“You’ll Understand When You’re Older” | Family Secrets and Horrific Initiations in Best Wishes to All
IFC Films and Shudder.
People becoming more conservative as they age is a common bit of folk wisdom, suggesting that it’s natural to replace the idealism and sensitivity of youth with hardened self-interest as you get older. Whether it’s true or not — the data shows that millennials are reversing this trend, perhaps because we have less to lose than previous generations — the idea is so widely accepted that its true horror becomes obscured. Why should the suffering of others matter less the longer you’ve been alive?
Indeed, young people’s political awakenings are often violent and radicalizing, a concept that receives a rare horror-movie treatment in Yuta Shimotsu’s debut feature Best Wishes to All (screening Friday, May 2, at 11:59 p.m., at the Music Box Theatre, as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival). Born in 1990, Shimotsu is himself a young director. And his protagonist, played by Kotone Furukawa, is youthful as well. A nursing student studying in Tokyo, she’s come back to the countryside to visit her grandparents, who embody the cheerful ojichan and obachan archetypes beloved (and used as punchlines) in Japanese culture.
The Japanese countryside is rapidly aging, and the lack of young people in these areas has become a national crisis. So Furukawa’s character stands out, as does a former classmate (Koya Matsudai) who’s returned to take over the family farm and care for his sick father. “The world couldn’t go on if everyone pursued their dreams,” he says, defeated. But there’s something else that’s different about him, something that doesn’t become clear until another secret is exposed a half-hour in.
IFC Films and Shudder.
The bag twitch in Takashi Miike’s Audition (IYKYK) is an iconic moment in Japanese horror, and Best Wishes to All similarly renders the fabric of its reality when the key to our heroine’s family’s success is exposed. Without revealing too much, it takes the idea of “no ethical consumption under capitalism” to sadistic, grotesque extremes. Happiness can only be achieved by exploiting others, Furukawa’s character’s father patiently explains to her. It’s just the way things are.
There’s a parallel here to discovering any of the many horrible things going on in our world — seeing the dead bodies of Palestinian children on social media, maybe, or staying up at night worrying about the apocalyptic threat of climate change — and finding, to great personal distress, that no one really seems to care. Midway through the film, Shimotsu captures this feeling in a long, unbroken shot of a family eating dinner, casually chatting as Furukawa furiously packs her bags in the background. “You’re all twisted! Someone is dead!” she cries. Her mother chuckles. “You saw that thing as a person?,” she asks.
Everyone around her treats our heroine’s moral repulsion as hopelessly naive. One woman, around her age, mocks her by asking if she still believes in Santa Claus, too. They assume that a better world is not possible, and take pleasure in their cruelty to those they deem less human than themselves. Eventually, this innocent girl will grow up and accept reality, they’re sure of that. But does it have to be this way? Is empathy foolish, and exploitation inevitable? Do we really have to close our hearts to survive in this world? Shimotsu’s film dares to ask these questions.
Best Wishes to All screens Friday, May 2, at 11:59 p.m., at the Music Box Theatre, as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival; this screening is co-presented by Music Box of Horrors.
