Based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel, A PALE VIEW OF HILLS is director-screenwriter Kei Ishikawa’s take on post-nuclear Japan. The film lives up to a strong cinematic legacy of Ishiguro adaptations with its stunning, dreamy aesthetic and the performances of a talented cast across generations, but the script does not achieve the nuances of its preceding adaptations.
In 1982, widow Etsuko (Yoh Yoshida) receives a visit from her grown-up daughter Niki (Camilla Aiko) and informs her that after decades in her picturesque English countryside home, the place is too empty, and she has decided to sell. Eager to excavate memories before her childhood home is gone, and as a journalist, to glean material for a book, Niki urges her mother to talk about her youth. Etsuko, who sleeps on the sofa – if she sleeps at all – is hesitant, but eventually describes a dream that has been haunting her, of a woman she knew in Nagasaki.
Floating back to flashbacks of 1952, a young Etsuko (Suzu Hirose), a pregnant housewife who lives in a new apartment, notices a neighbour living in a run-down cottage by the river. Nervous and eager to help, she notices the woman’s young daughter fighting with boys and rescuing a straggly cat, then escorts the daughter home. A friendship of contrasts emerges, with Sachiko (Fumi Nikaido) flouncing in silk scarves and skirts, flirting with officers and dreaming of America, blasé about leaving her daughter alone at home, while Etsuko is prim, shy, anxious about her baby and in awe of this cosmopolitan confidence. Hirose is especially perfect here, having grown up from her childhood role in Kore-eda’s OUR LITTLE SISTER; she is delicate and precise as this cheery young wife who increasingly struggles to keep up her smile.
“On one hand, the 1952 segments are some of the most beautiful on film this year: framing the gentle Etsuko in windows with beautiful blue skies that echo Japanese art, especially ukiyo-e woodblock landscapes.”
Ishiguro’s delicate prose is ripe for adaptation, and he is open to filmmakers developing their own vision and making changes. From the dystopian romance of NEVER LET ME GO to the repression of REMAINS OF THE DAY, this film has a daunting legacy to uphold, which it fulfils in some ways but not others. On one hand, the 1952 segments are some of the most beautiful on film this year: framing the gentle Etsuko in windows with beautiful blue skies that echo Japanese art, especially ukiyo-e woodblock landscapes. This surreal, painting quality is so satisfying on a large screen, and adds to the unreliability of the narration, a rose-tinted version of these young women at turning points in their lives.
On the other hand, the script tells of trauma with over-exposition rather than showing it. A key strength of the novel is its subtlety, with a lethal combination of a British stiff-upper lip and Japanese reserve that leaves a lot of the post-nuclear trauma up to interpretation, but here, rather than abstract memory sequences or more visuals to show the devastation, the script shoehorns the bomb into every other conversation. Sometimes this works; there is stigma around radioactivity and whether it is contagious, and a particularly emotional scene where Etsuko describes saving her violin, but a picture tells a thousand words. It’s a missed opportunity to rely so heavily on dialogue.
“On the other hand, the script tells of trauma with over-exposition rather than showing it. […] a picture tells a thousand words. It’s a missed opportunity to rely so heavily on dialogue.”
The script still manages to shine at certain moments. For example, the character of Etsuko’s father-in-law, the retired headmaster (Tomokazu Miura), is beautifully adapted, adding just enough extra detail in the dialogue to show his traditional attitudes towards the war and education. In the book, we know very little about Niki’s life beyond her living in London. Here, Camilla Aiko adds layers of self-consciousness as a struggling writer and hints at the crossroads of her own, mirroring the anxieties we see in the young Estuko and Sachiko.
The framing of Niki recording an interview with her mother for research is logical, with an added clever commentary about how she’s pressured into writing about generational trauma “because Hiroshima is in right now.” Still, it does feel like a lazy, inorganic way to get her mother to open up, even if the ending rectifies that, connecting what we see in the past with the present day, linking that image of early motherhood with Etsuko’s daughter and Niki’s sister Keiko, who committed suicide, steering the conversation away from book research towards their shared grief and what-ifs.
Ishikawa’s freedom with the source text both gives and takes away, which may leave lovers of the book feeling a little cold, but it amplifies the themes of a complex work and makes for stunning cinema that dwells on what makes the author great: “memory, time, and self delusion”.