"Coincidence and Imagination" Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi From "unlikely" to "possible" [Director's Interview Vol.170]

Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi's international acclaim is reaching its peak with his film " Drive My Car " (21), which he directed and wrote, winning four awards at the Cannes Film Festival, including Best Original Screenplay. The film also won Best Picture at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the first time a Japanese film has achieved this feat. In addition, " Wife of a Spy " (20), which he co-wrote with director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and Isabelle Huppert named him as one of the directors she would like to work with. "Chance and Imagination," which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and was part of that acclaim, is finally being released.

The short story collection "Chance and Imagination" is composed of three stories shot in a minimalist way. However, the content goes beyond the word "minimal" and is full of cinematic surprises, richness, and above all, entertainment. The reason this collection has received international acclaim is that it is a work of art that is easy to understand. What did director Ryusuke Hamaguchi put into this collection? We spoke to him.

Index

• I wanted to make a short film.
• "Coincidence" inspired by everyday life
• From "It seems possible but it doesn't" to "It seems impossible but it does"
• The degree of coincidence increased as the story progressed
• One of the project's aims is to "Work with people who want to work."
• Classic editing is what I aim for
  
• This scale that I don't want to let go of

I wanted to make a short film.

Q: There seemed to be a lot of laughter at the screening at Tokyo FILMeX in October. What did you think about the audience reactions, including at film festivals overseas?

Hamaguchi: I wasn't trying to make people laugh at all, and the actors didn't act that way either. In the film, people are trying their best to do something, but there's something "off." It seems that these situations invite laughter. This kind of unexpected laughter sometimes happens in my films, but this time, I had the impression that the batting average was unusually high.

"Chance and Imagination" ©2021 NEOPA / fictive

Q: This time, the subtitle is "Ryusuke Hamaguchi Short Story Collection." There are also some parts of "Drive My Car" that seem to have some of Haruki Murakami's short stories sprinkled throughout. Please tell us your thoughts on short stories.

Hamaguchi: It's normal for novelists to go back and forth between feature-length and short stories, but that's not so easy with movies. Haruki Murakami has been reworking what he did in his short stories in his feature-length works, and his short stories have become a kind of touchstone, and a place for him to sort out what he's accumulated. I wanted to have a place like that, but it's quite difficult to make a short story in a movie. There aren't many outlets (opportunities to screen it). But if you make it into a collection of short stories, it becomes much easier to get it out to the world. So I tried doing it this way this time.

Q: So that's why it's called a "collection of short stories" and not an "omnibus."

Hamaguchi: When I hear "omnibus," I think of "Tales of the Unusual" because of my generation (laughs). Well, it depends on how you put it. In either case, you can't "group" them together as an "omnibus" or a "collection of short stories" unless they share a common theme. In the end, I don't know which is the correct way to say it (laughs). Also, I personally get the impression that the individual stories in an "omnibus" are not very related, so I felt that "collection of short stories" was the right term this time.

"Coincidence" inspired by everyday life