INDEX
The Collective Madness That Pushes Boundaries
In ‘Cloud,’ the scene where Sano (played by Daiken Okudaira), who works for the reseller Yoshii (Masaki Suda), hands a gun to Yoshii was striking. I felt that we, too, might “easily” cross boundaries while blindly accepting information, much like the group connected through the internet.
Kurosawa: I appreciate your thoughts; thank you. That’s exactly right. When you’re alone, you think, “There’s no way I would cross that line,” but when you get caught up in a group, something different from your ego takes over, and you become unstoppable.
Truth becomes irrelevant, and everyone blindly believes in it. In this film, it ends up being a relationship where it’s “kill or be killed.” No one says, “Let’s stop,” and it continues until one side dies. The feeling that a certain boundary can be crossed quite easily is something that I think everyone experiences.
Did you intentionally avoid including a character who would put a stop to the dangerous situation?
Kurosawa: I chose not to include such a character. While it’s possible to forcefully insert someone who could stop the situation into the story, the only entities that have the power to do so are the police or organizations like the Yakuza. Even if they were able to halt the actions of those who have crossed the line, I believe it would be quite difficult to stop the emotions that have already been triggered. Since it’s fiction, I wanted the story to go as far as it could.
It seems like you had a pure desire to create action scenes. What are your thoughts on that?
Kurosawa: Yes, I did have that simple desire. I expressed to the producer of ‘Before We Vanish’ (2017) that I wanted to do a full-fledged action film next.
However, when thinking about a contemporary Japanese setting, the stories that come to mind mostly involve the police or the Yakuza—people who are likely to engage in gunfights. So, I wanted to focus on the story of “ordinary people” who live in modern society and have little to no connection to violence. Certainly, when the police or the Yakuza wield guns, it looks smart and powerful, but I wanted to capture the clumsy action that only people who are entirely unaccustomed to violence could exhibit.
Everyone becomes ensnared in a situation from which they cannot retreat, consumed by violence, but I believe Yoshii was the only one who attempted to turn back.
Kurosawa: Yoshii, played by Suda, is an ambiguous character. When he sells all the electronics he bought cheaply at the beginning, he doesn’t react with sheer joy; instead, he experiences a mix of relief and anxiety. His consistently ambiguous reactions tie into his cautious nature.
The character was inspired by someone I know who engages in reselling, and he is extremely careful. He understands that making a hasty purchase could lead to bankruptcy, so he approaches his work with the same level of caution as trading stocks. By making Yoshii an ambiguous and cautious character, he doesn’t easily step into a kill-or-be-killed relationship, but ultimately, he finds himself in a situation where ambiguity is no longer an option and begins to change.
After Yoshii engages in reselling, his act of stepping away from the computer to stare at the screen also seems to reflect that “ambiguity.”
Kurosawa: That’s more of a sensory observation on my part, but since reselling transactions take place entirely within the computer, if Yoshii immerses himself in that world, he loses his composure. By stepping away from the computer, I intended to express that he is a person who makes careful and calm judgments.
