In Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films, there is something eerie in the air.
The Japanese filmmaker's career spans more than 50 years, and his films are both prolific and maverick, and his mastery of atmosphere is so masterful that he can be in a class of his own.
Some might call it an "infectious disease movie".
In this kind of film, the city's ecosystem is subverted by some invading physical or mental force.
Not all of Kurosawa's films fall into this genre, but those that fall into this genre have a special quality that is real to us in the moment of our anxious, never-ending apocalyptic strolls.
In his previous films, his film was a stylish techno-horror film that slowly portrayed the rebellion of young people.
You'll feel the threat before you see it, and then it will gradually become visible and indelible.
Kurosawa's cinematic style is methodical yet eerie, and the effect is like watching a modern film made with retro paranormal cinematography.
His new film, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, is the spiritual sequel to Akira Kurosawa's 1997 masterpiece X Seiji, with a short 45-minute film.
Bell
In this film, the ills that plague Tokyo, and possibly the whole world, are environmental problems.
Tashiro, a docile culinary student pacing in front of a pot of burnt onions, likens the otherworldly sound that paused him to a "scream...... But not human".
His classmates couldn't hear it, and neither could we.
But Tashiro was insisting.
Is he deaf?
Or is it crazy?
Or is it that everyone else is not on the right frequency?
Kurosawa likes to ask these huge, creepy, and abstract questions, and he prefers to give answers.
His most powerful films, such as "X", are often portrayed as metaphysical riddles.
Its ambiguity is deepened by the director's unique clear images, which make people even more disoriented.
Kurosawa's compositions have some terrible symmetry from Kubrick, but mostly without magical exaggeration.
His interior spaces are very ordinary, transformed into places of horror through elaborate gradient focus or lighting design, or through decisive shifts in performance and tone.
The storyline of "The Bells" revolves around a few such wonderful moments.
A sudden violent event puts the narrative baton in the hands of Tashiro to his middle-aged instructor, Takuji.
The method is as slow and difficult to explain as the murder in "X Shoji".
Rather than using horror plots such as jumping off buildings and frightening, Kurosawa does the opposite, but his scenes are full of paralyzing numbness, hypnotic fear.
"The Bells" just gives a glimpse of a society where people are in a collective state of failure.
What is memorable is how this particular malice is evoked and sustained through a series of rapid, recurring themes:
The food was prepared but not eaten;
Waste is recycled repeatedly and paranoidly;
The figures meander, aimlessly navigate the urban space.
Before our eyes, these urban spaces seem to be becoming more and more marginalized, as if streets and buildings are silently moving in and out.
For viewers who are susceptible to Kiyoshi Kurosawa's metaphysical implications, "The Bells" will hit their heartstrings accurately.
Those who insist on harmonizing the sensory effects of the film with some kind of interpretation or ending may be puzzled.
But it is in these cracks between feeling and meaning that Kurosawa practices his dark art.
"The Bells" is great not because it rejects interpretation or analysis, but because it welcomes interpretation or analysis.
Because it is clear that coherence is both appropriate and hopeless in a contingency universe that brings little comfort.
The final shot of the film is Takuji, who is now aware of the endless noise and therefore seems to be unable to do anything, silently opposing his own reflection in the entire mirror in the lobby.
It's hard to tell whether it's a moment of self-knowledge or a moment of encounter with the other.
The deep and unforgiving horror of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's short film is that it implies that the two possibilities are the same.