Unrated, but this is a movie about the fallout of rape. It was Japan's experience with the #metoo movement. As such, the movie gets graphic. But even more than the graphic nature of the crime, the movie is much more about despair, leading to an eventual suicide attempt. There is some language and a lot of it is about disparaging the victim of rape. It's a pretty bleak movie, even though you don't see anything that is visually upsetting.
DIRECTOR: Shiori Ito I'm already fried and I've only written one blog. I'm one-third of the way through my blog catch up and I don't even know if I can get through this one. The bigger problem is that I often really struggle writing about documentaries, especially the ones that have a stronger political stance. It's not that I don't love political documentaries. Quite the opposite. I love when documentaries --and art in general --has a strong political stance. It's just that it is hard to talk about the movie as opposed to the issue. So if I veer way into just talking about rape culture instead of looking at Ito's story, I apologize. My biggest warning for people considering this movie --and this sounds monstrous --is that you have to be pretty caffeinated. It really is a gut-wrenching tale. But I'm 41 and I try squeezing life out of each moment. By the time that the kids were in bed (including my oldest who loves staying up way too late), I was already exhausted. There were times that I drifted off for half a second. A lot of that is me. But a little bit is on the movie. It's one of those documentaries that might be close to an authentic documentary. Sure, the subject of the movie is also the director. I really don't want to focus on that because I absolutely believe everything that Ito presents here. In general, kids, you should believe women. I'm more talking about the fact that Ito is in the trenches for this documentary. She's dealing with criminal charges, civil court, writing a book, and filming a documentary. She has no idea how any of this is going to pan out, which makes the documentary fascinating. It's just that, when it comes to Sleepy Time Tim, there's a lot of scenes where Ito takes a phone call or is in the car, simply reiterating who she is going to meet. It's a documentary where there's nothing really to manipulate. There's a lot of sad and quiet scenes and I feel really bad for nodding off from time-to-time. It's not a bad doc, but it almost is a podcast more than it is a movie because there isn't anything all that visual. Where Ito succeeds is putting Japan in a context for the Western world when it comes to how women are treated. Japan is a bit of an enigma. I'll say that this most recent election kind of makes the entire world a crap shoot for what morality might be. Japan has always existed in a paradoxical state from an American perspective. Japan, on the grand scale of history, has defined itself from an isolationist perspective. It's only modern history that Japan embraced modernism and put itself under the global microscope. From what I see, I see a place that has a rich history coupled with insanely fast moving modern innovation. But Ito points out kind of the fallout from something like that. One of the theses of Black Box Diaries is pointing out how incredibly attached to elements of the past the Japanese are, especially when it comes to rape statutes or really any laws that should be implemented when it comes to the greater protection of women. There's a ton to glean here, but the crux of the movie is the fact that these are out of date ideas based on the idea that women are somehow an inferior gender. Now, the kneejerk reaction is to say, "Man, Japan is really backwards." I don't disagree. Ito is laying out the message that Japan needs to catch up to the rest of the world. And I know I'm White Knighting a bit here, but it isn't much of a stretch to say that the events of Black Box Diaries are a universal problem. Maybe the law is written differently, but some of the most horrifying things that happen in the movie would be endemic to the United States as well. One of the key motifs that the film keeps returning to is the notion that, as a victim, Ito is criticized for speaking out about her own abuse. She gets emails and the worst part is that these emails come primarily from women. (And here's where I abandon any attempt to analyze the movie and simply talk about my own political thoughts.) The recent election in the United States was disheartening simply due to the fact that a lot of women voted against their self-interests. I get the Pro-Life movement and I am even invested in that to a certain extent. But a lot of the most vocal trolls of progressive politics came from women (with the exception of Black women) saying disparaging things about what could be boiled down to any kind of feminism. The specific brand of vitriol that the email that Ito received came in that flavor. A lot of it was "How could Ito be profiting over this man's sadness?" There's the weirdest double standard that for some reason is contagious because we see it quite a bit. My best theory is that it is both an attempt to "be one of the good ones" because women criticizing women shows that women could be whatever they want and a desperate attempt to hold onto an era that never really existed. I'm going to throw out a theory that makes the movie even grosser. I don't love it. I'm not an expert. I can only speak to what I thought about while watching a movie about a real woman going through a real issue with real people. One of the people in Black Box Diaries was Investigator A. (Note: I'm really confused how the Japanese audio handled the name "Investigator A". Like, third parties called this guy "Investigator A" according to the subtitles of this film and that's weird to me.) Investigator A is incredibly frustrating. I don't know if Ito wants us to dislike Investigator A because that narrative goes against what she says. Investigator A is initially quite brusque with Ito. He dismisses all of the things she says, claiming she can't prove anything. Part of it can be written off as an example of why it is incredibly hard to make sexual allegations against someone with a lot of power. Sure. But then he starts warming up to her. Ito claims that he wants to do the right thing and I'd love to live in a world where that is true. But the more I see of Investigator A, the more inappropriate I see his behavior. He seems to be in love with Ito. Ito gets excited for each next meeting, thinking that Investigator A will throw caution to the wind and openly testify against the police department. But each meeting is just about how supportive Investigator A is, but he cannot reveal his true identity. They honestly read more as dates as opposed to anything that would be considered a clandestine plan. When she calls him and he's drunk, he claims that he'd come clean if she would marry him. She writes it off as a joke, but it really reads like "It's a joke unless you're down..." If anything, I read Investigator A as more of a problem than a solution. He seems to be taking advantage of someone who was abused by pretending to be a good guy, only to keep it safe and at arm's length. Again, I'm not behind the scenes, but I do not care for him one bit. But then, almost as if the world was impossible of goodness, we get the hotel employee. Thank God for the hotel employee. Again, Ito does this unbelievable job when it comes to showing how patriarchal Japanese culture is. But it seemed like there was no hope for society. I mean, I don't know if it shocks anyone, but the only actual hero in this story is someone who probably makes poverty wages. That is weirdly heartening. That's kind of why I got so aggressively disappointed at Investigator A. The tonal difference between Investigator A and the hotel doorman seems like the difference between fake good guy and genuine concern. The hotel doorman was willing to put it all on the line just to make sure that this woman got justice and that was heartening. I want to talk about the suicide attempt. (I almost said sequence because it is so easy to distance a real person's life when it is in a film. There's a part early in the movie when she says, "If it ever looks like I'm going to commit suicide, know that it isn't true. I would never commit suicide and it means that I may have been murdered." But we have this footage. She confesses to trying to commit suicide after that point. That's upsetting. I'm not throwing stones at her. She is going through her own journey. I'm more commenting on the fact that nothing seems certain at any point in our lives. When she made that statement early in the film, it was almost this underground dark web conspiracy stuff. But then she tries to commit suicide and I realize that none of us are completely free from awful impulses. I mean, thank God she survived. It's horrible, but it is also just an indictment of how toxic society can get that someone so focused on a cause and still spiral to horrible depths. It's a tank of a documentary. Will I say that it is the documentary that changed my life? Probably not. But then again, someone else is going through this thing. The movie starts off with a trigger warning with a personal plea to look out for one's own well being. Yeah, I'm not a woman who deals with sexual assault, so I appreciate what the movie did here. |
Film is great. It can challenge us. It can entertain us. It can puzzle us. It can awaken us.
AuthorMr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies. They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved. Archives
February 2025
Categories |