Awareness of death forms the backbone of this arresting drama…
To live in a city can be a stressful thing; the lights, the noise, the constant awareness that there will always be other people around you. It’s a constant reminder that the city is alive, that those within it are merely mortal. One day the people in the city will die, but the city continues to hum, the city stops for nothing.
Apologies for such a morbid start to a review, but The Tokyo Night Sky is Always the Densest Shade of Blue appears to have a mortal fixation. It ostensibly tells the story of the continued coincidental encounters of two struggling and nervous twenty-somethings: the nurse Mika (Mikako Ichikawa), and the construction worker Shinji (Sousuke Ikematsu). However beneath humble exteriors, the sense of death and ending runs deep through a film that doesn’t have a driving plot to speak of, but is astonishingly emotionally astute.
The film itself is based on a work of literature, but rather than being an adaptation of a novel, instead it is an interpretation of a collection of poetry. This aspect of the film shines in how the city of Tokyo is shown on screen; director Yuuya Ishii eschews traditional establishing shots and instead points the camera tilting strangely above people’s heads, or focuses on the lower half of their body.
It feels like we are seeing the city as an inhabitant or an onlooker, not merely as the audience of a film. With the intimate nature of the story, for the film to depict the central characters as distant whilst creating a sense of closeness to them is impressive. On top of which, in the scenes when Mika and Shinji are walking in the city as part of the daily grind, sound too comes to be of distinct importance. You hear a mire of footsteps, every piece of construction machinery, glasses being placed on tables. Every possible sound can be easily heard, making the film a powerfully sensory experience. The Tokyo Night Sky… takes the concept of film being an audio-visual medium and runs with it.
Another interesting thing that the film does technically is occasionally obscure the audience’s viewpoint deliberately, which is an emulation of how Shinji is blind in one eye. Ikematsu does a fantastic job at conveying this part of Shinji’s personality, working in conjunction with clever camera tricks.
Shinji is visibly on edge, conscious of his disability, but he tries to hide it by being overly talkative when nervous, something he has in common with Mika, which makes for some pleasantly humorous scenes when they are constantly trying to talk over each other. The unwelcome constant noise of the city being replaced by a more human sound.
We get a similar juxtaposition in how Ishii films the scenes at Mika’s family home in the countryside. The prevalence of static shots settle the film down, making it more like a traditional domestic drama in these scenes, albeit a rather uncomfortable one as everyone sat at the table seems to be on a different frequency. However the homely feeling is most certainly present, serving as a reminder that every character, even those we just see glimpses of, has a life outside of the film lens.
This wider cast of characters all deserve mention, though obviously there’s not time for that. The inept busker who keeps playing the same song over and over again is a splendidly entertaining, yet touching motif that appears throughout the film, and Shinji’s construction worker friends all have their own distinct personalities and stories of their own lives that the audience wishes they could watch almost as much as those of Shinji and Mika.
And yet, much as so much of the film is pleasantly entertaining, Ishii also paints Mika and Shinji as tragic characters, down on their luck and powerfully affected by time itself. This comes to a head during the intercutting of them both going on dates, Mika with an old flame, and Shinji with a beautiful high school friend he had no idea liked him. They are both far more successful than the central characters, which is precisely why we know it can’t go well. Ishii often chooses to depict Mika and Shinji’s actions simultaneously in this way, but it has to be said that it’s most effective during these scenes of pain.
If you’re waiting for some caveat, any parts of the film that I did not see myself enjoying, you can stop reading, because The Tokyo Night Sky… is a film that I find it very hard to criticise indeed. Ikematsu and Ichikawa should both be ones to watch, especially the former given his turn in Koreeda’s After the Storm. They certainly carry the film, but are supported by an equally wonderful ensemble, each character displaying a part of themselves that aids the film as a whole, each with their own story to tell.
The mood and pace of the film follows an arc that feels satisfying without being cliched. At times it’s playful, but it is always plangeant, it is always sombre. It silently reflects the fears of adulthood, and the constant stresses of living paycheck to paycheck in the largest city in the world.
People should seek out this beautiful film, not purely because the cinematography is gorgeous and actively boosts the plot to new levels, not just because the two central performances are some of the best of the year, not just because you want to meet and befriend every character you see.
It’s also because of the sheer duality of it, at once an ode and a diatribe directed at the city of Tokyo. We are reminded of this as Mika comments on the blackness of the sky out in the countryside; even if the Tokyo sky is indeed always the densest shade of blue, that in itself is a reminder that the city is alive, and that’s worth celebrating.