Review: 'A Pale View of Hills' - Dedicated to us who 'cannot change' even 80 years after the war

I went to see 'A Pale View of Hills'.
Immediately after the movie ended, two ladies sitting next to me started talking.

"So many mysteries were left!"
"Someone changed at the end, but what was that about?"
"Would I understand if I read the original book?"

Because this film adopts the format of "recounting while remembering one's past self", discrepancies arise between the "content being told" and "reality." It is a work that belongs to the so-called "unreliable narrator" genre, and it is a film where the audience must fill in the gaps of the "content being told" in the main story and attempt to interpret it.

Therefore, it is no wonder that some audience members cannot fully understand it, as it is not explicitly stated that "this is how it actually was."

So, in this review, I would like to focus on the scenes that left a strong impression on me and the message I received from them, without delving too deeply into the interpretation of the plot.

────Spoilers below────
























Although there are many films set in "Hiroshima" that depict the damage caused by the atomic bomb, there are few set in "Nagasaki." This work is one of those rare films.

The scene where the protagonist Etsuko, played by Suzu Hirose, has flashbacks of losing her students to the atomic bomb and repeatedly cries out, "I couldn't save them!", was a masterpiece. It confronts the audience with the fact that the scars of war, which have not faded even five years after the war, are etched into her inner self, which at first glance appears to have regained peace.

Seiji (Tomokazu Miura), the father of Etsuko's husband Jiro, appears to be a gentle person at first glance, but when his wartime militaristic education is denied by a former student, he flies into a rage, saying, "Do you not acknowledge our efforts!". His pathetic figure, unable to face his own mistakes and desperate for self-preservation, brings to light the image of an educator during wartime.

Tomokazu Miura's performance overlapped with the image of "ordinary Japanese people" who, even now in the Reiwa era, cannot face their past culpability.

Also, the scene where Etsuko's friend Sachiko (Fumi Nikaido) drowns a kitten that her child was fond of made me shudder at her madness.
I think this scene succinctly expresses her behavioral principle of justifying acts bordering on abuse while always saying it is "for her daughter".

However, at the same time, she refuses to live with relatives she does not get along with and lives with her daughter in a shack by the river. I think Sachiko's sense of family, which overlaps with Seita's way of life in "Grave of the Fireflies," showed the conflict between pre-war "blood-based collectivism" and post-war "individualism".

And in the story, the phrase "We must also change" is repeated twice in different situations.

It sounded more like telling oneself than calling out to others. Denying one's past self and accepting new values is painful—but if one does not keep telling oneself this, one will be entangled in old ways of thinking.
I felt the author's strong message in those words, which held both that suffering and hope.

"Discrimination," "views on war," "patriarchy," "gender perspectives"... Precisely because movements resisting change are becoming active again, I believe "A Pale View of Hills" is not just a "post-war drama," but a work that forces us living in the present to confront "how to accept the pain of change".