Great premise, ruined by an artsy approach
The true story of the "Phone of the Wind", which this movie is roughly based on, sure is a lovely, extremely moving and interesting one! And the Touhoku Tsunami and all the tragedy and loss that it caused are incredibly touching, of course. Unfortunately, the screenwriter and the director of this "Kaze no Denwa" - Nth victims of what I call "the nefarious influence of 'Cahiers du Cinéma' and Nouvelle Vague" - decided to ruin all that by having the part of the movie about Touhoku and the phonebooth (basically, the last 50', more or less) preceded by almost 90' of mostly useless and painfully boring scenes. Just one example so as not to spoil anything: at the beginning of the movie, the main character takes a ferry; ok, anybody with even just an ounce of respect for the viewers would have simply shot two/three short sequences, and with some editing the scene would have been done (and it would have lasted, like 10 seconds, tops). But here instead they went with an *interminable* sequence shot of her slowly approaching the dock, then waiting for the ferry, then the ferry slowly approaching the dock, then the few people on the dock slowly boarding the ferry, then the ferry finally (and yeah, you guessed it correctly: *SLOWLY*) leaving the dock: 180, *endless* seconds which add *nothing* to the story - quite the opposite, really! >____<Seriously, the first 80+ minutes could be reduced to 10'/15' tops, keeping only the relevant scenes and cutting all the useless, artsy cr*p...=___=
Too bad...if this story had been written and directed by a decent writer/director team, this could've been a true masterpiece!
As is, it's mostly a yawnfest; and it's such a pity, considering that this story - and all the Tsunami victims and their relatives - would've deserved much more than this, imho! /.___.\
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This review may contain spoilers
The story revolves around a girl who lost her family due a tsunami. And even after like 10 years, she still hasn't gotten over it. And that's clearly evident from the girl's mannerism. The cast for the girl was right on spot for this particular role, her natural look+ make-up+ acting totally brought out the misery she was in throughout the story. Since the girl was in her teens, we get to see a kinda rebellious phase of her life, as she ran away from her aunt's home in hopes to visit her original home. Throughput this journey she ends up meeting several people who share the same misery as hers, losing their loved ones due the tsunami or some related cause. Everyone of them tells their story to her, but she never really returns any meaningful response. She goes on aimlessly and puts herself in pretty dangerous scenarios but somehow strives though with the help of some kind people. But that's pretty much it. The story literally just covers the sorrow of this girl and the people she meets along the way, kinda portraying how even with all that sorrow and misery they are still striving on and persevering for a hopefully better tomorrow.
Towards the end, when the girl eventually gets to visit her original home she does express her sorrow and kinda emotionally breaks down as expected but somehow it doesn't feel as emotionally moving, maybe that's because the girl expresses so less throughout the movie that we literally never get to know much about the character apart from her sorrowful side.
The actual wind phone is mentioned at the very last part of the movie and actually been shown for like 5-10 mins, even though the movie is literally called 'The Wind Phone'. So that didn't particularly make sense to me.
Overall the movie does feel pretty sorrowful yet empty, going over the themes of loss and perseverance yet never fully committing to expressing something truly valuable and unique to the viewer.
The cinematography was okay-ish. The music not so good. The screenplay was weak. Perhaps, the acting was the only strong point of the movie. Clearly the execution didn't quite catchup with the imagination in this case, in my opinion.
Really not good enough for recommendation.
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