Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy - dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi
A virtuoso display of acting and a flawless script result in one of the finest psychological dramas of all time.
There’s a strange and somewhat rare thread through movies ranging from the Deerhunter, to Eyes Wide Shut, to Parasite where a seemingly straight drama can sublimate at points into a psychological thriller. In moments of anxiety or unease, the director manages to open our emotional gates and show us something undeniably dark and human. It is at once immediately recognizable and perhaps touches our fear centre causing us to self-reflect on what we would do, or have done, in the same situation.
Korean cinema perhaps is most deeply representative of this type of motif. In the case of horror movies it becomes rather explicit, while in dramas such as the Oscar-winning Parasite, it seethes and pervades on nearly every level throughout the film until it subconsciously communicates the underlying theme of the story.
Western or Japanese cinema, by contrast, typically sticks to Hollywood format, straight story arcs or is simply literal. With this expectation at the outset, It’s perhaps doubly odd to then experience the psychological device employed in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy because it subverts the typical patterns of Japanese modern cinematography so strongly.
I will endeavour to reveal as little about the plot as possible and speak mostly to the overall structure and effect of the film so that you may enjoy it yourself.
I’ll structure the review by highlighting 6 categories of exceptionality, matched to a prospective viewer. Any one of these entry points is enough to earn this film my recommendation. Hopefully you fall into more than one:
You like Japanese culture
You are an actor
You are a writer of fiction
You are fascinated by memory, senses, and identity
You enjoy emotional experiences
You want to understand the universality each person faces in challenges of relationships
You like Japanese culture
Having visited Japan countless times over decades, I’ve found the culture endlessly fascinating. The myriad of rules and social graces is impossible to completely grasp and even native Japanese people find themselves in sticky situations that are on the whole far more complex than Western life. This film deftly and deeply deals with many of the key ones— seniority, gender, dating, and duty. If a film dealt with even one of these aspects well it would be considered important. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy succeeds at all of them.
Of course, these themes are present in every culture, but to see the depth of investigation in the context of typically subdued Japanese cinema (and culture) is monumental.
You are an actor
In the first vignette after about 15 minutes, there is an unexpected turn in which both the plot and a character changes dramatically. This turns out to be the first of many and becomes a key element of the film’s structure. The delicacy and completeness of the transformation each time is absolutely spellbinding to watch. Literally you are drawn in, stopping and pausing to think what is going on and physically pulled to study the faces of the characters to see what their intentions are.
In real life, we do this often when meeting someone new or perhaps in public when someone is acting erratic. Our preservation instinct kicks in. Our senses sharpen. We observe.
When a real person does this it is transparent, inviolable, and exactly as the person is. They are not an actor. They are simply living.
To be able to conjure this effect through the screen without any form of external cues is a testament to the complete seamlessness of the acting. In recent memory, the only performance with equal comprehensiveness is another Japanese film— Antiporno. There are stylistic similarities here as well.
Amazingly, it is not just one lead who rises to this peak level, nearly all the actors are peerless.
You are a writer of fiction
After watching the movie, I had assumed the story was based on a novel. The depth of the characters, precision of the dialog (and translation in this case), and the structural integrity of the film is so rich, so nuanced, and so deftly handled, that it seems inconceivable that it could be written in script form only. For those who have read Shantaram, or For Whom the Bell Tolls, you can consider the story of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy of the same level of development. The snapshots of time seem to be just that- snapshots- which believably have complete histories before and after. It’s absolutely seamless.
Perhaps even more impressive is this is all done in the span of only 2 hours, which is further divided into 3 sections. To develop characters and storyline to this exalted level in only 40 minute short stories is exponentially more difficult.
I was shocked to read that the director Ryusuke Hamaguchi also wrote the script. He needs to write a novel.
For any writer who understands a story such as this, it may take 3-400 pages to successfully capture what has been portrayed. The dialog alone is a feat, and how the words perfectly carry the story from scene to scene is absolutely masterful. By the same token, imagine how catastrophic changing even one word in a key scene would extinguish the flow of the story. The writing is like the purest poem or haiku on the scale of a novel.
You are fascinated by memory, senses, and identity
Again, not to give away any of the pleasure of the plot, I cannot think of a movie that so pointedly isolates the universal feeling of deja vu, confusion, and ultimately the question of whether our own identity is trustworthy.
There have been countless essays, for example, written about Hitchcock’s Vertigo on this theme, but in the company of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Vertigo seems like a Saturday morning cartoon— a prehistoric relic before the rest of evolution was discovered.
It’s a visceral experience where you go through what the characters are going through. If you have any inclination to these types of deja vu or coincidental events in your life, I’m sure it will resonate strongly. It forces you to reassess your own solidity of identity, which can be off-putting, but ultimately reinforcing.
You enjoy emotional experiences
It should be clear this far into the review that this is not a movie for escapists. It’s a movie that hooks you for all its worth and systematically de-robes your expectations. I found, especially after a year of Covid ennui, that it was a welcome intensity of feeling.
As I alluded to at the beginning, the situations in each of the 3 stories begin mundanely and then rapidly are flipped upside-down to their most illogical. In doing so, the director effectively isolates the emotion we would feel suddenly if this happened. At the same time, critically, he then provides the resolution to the emotion. This works both on the autonomic level and also the societal level. It’s a beautiful and perhaps symphonic way to present conflict and then resolve it. There are stylistic echoes of Beethoven’s 9th symphony here.
You want to understand the universality each person faces in challenges of relationships
The final key takeaway from this movie is the central story which revolves around how we all experience relationships. How we expect them to start, how they change, and how they end. Perhaps with the exception of family dynamics, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy manages to touch upon nearly every type of relationship dynamic we might experience. It’s incredible to think of the breadth of the list while writing this review: romantic, professional, friend, media, social-class.
Further, each relationship dynamic is then investigated in terms of the desires, expectations, misunderstandings, compromises and negotiation that it entails.
I can’t help but think that even the most obtuse, emotionally-closed person will meaningfully associate with some aspect of the characters. Conversely, for someone who is interested in human dynamics and learning how to best relate, it’s a delicious display.
CONCLUSION
This is not a Hollywood film. It’s not even a typical Japanese film. What it does, is introduce itself using coddling cinematic elements and everyday situations, then systematically annihilates your expectations while precisely conveying the emotion and message of the director’s comprehensive vision to your opened awareness.
The effect is like a magician doing a trick which on the surface seems so simple, yet resonates with you all the more because of the extreme incongruity. Ryusuke Hamaguchi is clearly one of the great magicians of cinema today.
AVAILABILITY
THE RATING
10/10 Absolute
10/10 Relative
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