“I Wish” – I wish it were better [MOVIE REVIEW]
hshiro MAEDA and Koki MAEDA in I WISH, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Brothers Koichi and Ryu (real life brothers Koki and Ohshiro Maeda) no longer live together since their parents divorced. Koichi, 12, who lives with his mother and grandparents in the southern town of Kagoshima, a town dominated by a dust-spewing volcano, longs for his family to be reunited. Ryu, his younger brother, living in the northern city of Hakata, likes his situation with his father just the way it is – no yelling, no conflict and no responsibility. Koichi with his chubby cheeks and hangdog expression is the personification of sadness and loss. Ryu, on the other hand, still has youthful exuberance, bright eyes, an ever-present smile and few visible cares.
Learning that a bullet train will now join the two cities, Koichi imagines that anyone who views the two trains passing for the very first time will experience a miracle. Koichi and his two best friends each have their respective wishes for the miracle of the trains and set out for the distant viewing point. From the other direction, Ryu has gathered his best friends for the same reason. Meeting together at that midpoint, the children all have high hopes.
I, too, had high hopes. I had hoped that the pacing would have been a bit quicker or perhaps more lyrical. It may just be that I was not entranced with the storytelling techniques employed by the director because he seemed to put us into an endless loop of depression, repetition, and annoyance. Certainly the children are explored but the fulcrum of the Koichi’s depression, his mother and father, are barely revealed. His mother is depressed, short-tempered, unhappy and unfulfilled. His father, a musician, happily lives a marginal, irresponsible life, rarely there for his son; he’s a man whose idea of nutrition is finishing the crumbs in a bag of potato chips.
Perhaps Kore-eda was trying to tell us, through the children, that life isn’t perfect, you rarely get what you want and miracles don’t happen. He has cloaked his film in a lugubrious fog much like the volcanic ash that envelopes Kagoshima. For a film that has been called lyrical, this is a tough row to hoe. I don’t need to go to the movies for a message like that; I can just relive my own childhood.
Opening May 11 at the Westwood Regent Theatre.
Neely also writes a blog about writers in television and film at http://www.nomeanerplace.com