彼方の閃光 「Kanata no Senko」
Release Date: December 08th, 2023
Duration: 169 mins.
Director: Yoshihiro Hanno
Writer: Yoshihiro Hanno, Natsuo Shimao, Toru Okada (Screenplay), Yoshihiro Hanno (Original Story),
Starring: Gordon Maeda, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Awich, Shogen, Masayuki Ito, Masaya Kato,
Lightning Over the Beyond is an indie production from Yoshihiro Hanno that gains epic proportion by using the format of a road movie and hopping forward through time to explore big themes of war and the question of “what is an enemy?” and having a gorgeous visual palette.
The film is Hanno’s fourth feature and, in a way, is similar way to his last work, Paradise Next (2019) in being a story about two guys with troubled backgrounds travelling together and slowly revealing their travails. While Paradise featured gangsters in Taiwan, Lightning features anti-war dreamers in southern Japan.
We follow Hikari (Gordon Maeda), who we see at three points at his life. The lion’s share of his story occurs when he is a 20-year-old student at a Tokyo art university. His childhood experience of life was defined by his blindness and, although his vision was restored through surgery at the age of nine, he remained colour blind. Having just begun entering adulthood, he struggles to overcome being unable to harmonise with a world that offers so much that he can only just make out.
Inspiration eventually comes one summer from the post-war photography of Shomei Tomatsu which leads Hikari to Nagasaki and an invitation to make a documentary film by a self-proclaimed revolutionary, a garrulous older man named Tomobe (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi) who latches on to the younger man while weaving grand dreams of a world without war and capitalism. It is the sort of talk that sound compelling when young and inexperienced but recognisable as a trite pipedream to person a bit wiser and worn out by experience.
Hikari’s interest piqued, and with camera and mic in hand, the production is launched. Their subject is following the traces of conflict by talking to and recording the voices of survivors of the atomic bombing in Nagasaki (the persecution of Christians in the area is tied in), and the American assault and occupation of Okinawa.
Of course, this physical journey to document conflict doubles as an emotional one as friction emerges between two men wrestling with their own trauma.
While some of the writing is platitudinous with regards to the subject of war, the honest approach to highlighting civilian suffering is moving. While Tomobe’s backstory reveal feeling bathetic despite foreshadowing and serious delivery, the interweaving of real-life facts with the drama does work.
The war documentary angle is an astute choice for story framework as it provides a natural stage for conflict and a thematic backdrop centred on exploring ideas of what drives people to antagonistic behaviours. Both Hikari and Tomobe organically begin to display their own antagonism to the world as questions of the morality of their project and their commitment to it drag them together and apart. Character backstory informs action. Tomobe’s abandonment issues leads to cynical and violent actions pushing people away while Hikari remains idealistic and emphatic about his need to be empathetic to his subjects and tries to draw them in. This push-pull tension leads to compelling character drama where a surprising amount of sexual and violent attraction between the two organically springs up.
At times the film feels like it can drift as the doc drags on and the protags circle their issues and history but the acting and atmosphere are strong enough to make an absorbing time.
Gordon Maeda, son of Sonny Chiba, uses his youthful looks to sell an earnestness that conveys passion; passion for other people when Hikari enjoys their company, a wrathful youthful passion witnessed alcohol-tinged tirades about the world, and the hesitant longing passion to belong to someone, anyone, who will share his world view and that imbues the film with energy so that his emotional journey is affecting. Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, who played a character caught in conflict with crime, race, and sexuality in Okinawa in Takashi Miike’s Blues Harp (1998), is a great foil as he fluctuates between being a lightning quick charismatic impresario/politico with a broad smile, all defined by manic energy, and utopian thinking with heavy aggressive movements and contorted face as his character’s mood rises and falls during the story.
The side characters are made more three-dimensional thanks to the performers, especially rapper Awich, who plays Tomobe’s on-off lover Amy and Shogen, so mature, bitter and august in courtroom drama December (2022) who slips into a warm-hearted performance drawn from being in his native Okinawa and it all helpfully pushes Hikari’s character arc through to the end as his character comes to terms with conflict and hopes for a better world in another time period altogether, a sentiment beautifully reinforced by seeing Hikari in youth in the final image.
Hanno’s gift for visuals is tremendous. He is good at capturing Hikari’s worldview via having his visual acuity dictating the look of the film, starting from black screens and narration for blindness to black-and-white. In a similar vein, Hanno highlights the tactility of things, from the paints Hikari uses and the rough textures he creates in his art, to the bristle of Tomobe’s facial hair and the grasping of flesh by emotionally and carnally needy hands.
Even if the pacing sags at times, the crisp looks of the film maintain atmosphere. The Nagasaki hillsides in the dusk as lights twinkle on in the descending dark, a tram trundling along a street and two characters having a smoke while leaning against a car all have a moody feel. The shadows cast upon faces and naked bodies have an erotic pull as they highlight the curves and touch. The searing heat and sultry atmosphere of Hikari’s summer journey is highlighted by masterful use of light and dark that give the film an epic and timeless feel so that the anti-war message benefits.
Lightning Over the Beyond is the fourth directorial work from a man better known as a composer since Hanno has scored the works of notable filmmakers like Hou Hsiao-hsien (Flowers of Shanghai, 1998, Millennium Mambo, 2001), and Jia Zhangke (Platform, 2000, 24 City 2008, Mountains May Depart, 2015) – he also did Call Boy (2018). As a director, he displays the eye of an ace photographer to create striking images while his performers imbue the characters with a rich sense of vitality that lifts the film off the page and into a realm of passions.
Lightning Over the Beyond was screened theatrically as part of the Japan Film Festival Los Angeles 2024. It is available to stream until September 15. Visit this site for more info.