsuko’s first daughter, Keiko. Struggling to adjust with being moved from Japan as a child (an experienced which mirrors Ishiguro’s own), she killed herself some years ago. The two sisters together can be seen as a stand-in for the author, whilst Etsuko provides a path to understanding something of Japan’s troubled past.

Introducing the Fifties scenes, Ishikawa presents us with a series of black and white photographs from the period, full of laughing children. The war is over and Japan is experiencing a new feeling of freedom and possibility – but things are not so easy for older generations. Etsuko is expecting a child; she and her husband Jiro (Kôhei Matsushita) read a newspaper article about a child strangled to death. Sitting in her window, reading about US fashion, she overhears her neighbours’ anti-Americanism. Jiro’s father, Ogata (Tomokazu Miura) struggles with the idea of change, and with the disruption of traditional values which he, as a teacher, once worked hard to instill. In one scene, Etsuko and Ogata talk about the day when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. The glow from the window briefly overwhelms everything that we can see. Etsuko’s tears shine brightly as they are scattered by her eyelashes.

Weighed down by feelings of guilt and always willing to give way, or even lie, to keep life simple and peaceful, Etsuko is still reeling from the shock of that day. Her response is contrasted with that of Sachiko (Fumi Nikaidô), who wears the clothes she only dreams about, makes little effort to hide her radiation scars, and snaps back angrily at people who express prejudice about them. Confessing that she never fully understood her, Etsuko is increasingly drawn to this woman, and there are points when their identities become blurred. She is disturbed, however, by Sachiko’s neglect of her deeply troubled, depressive daughter, Mariko, who find her only joy in a pair of tiny tabby kittens she keeps in a box.

There’s a theatrical aspect to some of the framing, especially during the search for Mariko when she goes missing. The two women rush through thick undergrowth which tangles around their feet. We will return to this image later, at a pivotal moment. On each occasion it is dusk, and the gradual purpling on the sky creates a surreal atmosphere.

All of this fine work has potential, but too often the deeper ideas in the book are teased only to be abandoned. Even if you haven’t read it, you’re likely to feel frustrated by the film’s failure to fill out its subplots, replacing what might be potently elusive with what is merely thin. After all this, the ending feels heavy handed and awkward, prescriptive when that elusiveness matters most. As a result, though the flavour of it is there, the film never reaches the deep, aching places that it should. it skirts over tragedy which should have a profound impact on the viewer.

There is enough here to enchant, but not enough to make you fall in love. It’s a beautiful distraction but a missed opportunity to deliver something much more profound.

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