Michihito Fujii, despite wanting to confront the Tohoku earthquake through cinema, struggled to find a fitting narrative envelope to deal with the loss it produced. In 2022, one year after receiving the project of The Parades, its initiator died: Micheal or Mitsunobu Kawamura, the CEO of Star Sands, Inc. and the creative force behind Tetsuya Mariko’s From Miyamoto to You (2019), Takuma Sato’s Any Crybabies Around? (2020), Tatsushi Omori’s Mother (2020), Keisuke Yoshida’s Intolerance (2021) and Missing (2024), and many of Michihito Fujii’s other films.
The sudden task to mourn a personal loss gave Fujii the necessary subjective fuel to frame the loss caused by the devastating earthquake and Real of death creatively. Central to his creative exploration is the idea that the medium of cinema can preserve the existence of people, places, eras (東北放送, 2024). Film forms the imaginary support for symbolic remembrance. At the same time, he plays with the fact that people, who are physically absent, leave traces of their existence on subjects (Psycho-note 1). Our subjectivity delivers the symbolic frame that ensures the continued symbolic existence of those who passed away.
The Parades, however, is not merely an attempt by Fujii to erect a filmic memorial for Mitsunobu Kawamura – a personal journey of mourning, but a filmic experience dedicated to those who are no longer among us. With his film, Fujii aims to create the possibility for the spectator, to paraphrase Lily Franky’s words, to reignite one’s remembrance of someone who was once there (CyberAgent, Inc. (n.d.).
The narrative of The Parades commences when Minako (Masami Nagasawa), after falling victim the brutal currents of waves, wakes up on the shore. As she looks around, she sees debris everywhere – in the water, on the beach, the coastal town turned to rubble, yet no sign of her son Ryo (Haru Iwakawa). Desperate, she starts searching for him.
In the nearby gym, she approaches Kanda (-), one of her colleagues, and his daughter Yuko. She asks about Ryo, but he ignores her. Upon touching his shoulder, everyone suddenly disappears – she cannot physically touch anyone. Not much later, while walking through the rumble, Akira (Kentaro Sakaguchi), a man passing by in a van, suddenly calls out to her and invites her to a gathering place on a hill nearby.
Confused, she demands some answers. Former yakuza Shori (Ryusei Yokohama), being pushed by the others, tells her she is dead and that she, having regrets just like the rest of them, is unable to move on. Slightly affronted by the easy-going ways of the others – former snack-owner Kaori (Shinobu Terajima), film-producer Michael (Lily Franky), and ex-banker Tanaka (Tetsushi Tanaka), she soon learns that, every month under a new full moon, a parade of deceased sets out in the hope of encountering the person they hope to meet.
The Parades is not simply a narrative of finding closure after death, but about discovering the chance to verbalize/enunciate the signifier that can finalize one’s subjective narrative – be it an apology, a word of farewell, an act. The subject’s regret is shown to be function of the unexpected inability to enunciate those signifiers that were known to be important but remained unsaid. In the first parade, for instance, Minako witnesses a father re-finding his family and discovers that, for him, the missing signifier concerns an apology concerning his failure to act in accordance with his fatherly ideal – i.e. a father protects his family.
Yet, after the introduction of the film’s title, Fujii immediately emphasizes that certain subjects, like Akira, avoid (fully grasping) the truth of their inability to move on, of their continued lingering within this space that is part and not part of the physical world. Or, to put it differently, certain subjects want to avoid finishing their business and leave their regret unresolved. They do not want to know which final signifier they desire to say and to whom they desire to say it. In the case of Akira, for instance, the spectator easily surmises that his singular focus on writing about the afterlife – “My goal is to share this with the world, to show that there is a life after death” – is a way to avoid the confrontation with his own regret. Given the subtle avoidance that marks his comportment, it is not surprising that Akira struggles to finish his novel – “But I can’t manage the end”. How can he finish his novel if he is unable to discover the final signifier by which he, by enunciating it to his addressee, can finish his existence as subject?
Nana (Nana Mori), who committed suicide after being bullied by her classmates, on the other hand, is initially blinded by resentment to discern what she, as subject, has left unfinished in the world of the living. While the participation in a parade allows Nana to get into touch with her regrets, the heartfelt apology she addresses to her bullied friend Yasuko (Akari Takaishi) does not appear to be her true final signifier; she remains in the world-in-between.
Shori, on the other hand, is held back by a reluctance to meet the addressee of his final signifier – Mizuki (Mai Fukugawa), the fiancé he left behind when he died in a shoot-out. This reluctance, which stems from a fear of being forgotten by her, has kept him lingering within this space-in-between for seven years and forced him to seek refuge in the fleeting pleasures attached to his memories with her.
The resolution of his segment re-emphasizes that the enunciation of the final signifier to one’s addressee enables the subject to write his final sentence and give his narrative its final punctuation. Moreover, the final signifier, enunciated as subject from the space-in-between, will sort effects on one’s addressee, as Fujii elegantly implies and touchingly shows throughout his narrative – there are states of being that approach the world-in-between; the world-in-between is not without its resonations in the world of the living.
