Soapy Middle-school Story Based on a Song
Three years into a very successful career as singer-songwriter in 2008, Angela Aki released her 8th single "Tegami (Haikei Jūgo no Kimi e)" or "Letter: Dear 15-yearold Me". The song was then used in the following year as competition song in a national competition for middle-school choirs and NHK produced four documentaries following Aki to various middle-schools as the children rehearsed the song for the competition. One of those documentaries served as inspiration for a 2011 novel by Nakata Eiichi, a pen-name of the extremely prolific writer Otsuichi, and that novel is the basis for this 2015 film. The song itself has since become the standard graduation song for middle-school graduation ceremonies in Japan.The story is set in a small island town near Nagasaki, and centers around three characters: third-year student Nazuna who is the captain of the choir club, Kashiwagi-sensei who was a well lauded classical pianist and who has returned to the island to serve as a substitute teacher for a year and first-year student Satoru. The film slowly reveals the backstories of these three characters as Kashiwagi disrupts the old way the choir was run by allowing boys with all their cooties to join the group. All three of the characters have very soapy pasts and the plot is overly reliant on convenient plot timings for events that otherwise would have little chance of being conincident. But the film does build to a lovely climax at the provincial choir competition in Nagasaki City with a truly moving performance of Aki's song by the choir.
If you love the song, then this film is probably a must-watch. For the more general viewer, the film is still quite good with some excellent performances by the three main actors as their characters go through a year of growth which does reflect well the dialogue within the lyrics of the original song.
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First the good things:
The teenagers' acting was overall good. I liked the background characters, and Nazuna was very well acted. Kuwahara was cute as a button -- but why did he constantly had the same tense posture, regardless of how he felt?
The script told the story in just the right pace and fit its elements together into a whole.
But that "whole" was unfortunately overly sentimental and contrived. The plot was predictable and characterizations superficial. Major events always were very obviously conveniently timed.
Several plotholes were left at the end:
Why is a professional pianist allowed to teach at a Middle School?
Why does nobody know that she is no longer active as a pianist, and not even a search turns up that she withdrew from engagements?
Why is the boy's father suddenly okay with him singing?
As far as I know, the song the choir sings in the contest was the insoiration for the novel this film is based on -- the song is about looking into the future, not giving up despite obstacles in life, etc etc. In my opinion, the problems in the protagonists life didn't fit the song and its intended audience of fifteen year olds. How many teenagers have a dead mother and an absent father? How many have to take care of their autistic older brother? Normal teenagers's problems are very different -- and for them often as insurmountable as those presented in the film.
So, slice-of-life problems would have fit this song better. And the moments when the children were children -- girls complaining about icky boys, boys peeking at girls and crushing on the new beautiful teacher, kids forming and maintaining friendships, a boy secretly being in love with a girl, those were the only moments when the film felt real. But there were precious few of them.
Another interesting avenue to explore would have been the boy and his questions about his own purpose. If you (think you) know why you are on this world, or rather, why your parents had you -- what does it mean for your own sense of self, for your dreams and feelings?
The worst thing is that in the end, it feels as if none of the children's problems are solved -- nor does it feel as if they took a significant step forward in their lives. Only the pianist can leave the island with a lighter heart and look into the future. Were the children's stories just a means to an end?
In some scenes, as well as the island setting, I wondered if maybe this was a callback to the seminal film "Twenty-Four Eyes" -- especially the scene on the grassy hill with the teacher and her students singing felt like it was. But where "Twenty-Four Eyes" made me feel deeply, this film left me mostly cold. Near the end, I even predicted what would happen constantly just a minute before things happened, and then rolled my eyes at it. Only the two minutes of conversation, the one flashback and the song after the competition was somewhat moving -- but then I am weak when people are being kind to each other.
Was it good?
For me, it wasn't. The obstacles were nothing new, and didn't fit the song.
Did I like it?
No. I found it superficial and overly sentimantal, when it didn't need to be. Other viewers loved it and called it "heart-warming".
Would I recommend it?
Not really.
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