At the Venice Film Festival premiere of Cloud, we interview writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa about his internet reseller satire.
Japanese director, film critic and author Kiyoshi Kurosawa has had a career of over 50 years, whose notable works include 1997’s Cure and the Un Certain Regard winning Tokyo Sonata. Kurosawa is known mostly for his work in the horror genre. Cloud moves away from horror, broaching the delicate bindings of the action genre in playful ways. The film opens with Ryōsuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda, from The Boy and the Heron) as a young man in Tokyo trying to make a living by reselling merchandise he buys at a discount. Sometimes this is through legitimate deals, but often it is through illegal methods.
He begins earning enough money this way that he quits his job. Selling designer handbags, purses, collectors items – some of which are fake – at a profit soon earns him notoriety online, and he is pursued by an online group of his victims to quite sinister results. The capitalist world that is invoked in the first half is remarkably dry, as Kurosawa appears to take the more tough shortcomings of capitalism and present them in sterilised detail. But all is not what it seems and this farce becomes angry, causing him to fire assistant Sano (Daiken Okidaira) and to lose his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) in the process before they both make strange, compelling turns in the final act.
His last film to premiere at Venice Film Festival, Wife Of A Spy, took home the Silver Lion for Best Director in 2020. He is back on the Lido again in 2024 with his internet reseller satire Cloud, which premiered out of competition, less than a day after Japan announced it as their submission to the 2024 Academy Awards. We sat down with him during the festival. In the interview, he discusses the Internet, sound design and the surrealism of Cloud.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa on how the internet spawns violence
There is a lot of violence in the film, and the people who hate the protagonist have reasons, because they were fooled by him. To what extent do you think their hatred is justified, and to what extent it comes from the internet?
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: The internet itself is just a tool. It is a very useful tool that we are using every day, all of us. But the most problematic thing is how humans are using the internet. For example, this hate from one person is very small, but with the internet, it is multiplied. Then it becomes collective, and then it generates the violence. And this is really happening today, with the internet.
Did you take inspiration from a specific event?
K.K.: In Japan, there was a similar event, with many people gathering on the internet, and it then developed into violence: I took hints of this real event. Nowadays, in Japan, I think many people – ordinary people in particular – carry a lot of anxiety inside. This anxiety starts very small, but the internet can cause an explosion, as a result of all these people’s hate, or the uncertainty they feel. In Japan there are many, many situations like this, and I think that is the scariest thing these days.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa on the sound design of Cloud and the use of surrealism in his films
The sound design of the film really impressed me. Some sounds are very loud, such as the axe that can be heard through the door, or the gunshots echoing through the warehouse. What was your approach to sound design?
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Thank you for pointing this out! I wanted to use real sounds, not only for the action scenes but in all of the scenes. I made some of these sounds louder and some quieter, and I also wanted to use less music this time. Most of the time, in action films, the music serves a great purpose, but I think it can also sometimes disturb viewers’ perception of the film. There’s a limit to what images alone can do, and I wanted to cover this limit by using real sounds instead of a score. These sounds are often very simple, but they can express so much.
When did you start thinking about this process for sound design?
K.K.: The sound was very important to me from the beginning. That’s why, during shooting, I asked the technician to collect every sound possible from around the scene.
The final scene of Cloud is gorgeous and the background is almost kind of mystical. How do you balance the tone when you’ve got realistic and grounded scenes and then surrealism?
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: I think that not only this movie, but all my movies are always a combination of the real and the unreal. And that’s why the ending of this movie is this way. During shooting, the actors who were reciting the screenplay were all telling me, “This is really unrealistic”. But we had to show the combination of real and unreal. It seemed to them that the story was changing [with that ending], but it actually wasn’t. I wanted to have that combination of realism and surrealism throughout the movie, to make it all continuously surreal.
Sano is a very intriguing character. He is a collaborator who was fired by the protagonist and then helps him. He has a strong loyalty to Yoshii until the end and he had reasons to hate him because he was fired. So how should we interpret this character? Is he someone who doesn’t go with the crowd and follows his instincts or is he a guardian angel?
K.K.:: I think Sano is the most unrealistic and fictional character in this movie. He’s helping the protagonist, but at the end, his actions are very ambiguous. I would define this person as a daemon of sorts, because he brings, at the same time, both happiness and the contrary of happiness.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa on Oscars and working with actors for the first time
You worked with actors you had never worked with before. How was that?
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Yeah, I worked for the first time with many actors that I had never worked with before, which was a very interesting experience. The work was very hard as we had many killing scenes and many very cruel scenes. But while there are many such things in real life, this was all fiction. After the shooting of some scenes, we would begin to laugh or we would relax. Somehow, we created a very good atmosphere among us.
Today news broke that Japan has chosen Cloud for their academy award submission. How do you feel about it?
K.K.:: It is only a possibility, but it is nice to be chosen, thank you.
This interview was conducted in Japanese with a translator and then edited for length and clarity.
Cloud had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 30, 2024. Read our review of Cloud!
Header credits: A still from Cloud (Nikkatsu) / Director Kurosawa Kiyoshi (Jacopo Salvi, La Biennale di Venezia / ASAC)