In Micheal’s case, his unfinished business is clear. The spectator has no trouble in reading his unfinished film Remembrance of Things Past concerning his participation in the student protests in Okinawa as the signifier left un-enunciated due to his unexpected death and his beloved, represented within the film by Maiko, as his addressee – “She was always waiting to see the completed film”. Yet, even he, for some reason, is reluctant to bring his final signifier to completion.
With the conversation between Minako and Micheal, Fujii shows that the subject actually lies (unconsciously) in wait for a signifier that can enable him to overcome his inhibition, to annul his passivity towards his production of his final signifier. Minako enflames Micheal’s desire to address what he has left unsaid to his beloved merely by re-emphasizing her desire – “She’d still like to see it. I’m sure of it”. The Parades echoes, in this sense, the common narrative structure where the entry of a foreign element, by inaugurating new relational dynamics and bringing new signifiers into circulation, forces change.
Michihito Fujii proves with composition that he is able to find poetic beauty in natural cruelty, without undercutting its traumatic echo, without erasing the sign of the passing of the Real. Fujii succeeds in doing so by crafting aesthetically pleasing shot-compositions, utilizing musical accompaniment in an equivocal way and combining both in a thoughtful manner together (Cine-note 1).
The evocative opening of The Parades is a beautiful example of Fujii’s approach to beauty and the cruelty of the Real (Cine-note 2). He frames the waves both as a presence of peaceful beauty and as a site of deadly potentiality. Fujii echoes the dimension of beauty as well as the lurking presence of the deadly Real by relying on evocative musical accompaniment and thoughtfully using diegetic sounds – the rushing of waves as relaxing and as lethally threatening. The pieces of music infuse a sense of melancholy and solemness into the film’s atmosphere and offers the spectator an interpretative glance at the mental state of the character-in-focus.
Fujii is able to touch the spectator not merely because his compositional approach allows the spectator to feel the absent yet embracing presence of death, but because makes him aware of the radicality of narratives left unfinished, of subjective stories that have, for one reason or another, been cut short.
Fujii’s approach – the approach of the conflictual duality of things – is also evident in the evocative way in which he brings the flashbacks that, like a wave, wash over Minako to life. These flashbacks, by elegantly letting the spectator’s eye coincide with Minako’s subjective gaze, confronts the spectator with the fact that motherhood is a contradictory tangle of conflicts, happiness, frustrations stabilized by love and that love’s function turns the physical absence of Ryo into a radical disruptive lack.
Of course, to tell his story, Fujii resorts to a simpler concatenation of static shots and soft-focus shots. It is, however, evident that he always composes in support of the conversational flow: He takes time to frame the impact of the signifier on the subject and his body – e.g. Minako hearing that she is dead. In some cases, Fujii also emphasises the impact of the signifier by decorating the stillness of the shot with a musical ornament.
The Parades is a narrative that fulfills its promise, allowing the spectator to fleetingly commemorate his or her ‘losses’. The reason why Fujii’s narrative works and sorts its intended effect is simply due to the effective performances – Masami Nagasawa and Lily Franky in particular – that breathe life into the emotional flow of the film – in the moments of drama, the comical decorations, and the heartwarming resolutions. Recommended.
Notes
Psycho-note 1: By giving the abandoned Kajo-numa amusement park in Miyagi a central role within his film, Fujii also underlines that one can find traces of the dead, of those who are physically absent, within the material societal field – architecture as form of symbolic remembrance.
Cine-note 1: There are many compositional techniques Fujii employs to delivers visually pleasing moments – i.e. shot-perspectives, lighting contrasts, depth-of-field, use of diffuse light, integrating reflective surfaces within the composition, frames within frames.
Cine-note 2: We cannot talk about the opening without highlighting the effective way in which Fujii invites the spectator to identify with Minako. By concatenating hand-held shots – in a jump-cut like manner, he trusts the spectator into the position of a yet-to-be defined protagonist. The spectator, whose gaze coincides with the filmic frame, cannot but orient himself via spatial elements – We find ourselves at the beach – and the centrality of a child within the gaze/screen – We are a parental figure. The shift in perspective coincides with the spectator brutally being swept away by the currents of the waves – are we drowning?
References
CyberAgent, Inc. (n.d.). BABEL LABEL監督 藤井道人×長澤まさみ 坂口健太郎 横浜流星 リリー・フランキー によるNetflix映画『パレード』の世界配信が決定. 株式会社サイバーエージェント. https://www.cyberagent.co.jp/news/detail/id%3D29718
東北放送. (2024, June 3). 映画「パレード」主演・長澤まさみは、なぜ“報道記者”なのか 藤井道人監督が語った故・河村光庸プロデューサーとの絆. Tbc NEWS. https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/tbc/1048679