Those of us outside of Japan can never understand enough just how monumental the impact of the bombs were. Beyond their horrifying devastation, the mass crime against humanity with tangible reverberations for decades, the culture of Japan and the Japanese was irrevocably changed. Kazuo Ishiguro, who was born in Nagasaki, understood this intimately when he wrote his acclaimed debut novel A Pale View of Hills. Speaking of its 2025 adaptation, its director Kei Ishikawa noted the similarity of a vital secondary character, an old professor who stays with his son and daughter-in-law for a time, to the more iconic Stevens of Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day -a man of a rapidly disintegrating era tragically incapable of adapting to a shifting world. It is an apt comparison, though I would note more the similarity to a handful of figures from classic films by Yasujiro Ozu -often played by Chishū Ryū or Nakamura Ganjirō- who face the same struggles but are in direct contrast to a younger generation trying to move on in a new era for Japan. That divide was always a fascinating theme in Ozu’s work, as it is in this film, but with a starker contrast in its worlds -post-atrocity Nagasaki and the Thatcher-era English countryside.
A work that reads, intentionally or not, as Ishiguro’s most personal, A Pale View of Hills as adapted by Ishikawa splits its time between these two disparate settings to examine the life, experiences, and choices of a woman who for mysterious reasons ran away from Nagasaki with an Englishman and a young daughter in tow, never to look back. Yō Yoshida plays Etsuko in 1980s England, her daughter Niki (Camilla Aiko), a writer, visiting their country home from London and curious to learn more about her mother’s somewhat nebulous past in the aftermath of the tragic suicide of her older sister Keiko. Suzu Hirose plays Etsuko in 1950s Nagasaki, married to a businessman and expecting her first child, while entertaining his father Ogata (Yomokazu Miura) -struggling to find a place for himself in post-war Japan- and spending her leisure time with a curious new friend Sachiko (Fumi Nikaido) and her daughter Mariko, preparing to move to America.
Sachiko is the most compelling character of the piece, set up as such by Etsuko to Niki -a woman who supposedly played a vital role in her decision to leave Japan. But how she did this becomes more of a mystery not less the further along the movie goes. And that’s really the point. Ishiguro’s novel is known for its haunting atmosphere conjured by an implicitly unreliable narrator in Etsuko, and Sachiko is intertwined with that from her first appearance, alluring and enigmatic. A large part of this has to do with the performance from Nikaido, who seamlessly relates an air of mystique through her vibrant hopes and dreams that at times border on delusional -Etsuko does not meet this American who she is supposedly marrying, and Mariko is on the whole unimpressed by the situation. Sachiko’s home down by a marsh, is ramshackle, disorganized -yet she presents herself with an air of glamour and class. Through the scenes that emphasize this there is subtle inference to her history and trauma from the bomb, a fear that she was affected by the radiation and has passed it down to Mariko -as is the common stigma she faces. In this, raw empathy for her goes hand in hand with pity, even in moments of ignorance, bad judgement, or neglect of her daughter -Nikaido demanding your rapt attention and investment through each stage of distraction and desperate hope alike.
Hirose is very good too, encapsulating well the juxtaposition of Etsuko’s somewhat dull graciousness in respectable company and the lightly subversive, adventurous, even ambitious side that slips out in the presence of Sachiko and especially Mariko, whom she forms a close attachment with. But the other interesting relationship for the young Etsuko is with Ogata, who acts as some kind of mentor figure (his son is out of the house a lot) and a symbol to Etsuko of the older generation, but whose relevance is fading. He is in some manner a parallel to her older self, though ultimately more specific in his ideology -in a key scene arguing with a former student who is completely disenchanted with Japan’s place in the world and part of a generation aiming to reinvent the nation, while Ogata still possesses a solemn patriotism in what the country stood for before and during the war. Like Etsuko, the film espouses sympathy for him but not necessarily the world he came from.
He lives in the epicentre though of where that world ended, forcibly by the greatest destructive weapon ever made. The trauma of Nagasaki looms large even as the city is rebuilt and the people don’t mention it. There is an argument we see in which Sachiko is accused of a kind of treason -abandoning Japan for the country that bombarded it. This notion as we come to find is clearly on Etsuko’s mind as well. In some regards, the world she occupies is a fabrication of civility -where one must pretend a collective trauma does not exist, or to talk about it passively when it does come up. Etsuko recognizes this alienation, and in spite of appearances, does not fit in -and cannot go on in that existence.
Alongside all of this of course is the narrative in the present, which regularly cuts in, though haphazardly at times. What begins as Etsuko’s story to Niki continues on without that framing device, as we see Niki herself living her life and interacting with her mother in other ways -notably in a confrontation about her feelings regarding Keiko's estrangement and death and an awkward interaction with an old neighbour involving a lie about Niki's life. The palpable curiosity and complexity to Niki's sense of international identity is well-conveyed, as is to a lesser degree the older Etsuko's stoicism and repression of feeling, particularly concerning her guilt over Keiko.
Ishikawa's direction is sensitive, only occasionally veering into a mood of apprehension around a few enigmatic or disturbing implications. He lets his actors dictate the tenor of most scenes and apart from the occasional borrowing of a visual technique from Ozu or (in the British scenes) Mike Leigh, there isn't much to say with regards to style. Given the nature of this story, that is a bit of a disappointment, and especially in the way the framing device is departed from makes the perspective of the Nagasaki sequences -critical to understanding them- a bit easier to lose sight of.
Still, the twist of the story is suitably effective, how it re-contextualizes everything before in a revealing way as pertaining to Etsuko's choices, psychology, and motivations, is a thrill to take stock of -even if the manner lacks a bit of ingenuity. It may potentially alienate Ishiguro fans as it makes direct something left relatively ambiguous by the book. As I understand it there are changes, specifically in tone, to the story's resolution here that Ishikawa credits to the atmosphere in which he made the movie in the modern era -intuiting something a little more hopeful was necessary.
And perhaps this makes the movie a little bit slight ultimately. But the story itself remains rich and compelling, told here with considerable talent and care, and an honest affection for the themes and subjects at hand. Moments of mystery are matched by moments of tenderness and solemn observances on a changing world. A Pale View of Hills has not received much recognition through its various festival runs, but it was a true hidden gem for me at TIFF this year and I hope more audiences will have the chance to experience it.
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