I Wish (2011)

I reviewed Kore-eda's Still Walking a while ago.  I was blown away by that film and I Wish is just as powerful. The film is unusual in many ways. Kore-eda's interest in existential questions is never heavy-handed, or tragic. The two films I've seen by him have both been life-affirming, but without a trace of the shallow and ideological feel-good structure that the American indie 'gems' tend to wallow in. Another unusual thing is the film's non-sentimental perspective on children as beings with full-blown lives with all the ambiguity and tension that involves. The story is a simple, yet quite erratic, one. Two brothers live apart from each other as their parents have split up. They talk on the phone and we follow the brothers in school and at home. One of the brothers live with his grandparents and his mother in a rural area next to a volcano. The other kid lives with his dad, who plays indie rock music. Both brothers engage in a tale about wish fulfillment: if one watches two particular trains intersect, then one can make a wish and the wish will become true. The kids take their friends with them to that place where the trains intersect. A third things that makes I Wish an unusual film is how the lighthearted style puts a frame around the existential concerns of the film. That style is, I would presume, not chosen in order to sugarcoat the story for the impatient viewers. Kore-eda shows how life goes on, despite all the sad things that occur in our lives. As I said, there is never a hint of tragedy in the film. The children's lives are seen from a perspective of joy and curiosity. The dialogue wanders off in ever-surprising directions. The kids are shown as both caring and brutal beings, insightful at times, immersed in fantasy most of the time. But Kore-eda never chooses to treat the kids' dreamy world from a grown-up perspective of disenchantment: the dreams reveal something about the world we all inhabit, kids and adults. The lack of sentimentality is evident on the kind of surroundings Kore-eda places his protagonists in: a matter-of-fact world. Urban life is compared with rural life, but neither is treated in a romantic way. A kid messes with a plant, but there is no hint that this is supposed to be the big Revelation of the fragility and mystery of existence. The jolly musical score co-exists with Kore-eda's wonderful (that's my opinion) fascination with the mundane look of infrastructure: roads, train stations, noises, telephones. I Wish is a film to marvel at by a truly vital director whose approach to film is one I am highly sympathetic with. I am happy that this kind of film gets done and that so many people are interested in watching it (I attended a film festival in Helsinki and the cinema was packed).