Introduction

While working as assistant director for directors like Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Shinji Aoyama, Kyoshi Sugita took time to assume and refuse stylish elements from the masters he worked with. Yet, it is only by putting one’s creative vision into practise that a style can come into being. 

As Sugitacrafted Hitotsu no Uta (2011), Listen To Light (2017), and Haruhara San’s recorder (2021), he established himself as someone who, rather than relying on the signifier, aims to evoke the state of the character’s mind by relying on facial expressions and body language. His latest narrative is no different.

Review

One afternoon, Haru (An Ogawa) approaches Yukiko (Yuko Nakamura), an older woman, on the street to help her find a restaurant called Kinokoya. Despite the sadness that is etched into her facial expression, Yukiko offers her to guide her to the restaurant. Haru has also been discreetly tailing Tsuyoshi (Hidekazu Mashima), an older man, to observe his demeanour.

What pulls Haru towards these two subjects is nothing other than the unresolved nature of the motherly loss she suffered in the past. She, who accidently encountered Yukiko and Tsuyoshi in the past when they also struggled with subjective injuries, hopes to discover, through observation, a way to work-through her own pain. 

Following The Sound traces out the very struggle the subject must deal with his/her grief and loss. In fact, Sugita’s narrative shows how the subject tries to silence one’s pain by leaning onto others who also suffer. Yet, Following The Sound also illustrates that without talking about one’s loss a true solution cannot be forced or found.

The dynamic of leaning onto others to bandage oneself fits within Sugita’s aim to celebrate the importance and the beauty of the mundane encounter. He only succeeds in emphasizing the importance of such encounters by showing that individuals are separated by imaginary barriers and that, via the field of the imaginary, this separation can seemingly be overcome. In Following The Sound, a simple mundane act (e.g. sharing a meal, cooking together) or a simple signifier of support addressed to the other is revealed as offering some imaginary connection that, by seemingly effacing the distance between subjects, positively affects the suffering and/or inhibited subject. These moments of fleeting connection, however imaginary they may be, do not fail to have a reparative impact on the subject.

Yet, it should also be evident that these mundane moments of interaction cannot offer Haru the solution to her unresolved loss. The spectator must realize that Haru cannot gain much from mere observation, by merely investigating of how Yukiko and Tsuyoshi try to deal with their pain. Without truly realizing it, they way she organizes her life keeps her loss imprisoned and, more importantly, alive. The start of the process of working-through loss lies not in a solitary search for the ‘cure’ in the lives of others, but by mustering up one’s courage to address one’s suffering subject to another subject.  

So, while many moments of fleeting joy adorn the unfolding of the narrative, a taste of forlornness persists. This forlornness is born from the fact that while many moments of interaction bring a kind of medicative joy, the loss that the subject struggles with and needs to work through is not brought into play. Yet, the bonds that are formed within Following The Sound forms the prerequisite to be able to speak, to find the signifiers to put one’s loss into words.

The composition of Following The Sound is marked by minimalistic dynamism – a subtle tremble marks dynamic and more static moments alike. This kind of minimalism succeeds in infusing a certain sense of mundane realism into the narrative, while also creating an atmosphere that exudes stillness and calmness, that evokes that, despite the myriad of interactions, some inner-element remains silent.

The reliance on long takes, for that matter, is utilized by Sugita to emphasize emotional expressions and mundane acts (cooking food, taking a train, sharing a cigarette, …etc.). Sugita’s stylistic choice creates a certain serene stillness that silently celebrates the poetry of the everyday life while also giving his cast time to utilize their bodily presence to invite the spectator into the narrative. The combination between the subtle tremble and the long takes allows the emotional expressions to attain a flair of authenticity and naturalness. In fact, due to these stylistic choices, the emotional complexity of and the loss that lingers within the three main characters come to their full right.

The minimalism is also evident at the level of the sound-design. Yet, the combination of mundane sounds (e.g. birds chirping, … etc.) and silence that form the soundscape of his narrative spaces allows Sugita to subtle reverberate the sound of the encounter and heighten the spectator’s grasp on the positive impact of exchanging signifiers.  

Following The Sound is an incredible narrative about the subject’s struggle to deal with his loss. What makes Sugita’s narrative so powerful – and sets it apart from other similar narratives, is the fact that he, by focusing on body language and facial expressions, succeeds in making the spectator grasp that loss is a silent force that infests every signifier and act.