Asian

MOVIE REVIEW [Screener] . This World of Ours (Oretachi No Sekai)

Remember being a senior in High School, drugging and raping underclassmen and making bombs filled with razor blade schrapnel? No? Maybe you were the self-mutilating waif with a penchant for instigating violence amongst your classmates. Not that either? Boy, times sure have changed, eh? Or maybe the epitaph left by This World of Ours (Oretachi No Sekai) is that things haven’t changed, that immorality is a distinct rite of passage and possibly a survival requisite.

Fueled by the familiar “coming-of-age” annals describing peer pressure and self-imposed persecution, filmmaker Ryo Nakajima chains us to three teenagers, one of whom shares his name, most likely conceived during his own reclusive trial (the “shut-in” trend which plagues so many Japanese youth today) where he possibly watched Clockwork Orange repeatedly.

These despondent kids on their dramatic treks to maturity, one desperately focused to accommodate societal expectation, aspiring to be a lifelong desk jockey, and one without regard for the future, resigning himself to class bully status in response to brutal antagonization from his teacher and a well-intentioned nagging mom. Both boys’ ideas of adulthood are heavily influenced by their fathers, albeit estranged; their current surrogate male fixtures incorrigibly stepping in to bid inclining impact on each teen’s future. Although they’ve never met, and besides their glaring similarities, the two boys are loosely linked by a girl who takes pleasure in pitting peers against each other and watching their orchestrated demise from the wings like some sadistic puppet show. Perhaps her home life is so chaotic that the only reliable notions are the predictable behaviors she can manipulate/initiate from others. Ah, they’re growing up.

Revolving around combative vs. defeatist attitudes of bullies young and old, acknowledging oppressive assimilation, erosion of free will and purpose, and the struggle to maintain empowerment despite these obstacles, This World of Ours (Oretachi No Sekai) conveys a fatalist effort prismed with crafty camerawork, misplaced messages of 9/11, Rossini’s William Tell Overture reruns (Clockwork Orange reference again), bulging-eyed actors. As far-fetched and calculous a story it may seem, This World of Ours grows on you (believe me, I felt it was obnoxious at first) and imparts a dense realism. Although you’ll be completely devoid of empathy (unless you answered “yes” to the initial quiz above), you’ll be drawn to the characters’ bleak infallible inadequacy “ideals”, if just to wish you could shake them from their funk.

San Francisco Independent Film Festival screenings: February 10 & 11, 2008

About the Author

Kris Kobayashi-Nelson says these directors/screenwriters rarely disappoint: Peter Greenaway, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Gus van Sant. Gregg Araki. Kris claims that Jake Gyllenhaal, Cillian Murphy, Desmond Harrington and Casey Affleck are much more than pretty faces.