It's the dead of night where I am when I speak with Kiyoshi Kurosawa over Zoom. The glow of my computer screen is my main source of light, and the floor lamp isn't bright enough to reveal what lurks in the shadows that stretch behind me. It feels fitting.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa needs little introduction to the readers of this website. A visionary director of connection and disconnection, Kurosawa rose to international prominence with Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001), unsettling J-horror works for the arthouse crowd which left an impression far beyond their credits.
Before that, he'd delivered the most unconventional pink films ever made (Kandagawa Pervert Wars and Bumpkin Soup) and the film that would ultimately birth the Resident Evil videogame franchise (Sweet Home). In the years since his breakthrough, Kurosawa's subjects have ranged from the family unit (Tokyo Sonata), to love beyond death (Journey to the Shore), and cultural dislocation (To The Ends Of The Earth). These films took up space in our brains, their final frames locking them in to linger. Encapsulating Kiyoshi Kurosawa's work is challenging, and that's perhaps precisely the point.
This month, Kurosawa enjoys a rare theatrical release in the US - with his devilish new action thriller, Cloud. A cautionary tale about psychosis and online product scalping, the film is as darkly funny as it is bleak and upsetting. Elsewhere on the festival circuit, Kurosawa's own 2024 French remake of his earlier Serpent's Path has been making its mark also - versions old and new played Japan Cuts along with Cloud last week in New York as part of a selectrospective.
It's this occasion that gifts us the pleasure and privilege of sitting down with Kiyoshi Kurosawa. His films can be cold, but the man himself is warm in conversation, beaming widely - we are, after all, discussing cinema.
You're as much a film scholar as you are a filmmaker, having taught at Tokyo University of the Arts for many years. How much does film history and its study influence your films and their shape? Yoshii in CLOUD, for example, strikes me as the sort of detached and driven protagonist that wouldn't be out of place in a Robert Bresson film.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: For you to bring up Robert Bresson as a comparison to one of my films feels like such an honor. I do feel film history influences my films in a big way. However, this is the first time I've heard Cloud, for instance, compared to Bresson. I'm actually having difficulty answering the question because of my happiness and shock from it.
I don't think I ever really studied film history in a direct way. As a cinephile, I've organically learned so much about film just by watching, and connecting that to my understanding of film history.
Filmmaking cannot be done alone. You have to have a tremendous staff and budget, so it never comes down to one's own will - it's a collective thing that you make. In making films, of course one has many desires.
For instance, the desire to make a profit, or the desire for a good reception. Myself, I'm thinking about how I'm going to approach the next scene, how I'll direct the actors. There's all these moments of confusion as I'm making films.
I think that my final way out of that confusion is to refer back to film history. Through film history, I think we can understand what is the correct thing to do. Perhaps you won't make a profit from making that decision, or your film won't be received well. Perhaps your actors won't be happy with the kind of direction that you give them. However, I think that learning through film history is how we come to understand what the correct way to make a film is.
One thing that I find striking about your cinema is your atypical and open approach to endings - whether that's a fitting ouroboros in SERPENT'S PATH, or something more akin to an ellipsis in films such as CLOUD. There's often a sense that you strike a match and hold it throughout your films - it's only at the very end that you throw that match and set the film ablaze.
When conceptualizing a film, do you start with the end or the beginning? How much importance do you place on a film's ending?
That's a really interesting description that you've given me, and I understand what you're trying to say. As far as the endings go, I always have them in mind when I start to flesh out a film. However, whether that ending goes directly as planned isn't really apparent until I start making the film. And of course, with endings, it's not typical for the ending to be filmed at the very end of production - oftentimes, endings are filmed very early into production. When that happens, I'm constantly in a state of uncertainty as to whether the ending is the right one for the film.
In the fiction of my films, my protagonist exists for just the two hours that the film is playing, but I like to think about what happens after. Of course, the film ends, but will my protagonist end too? If he or she were to continue to live, what would happen to them? And if he or she dies, how are the people that are left behind going to continue to live? And of course, the world continues as well, so what happens there?
I always try to think about these things while I'm writing or when I'm filming. I think hints towards the answer to those questions are faintly present in my endings that I end up putting in the films.
You were invited to remake SERPENT'S PATH as your second French-language feature, and it's a region that many of your peers are currently looking towards. Hamaguchi is set to shoot a film there, and many co-productions between Japan and France are coming about. Elsewhere, Miike and Tsukamoto are set to shoot new films in the US. Japanese cinema has often had phases of looking outwards and internationally, but this feels different somehow. Do you feel there's a notable change in the Japanese film industry's international outlook and approach?
First of all, I think it's simply a wonderful thing. Wherever you're from, whatever country you represent, it's possible to go to other places to make films. And that's not just limited toJapanese directors. There are many filmmakers internationally that are attempting to transcend borders and language, and there's great meaning in proving that it's possible.
I think it's important to film itself. Although it's very easy to say no to that kind of opportunity, because it can be quite a difficult endeavor, I think that anyone that has the chance to work in a country outside of their country of origin should do it - because that's an incredibly important part of expanding film history itself.
This may be a funny way to phrase this, but I think that, among filmmakers across the world, every single one has within them an admiration for American films. I myself think that, one day, I would like to make a film in America. But the fact of the matter is that it's very difficult to get a film made in America.
For those of us that can't, maybe we go to France, or we go to another country where the culture is different, and the language is different - as a means to practice towards the end goal, which is, for myself, to one day be able to work in America.
I think everyone agrees that the influence of American film on film history itself is immense, and that across history there have been so many foreign directors that end up going to the United States to contribute to that film history. No matter what, it's a given that making a film in America will always be within people's hearts as a goal.
In remaking an earlier, V-cinema work of yours in SERPENT'S PATH (2024), what did you discover about yourself as a filmmaker? Are your fundamental philosophies in filmmaking the same as they were back then, or have they shifted and changed over the years?
What an interesting but difficult to answer question. In a lot of ways, I feel like I haven't really changed. But certainly, this was a new endeavor for me, as it was my first time remaking a film of my own.
Even though it was a remake, the setting was different. It was made in France. The protagonists were changed, and even aspects of the story had changed. But I did feel like there was something about my own foundational spirit or direction in filmmaking that I was able to maintain, however different the details of the actual film may have been.
What was curious to me though is that viewers -- and this obviously depends on the perspective of the viewer -- but many of them came to me and said that these two films were completely different. It made me think about how, even if I felt as though the film maintained a kind of continuity in spirit and concept, for people what is important is what appears on the screen - whether it is the street in the image, or the faces, or the language.
And so once that changes, it completely alters how the viewers actually receive the film. How to resolve that, I'm not sure. I'm really not sure what to make of it.
Cloud is in cinemas now from Janus Films. With thanks to Japan Society NY for facilitating this interview, and to Monika Uchiyama for translating.