A Pale View of Hills Review: Frustrating Adaptation of Ishiguro's Novel
Japanese writer-director Kei Ishikawa's adaptation of A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro's 1982 debut novel, proves to be a frustrating and disappointing cinematic experience. The film, which explores themes of memory and trauma in post-war Japan, ultimately feels bland and soggy, failing to deliver the emotional resonance expected from Ishiguro's subtle and potent storytelling.
Two-Stranded Narrative Structure
The film unfolds in two distinct time strands. The first is set in England during the 1980s, where Etsuko, portrayed by Yo Yoshida, is an expatriate Japanese widow in late middle-age. Her grownup journalist daughter Niki, played by Camilla Aiko, grapples with the memory of her older half-sister Keiko's suicide. Etsuko has always maintained that she left her husband in Japan to be with a foreigner, bringing Keiko to England, with Niki born later.
The second narrative strand is a flashback to Nagasaki in the 1950s, a city struggling to recover from the trauma of the atomic bomb. Here, the landscapes are nicely rendered, with local cinema showings of Yasujirō Ozu's The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice and Akira Kurosawa's To Live hinting at stylistic influences. Suzu Hirose plays a young pregnant woman discontented with her boorish salaryman husband, whose pompous retired schoolteacher father visits and is enraged by a former pupil's critical magazine article.
Undermined Emotional Truth
Despite its fascinating characters, the film's contrived and anticlimactic surprise ending lacks a clear, satisfying twist. This undermines the emotional truth of the main character's life story, leaving viewers wondering about key events like Keiko's adult life and the depression leading to her suicide, which are only glancingly alluded to. The narrative often feels pointless and irrelevant until the ending provides retrospective sense, but the execution is exasperating.
Ishikawa's take on Ishiguro's work contrasts sharply with previous successful adaptations, such as Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's heart-rending The Remains of the Day or Alex Garland and Mark Romanek's strange and sad Never Let Me Go. Ishiguro's own script for Living showcased a wonderful transformation, but A Pale View of Hills falls short, offering a view that is anything but clear.
A Pale View of Hills is scheduled for release in UK and Irish cinemas from 13 March, but it may leave audiences longing for a more straightforward and emotionally impactful telling of Etsuko's story.
