The Film Time That Never Ended: 'I Want the Sun'
A One-of-a-Kind Documentary Film
On March 15 and 16, 2025, we will hold a screening in Sendai titled “The Gaze of Record”. Through the screening of documentary films and talks with filmmakers Sachiko Iioka and Haruka Komori, we hope to create an opportunity to rethink the very act of “recording.”
The first film that came to mind during our selection process was 'I Want the Sun' (1994). This is a truly incredible film. It is a work composed and edited by Makoto Sato of 'Living on the River Agano,' using footage and video materials shot by lighting technician Sei Watanabe of his wife, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
The circumstances behind the filming of 'I Want the Sun' and the intentions behind its editing are detailed in the book 'Living in Old Age,' written by producer Mayako Sadasue. It is a wonderful record in its own right, sincerely documenting how this unique and beautiful documentary came to be, and it is a book I highly recommend to anyone who has seen the film.
Of course, I have read 'Living in Old Age' before. However, I will not touch upon its contents here, nor will I intentionally reread it; I will choose to forget what was written for now. I will also pretend that the proper noun “Makoto Sato” is unknown to me, and I will try to write about the experience of simply watching the film's screen.
Two People Apart
The film begins with footage of a bus driving along a mountain road. Then, the exterior of a hospital appears. It seems this place is the setting of the film, and someone has arrived there.
Suddenly, the footage switches from film to video. Inside a house. An elderly woman is singing a folk song in a resonant voice. In time with the melody, both of her hands tremble slightly. It is as if she is playing a theremin.
The title 'I Want the Sun' appears on the screen. The first cut after that shows a man holding a camera reflected in the glass, and the figure of a woman in the corridor on the other side. The location is likely the hospital that appeared earlier. An elderly woman in pajamas turns around when someone calls her. She is at a considerable distance, captured with a telephoto lens.
The man holding the camera is the lighting technician Sei Watanabe. The woman is his wife, Tomiko. Throughout the film, Sei Watanabe’s own voice narrates why he films his ailing wife, how grateful he is to the facility staff, and what it means to be a married couple.
The “narrator” of the film is Sei Watanabe, and this cut, where his figure holding the camera and the subject, Tomiko, overlap like a double exposure through the glass, is perfectly suited as an opening.
However, at the same time, even though they are indirectly contained within the same frame, the two are separated by a glass door and are not in the same space. The couple is separate, apart. The film begins there.
Sei Watanabe’s voice narrates: “It’s bad of me to film this,” “But, clumsy as I am, I’ll try.” We, the audience, first hear his voice expressing his hesitation about filming his aging, ill wife and showing it to others.
The scene returns to their home, and their courtship is recounted through old photographs. In time, various signs appear—buying the same things repeatedly at the supermarket, driving with the turn signal left on—and finally, Tomiko is diagnosed with Alzheimer's and enters a facility.
What Am I Watching?
Sei Watanabe is a professional as a lighting technician, but not as a cameraman. The images on the screen are fragmented, shaky, and jittery; they are not necessarily clear.
As for the subjects, while there are certainly direct shots of the facility and Tomiko, there are many things for which it is unclear why they were filmed. Landscapes such as flowers, butterflies, alleys whose locations are uncertain, and vacant lots are inserted, half of which are out of focus.
They are connected by audio and music, and there is no particular sense of discomfort from the beginning. However, as these images, which appear at a distance and frequency too strange to be called “image shots,” accumulate, one gradually realizes that this is no ordinary matter.
Also, footage that occurs when the film runs out during shooting, where it gradually becomes overexposed and nothing is visible, is used frequently. Why is this part, which would normally be cut, used? The subject is not reflected on the exposed film. What it points to is the “act” of filming (and editing) itself.
There is a self-reference in that pure white screen that says, “This is film.” When thinking about that meaning, I realize that 'I Want the Sun' may not necessarily be a “film of what is being shown.”
Among such images, the most bizarre is likely the long take of the facility's exterior shot from a high angle. When the camera is firmly fixed on a tripod and a building that should not move on its own is shown endlessly, I am stunned, wondering what on earth I am watching.
There must be some intention behind the cut that continues to show the stationary building. Even if footage is shot for a long time, it can be shortened during editing. In other words, the exterior of the facility, intentionally left uncut, remains there. Without anything being particularly explained, as time flows, I think: Is 'I Want the Sun' really a film about “a husband filming his sick wife”?
It’s the Same as the Earth Rotating
There is the issue of “when to end the filming” in documentaries. Especially when the camera is pointed at family members, one can film forever if one tries. Consequently, it is common in such films that the filming ends only when the other person passes away.
Though it may be insensitive, I watched 'I Want the Sun' thinking it would end that way too. Tomiko’s illness was gradually progressing, and I could not imagine any other destination.
However, the film did not end that way. Or perhaps it would be better to say, “the film itself did not end.” Both narratively and visually, while the time of 'I Want the Sun' began by tracing the progression of the illness, at some point (perhaps from the moment the stationary exterior of that building was shown endlessly), it felt as if it stopped moving in a straight line and began to circle, rotate, and repeat.
“There is no end to illness. It’s the same as the Earth rotating,” says Sei Watanabe. At the beginning of the film and just before the last cut, the rising sun (the “otento-sama”) is placed. It is a repeating, circulating movement and time.
The film ends with a very short cut of Tomiko in the hospital corridor turning around when her name is called.
The voice calling her is not Sei’s, but the camera is there. Because of that proximity, the image looks like the moment when the camera and the subject, who were apart at the beginning, were finally able to be in the same space.
As if thrown out from the centrifugal force of the vicious cycle, the film returns to the beginning and repeats, but this time, crossing the divide of the glass door, the two are together.
After finishing the film, I think. It does not necessarily mean that because the filmmaker is not a professional, or because it is out of focus, the things being shown are not the issue. In that case, the way the question is posed is different.
By filming, they are separated, and through editing, they are connected. Fragments are sustained by sound. Flowers and landscapes fly around the two of them as a place that is nowhere and at no time. The exposed film also captures the time spent filming as it was turned. Even the stationary buildings required that length of footage.
When we move away from apparent motion and rethink film from the perspective of flowing time, we can say that this is, after all, a 'film of what is being filmed'.
The Unfinished Film Time
Due to illness, the time of the two changed from a straight line to a circle. There is no easy introduction, development, twist, and conclusion there. To be precise, there is an 'introduction, development, and twist,' but there is no 'conclusion.' That is why 'the film itself did not end'.
Of course, the film actually ends. However, perhaps the '47-minute' running time, which is about half the length of a feature film, was also a necessary 'shortness' to keep us from being led to an easy conclusion.
Not letting flowing time be digested into the conclusion of a story. While pointing to what is not filmed, entrusting the film to the transience of what is filmed. This avoidance of an ending, created through editing, pushes this work beyond mere 'emotion'.
'I Want the Sun' goes beyond the fact that 'a husband filmed his sick wife,' and is a film of repetition where the two who once lived together meet again and again. It captures 'time' as a movement that is repeated forever, 'just like the earth spinning'.