Back in 2021, The Movie Sleuth’s very own Michelle Kisner
posted a detailed and celebratory article of the life and four of the works of Nobuhiko Ôbayashi with
Travelling Through Space and Time with Nobuhiko Ôbayashi. A year later following her piece, British
boutique releasing label Third Window Films specializing in East Asian cinema
releases on home video published a four-film boxed set entitled Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s
80s Kadokawa Years consisting of his movies School in the Crosshairs,
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, His Motorbike Her Island and lastly The
Island Closest to Heaven.
Over the
last year, domestic boutique label Cult Epics have one by one been porting over
the films in the Third Window set to standalone deluxe editions for American consumers. Housed in a transparent amaray case with
reversible sleeve art and a complete reprint of the original Japanese press kit
in booklet form, the film starring The Girl Who Leapt Through Time actress
Tomoyo Harada is among the usually hyperkinetic iconoclastic director’s
lightest and most straightforward coming-of-age dramas. Dialing down the quirky psychedelics to zero
and shot and set in New Caledonia, the film based on Katsura Morimura’s 1966
travelogue is one of the brightest and prettiest summer vacation movies as well
as portraits of young self-discovery.
Meanwhile
an older man sensing she is bored and looking for something more briefly takes
her under his wing as a surrogate tour guide before confessing the real reason
was because Mari reminded him of his ex.
All the while, the scenic backdrop of beachfronts and islands barely
obscured by ocean waters as well as the time-honored favorite vista of Obayashi’s
with a near artificial-looking cloudy sunset but that’s as far as the director
goes in terms of altering our senses.
Akin to the breezy and almost carefree summer vibes of Hayao
Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro without any of the director’s usual
fantastical leanings, The Island Closest to Heaven is a bit of a
travelogue of a film where as you go with Mari on her journey of discovery both
of the outside world and world within, you learn a little bit about
yourself. Sweet natured and relaxed though
always trained on Tomoyo Harada, one of the film’s charms is the intentionally forties
melodramatic soundscape of Asakawa Tomoyuki.
From the opening credits designed to look like a Metro Goldwyn Mayer
picture with a very on-the-nose parody of the Gone with the Wind cue, The
Island Closest to Heaven announces itself as an almost Douglas Sirk oriented
endeavor. From House cinematographer
Sakamoto Yoshitaka’s radiant and warm vistas of dusk skies, bright blue ocean
waters, we get an inviting multilayered journey with Mari as she navigates New
Caledonia mingling with residents and finding her own niche and room for growth
as a free-spirited and thinking young woman rather than adhering to the nebbish
lamentations of her beleaguered tour guide.
One of many coming-of-age dramas made by Ôbayashi around
that time and one of the sweetest self-discovery films, The Island Closest
to Heaven comes with a running audio commentary by Derek Smith, a visual
essay by Alex Pratt, a making-of documentary and theatrical trailers. Probably most interesting of all is the
complete reprinting in booklet form of the original Japanese press kit. Though untranslated, it brings the viewer
closer to what viewers in Japan might’ve experienced or felt watching the film
when it originally premiered.
Tomoyo
Harada is wonderful in the film, as is Ryoichi Takayanagi. For those who know House and only know
that more outlandishly playful side of Ôbayashi, they’re in for a real pleasant
surprise here with one of his more subdued but nevertheless evocative and
occasionally ethereal efforts. Cult
Epics have done a wonderful job with the disc and we can only hope they’ll do The
Girl Who Leapt Through Time next!
--Andrew Kotwicki