"PiCNiC" People on the borderline challenged by Shunji Iwai x Tadanobu Asano x CHARA [That's when the movie was born Vol.1]

What was the scenario version of “PiCNiC” depicting?

Because filming is done based on a scenario (script), a scenario is often likened to a blueprint, but when you compare it to a completed movie, you will find that in some cases the scenario is the same, while in others the content is almost the same, but the direction and acting are different. Depending on the situation, the impression of some things may change considerably. The scenario for ``PiCNiC'' has not been published, so let's take a look at what changes have occurred based on the scenario that was combined with `` undo '' that I personally obtained.

Both films have different structures than the completed films. Of course, one day, your partner starts tying everything up and finally demands that he be tied up in `` undo '', and ``PiCNiC'' is about escaping from a mental hospital and walking on walls to see the end of the world. The main idea remains the same. The detailed composition is different from the movie.

The movie version of ``PiCNiC'' begins with Coco, played by CHARA, arriving at a mental hospital in a car with her parents. While being abused in a closed ward, she looks around at the people around her and eventually becomes friends with Tsumuji (Tadanobu Asano) and Satoru (Koichi Hashizume). In this scenario, the first scene begins in the backyard of a church, with a monologue from the pastor (played by Keiichi Suzuki in the movie): One kitten comes to the church wall, but the next day there are three. It is said that after a few days of feeding them, even large cats started coming to the fence. Then, one day, he sees Coco squatting on the fence, eating the cat food he left out (this scene reappears in the middle).

Next, the title appears on the video of the camera running over the wall. The camera eventually captures the two boys on the fence. Tsumuji and Satoru are playing on the wall of a mental hospital. They see Coco being taken away in a car. From then on, the scenario and the finished movie unfold in almost the same way, but in the scenario Satoru stays with the story until the end, but in the movie he dies midway through. The scenario also includes dialogues with other patients in the psychiatric hospital, and depictions of Tsumuji and the others calming down the patients who are distraught and on the verge of rioting after being told that the world is ending. However, it was cut from the movie.

“undo” “PiCNiC” scenario (author collection)

The biggest difference is that the pastor only appears in the middle of the movie, but in the scenario he plays a role similar to Kyogen, and the pastor also appears at the end of the movie to close the curtain. From here on, I'll break down the story, including the punch line, so if you haven't seen it yet, please skip it.

In the movie version, in order to witness the destruction of the Earth, they escaped from the facility and continued walking along the wall. They ended up at the lighthouse, where Coco sacrificed her life to relieve Tsumuji's guilt. Wash away. With the sun floating in the ocean behind her, Koko is captured in high-speed photography as she falls on Tsumuji following the sound of gunfire, and countless feathers are said to fly in slow motion from the coat made of crow feathers that she wears around her body. Beautiful images will be the highlight.

The movie cuts to black at this point and ends with the credits, but the scenario continues. The next morning, as Tsumuji and Satoru are taken back to the mental hospital, the head nurses whisper to each other that the other person is missing. And the last scene is the same backyard of the church as the beginning. The pastor arrives with the children leading him by the arm, and is stunned when he sees the children pointing at the top of the fence. Coco's corpse was lying there.

The fence that stands in the back garden of the church appears at the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and the scenario is told from the perspective of the pastor, who is the only person allowed to talk to the girls on the fence, and it has an allegorical feel, like a short story. It makes you feel the taste. If this work were to be made as a TV drama, viewers would have found it difficult to understand without the presence of the pastor. It is unclear whether the pastor's passage was drastically changed during filming or during the editing stage, but it can be interpreted that the explanation given by the pastor was omitted because it would be too much if it were to be released as an original video or movie. , it is thought that as filming progressed, the story was focused on Coco and Tsumuji, so it was cut.

However, the Berlin International Film Festival's programmers praised the church scene so highly that the film was selected to be screened in the Forum section, which screens films by new directors. Originally, many of Iwai's works had religious elements, including ``Maria,'' which depicts a virgin pregnancy, and ``GHOST SOUP,'' in which an angel descends, and which originated from conversations with the dead through letters. The climax of `` Love Letter '' was a scene in which he went to meet the dead sleeping in the mountains and called out to them.

Needless to say, this type of drama was unique among Japanese TV dramas and movies. If the pastor had acted as the Kyogen performer as per the scenario, it might have caused an even bigger reaction overseas.

Special development and 72 hours of shooting