How would you react to a permanent loss of electricity? I’ll stop beginning reviews with psychological queries when I get some decent answers, dammit. Excuse me. Where was I? Oh, yes. Imagine your world without electricity. Say goodbye to ultra-modern toys – Phones, Computers, Light Sabers. Say goodbye to not-so ultra-modern toys: Cars, Refrigerators, Speak ‘n’ Spells. Unless gravity is a friend, plumbing will go, too, eventually. And after that, water and heat almost certainly won’t last the week in any city of reasonable size. And what do you do when the reasons you live in a city no longer apply? If society returns to rubbing the sticks together, I think major cities disappear.
Speaking of major cities disappearing, Tokyo is the home of the Suzukis (Fumiyo Kohinata, Eri Fukatsu, Yuki Izumisawa and Wakana Aoi), a family of jerks. Dinner time is special for the Suzukis; they each get to show off their unique brand of passive-aggression: dad (Kohinata) can’t be bothered to pivot from his television watching, mom (Fukatsu) doesn’t care, daughter Yui (Aoi) is addicted to her phone, which barely beats out brother Kenji (Izumisawa); he can’t even be bothered to make an appearance at all. When the power goes out, it’s all about me, me, me. My phone, my job, my friends, my porn. When’s it all coming back?
It isn’t. That’s the cruel truth and the city-dwellers here are hilariously slow in cottoning on to the issue. It’s logical, of course; what do you do when the power goes out? You sit tight and wait. You entertain yourself with books or boredom and repeat a quiet mantra about how the power will return any minute now. For the Suzukis, it did not. That goes for the rest of Tokyo, too. And the island of Honshu. And the nation of Japan. And the entire planet Earth. Dad scores the last bicycle in the shop and suddenly the foursome has transportation. To where? How about grandpa’s fishing village? Just gotta liquidate and get to the airport, right?
Yeah, what if the planes don’t fly, either? Well, gee, how big is the island of Honshu? 90,000 square miles? Pfft. Why, it’s only 800 miles across. This family of self-involved couch lint can make that in a *snap*, right? The best films I know understand both big picture and little picture. On the micro level, the Suzuki family faces challenges daily over food, water, transportation, and random competition. I was especially taken with a scene in which a set of blind women line up next to a tunnel with a sign saying, “will trade food and water for safe passage.” It’s like a modern-day troll
system. The family scoffs. But 100 yards into the tunnel, there is no light and a lot of obstacles, some of them moist.
On the macro level, every one of these jokers needs to grow up. How long would it take you to abandon your phone? How long until you abandon money? Where would you find food and water? Do you trust random people or not? Perhaps my favorite part of this watch is that each member of the family keeps his/her own time-table on maturity. One revelation of survival intuition does not make for four revelations of survival intuition. And it would be easy, very easy –especially in a family that doesn’t know togetherness— to be frustrated when one family member has not “stepped up” yet. And avoiding that frustration is, perhaps, the greatest lesson of all.
Survival Family is a great watch on several levels and perhaps the first pure message film I’ve seen in a while. The message being – dude, technology is as much a trap as it is a playground. Don’t be a tool. This is easily among my favorite films of the year.
♪Klaxons blare
Are you listening?
Acid rain
Has you blistening
Escape on two wheels
[While] Society squeals
Biking in a Honshu hinterland
Gone away
Are my fitbits
Here to stay
Are my own wits
Goodbye, Donkey Kong
He’s all kinds o’ wrong
Biking in a Honshu splinterland
In the meadow, we confront a wolf pack
Which is the one who wears the alpha crown?
In their eyes, we’re all one giant meat sack
Perhaps the four of us can stare them down
Later on
We’ll expire
Through a gauntlet
Made of fire
All kinds of afraid
Mad Max colonnade
Biking in a Honshu Shinto-land♫
Not Rated, 117 Minutes
Director: Shinobu Yaguchi
Writer: Shinobu Yaguchi
Genre: Our screwed future
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Survivors
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Hand-in-the-sand people
♪ Parody Inspired by “Winter Wonderland”
