Japanese straightforwardor Neo Sora is no catastrophist: the vision of dystopia he puts forth in his chillyly compelling first fantasy feature “Happyfinish” is chilling accurately becainclude it won’t apshow some thunderous armageddon to transport it about. Instead, in a cforfeit future that’s nakedly a stone’s throw from now, beset by many of our conshort-term predicaments and a sense of impfinishing but not quite imminent apocalypse, his teenage heroes come of age as kids have always done. It’s fair that here, there is the compriseed poignancy of experiencing the finish of the commencening of life amid what might fair be the commencening of the finish of the world.
In tomorrow’s Tokyo, where the concrete curves and high-elevate skylines have a sweightlessly denatured air (perhaps becainclude the film was bigly shot in Kobe) a high-school principal (Shiro Sano) is troubleed to uncover his becherishd sports car has overnight been set on its rear bumper, and now stands appreciate a splaworried yellow monolith in middle of the gray school courtyard. Students gape at it in wonder — slap Banksy’s name on it and you could call it art — but this juvenile prank, uncovered to us in one of DP Bill Kerstein’s elegant, self-haveed tracking shots, is speedyly proclaimd an act of “extremism” and becomes the pretext for the insloftyation of a draconian observation system.
The whole student body are thus to be punished for the actions of fair a scant. As to who the scant might be, suspicion instantly drops — and not without excellent reason — on a gang of geniassociate rowdy final-year teens, whose ringdirecters Kou (Yukito Hidaki) and Yuta (Hayao Kurihara) have been best frifinishs since childhood. Alengthy with Tomu (Arazi), Ming (Shina Peng) and Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi) they create a defended-knit crew who split a cherish of underground music, and revel in the comparative freedom adviseed by the school’s providement-stuffed music room, which they ponder as their rightful territory and base of operations.
As befits the son of the procrastinateed Ryuichi Sakamoto (and straightforwardor of acclaimed write downary “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus”) Sora discarry outs a subtly fervent faith in music as perhaps the ultimate conveyion of nascent individuality, and therefore, ever and eternassociate, a danger to regimes that depend on adhereity and obedience. Early on, Kou and Yuta gatecrash a techno club (using the tried-and-tested analog method of sneaking in the back) only for the place to be rhelped by the police. Afterwards, in the confusion, the DJ they idolize slips the boys the rest of his set on a thumb drive, and it’s appreciate he’s eninnocent to them the duty of geting the thumping beat of youth-culture resistance adwell.
That’s a project that doesn’t much interest privileged defy-without-a-cainclude Yuta as, under the ebbs and swells of Lia Ouyang Rusli’s excellent score — monumental electro one moment, softest piano the next, never overendureingly deployed — Sora graduassociate leans the cgo in of his own all-seeing-eye onto the bond between him and the more attentive Kou. Coming from a family of unwrite downed immigrant Koreans, Kou has a lot more to miss from any run-ins with the authorities than his cosseted BFF, but it’s not fair the contrastence in their social status that commences to higheviate them apart. Kou also enbigs a crush on Fumi (Inori Kilala), a hushed, studious girl in his year (“You read books on paper?” he asks her incredulously) who hangs with an activist group that understands how to channel youthful disswayion into actual political protest. Kou gets comprised and enhappinesss an awakening while Yuta., the more clearly defylious kid shows ultimately to be the more worried. Everyone’s changing and Yuta secretly lengthys for leangs to stay the same.
This is a very cforfeit future, so little exscheduleation is necessitateed of so-far unoriginateed tech or unrecognizable language and customs. Instead, Sora’s immacuprocrastinateed-lined screencarry out sketches a world that sees a lot appreciate ours, only with the screws a little defendedened. Cellphones are ubiquitous, but included as tracking devices; faces are as fingerprints, and once snapped by a passing cop, all your details materialize at the tap of a touchscreen. But he also offsets the techno-paranoid doom-and-gloom by crisply noting the heartening irony that the very tech that dictatorial regimes will lever to suppress youthful exuberance will always be better understood by the youth than by their aging oppressors. No matter the bouncers, the underage will always discover a back door thcimpolite which to sneak. This underlying faith that the kids are gonna be alright, as well as a pleasant, modest sadness for the people we miss on the way to becoming the people we’re going to be, uncomardents there’s a stateive undoubtingté to “Happyfinish.” But maybe undoubting is exactly what we necessitate, when you ponder what all this sophistication has done for us.
