Review | Toronto 2020: Under the Open Sky movie review – engrossing drama from Miwa Nishikawa sees Koji Yakusho shine as ex-convict

Koji Yakusho delivers an enthralling turn as a middle-aged gangster trying to find his place in Japanese society after serving a long prison term for murder
Directed with sympathy by Miwa Nishikawa, the film ends on an ironic note, but one that chimes with the moral quandaries characters in her work often face

Asian cinema: Japanese films

Edmund Lee

Published: 6:45pm, 11 Sep 2020

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4/5 stars

The difficulties a middle-aged ex-convict faces trying to reintegrate in society is depicted with infectious sympathy in Under the Open Sky, the sixth feature by Japanese writer-director Miwa Nishikawa and her first since 2016’s The Long Excuse . The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, ahead of a domestic release in Japan scheduled for February 2021.

Anchored by a mesmerising performance by Koji Yakusho in the leading role, this adaptation of a novel by Ryuzo Saki offers an alternately heart-warming and poignant portrait of a former yakuza gangster, Masao Mikami, who has just spent 13 years in prison for murder. Under Nishikawa’s affectionate direction, even the civil servants in minor roles dealing with the protagonist’s hopeless case are sources of kindness.

Mikami, we learn, was abandoned by his geisha mother when he was four and raised in an orphanage until he entered organised crime as a teenager. He eventually came to be known as the “brawler” of his syndicate, and was imprisoned for brutally killing a hoodlum who brought trouble to the hostess bar he and his then-wife, Kumiko (Narumi Yasuda), had opened.

Even with the assistance of his lawyer/benefactor (Isao Hashizume) and welfare services case worker (Yukiya Kitamura), the hot-tempered Mikami struggles to find an ordinary job to support himself because of his checkered past and multiple spells in prison. His body ailing and covered in scars and tattoos, his driving licence expired – and his skills behind the wheel clearly waning – he is unsuited to a driving job, and in danger of going back to his old ways.

When he is approached by young writer and TV director Tsunoda (Taiga Nakano) – who is being egged on by a producer (Masami Nagasawa) looking for sensational content – Mikami senses a faint hope he can find his long-lost mother. But Mikami’s readiness to resort to violence, albeit sometimes just to help others in distress, continues to haunt him. A trip to his former yakuza “brother” adds to his disillusionment.

From left: Taiga Nakano, Koji Yakusho and Masami Nagasawa in a still from Under the Open Sky. Photo: Courtesy of TIFF.

Nishikawa’s films on the themes of lies and deception have been consistently excellent. Here she switches gears with her first adaptation of another writer’s story, and a film focused on a character who can’t seem ever to betray what he is feeling. Mikami just wants to feel useful again – after all, the yakuza business is dead, as several characters remind him – but inevitably, he is treated like a social outcast.

Under the Open Sky ends on an ironic note that, at first glance, appears to run counter to the cautiously optimistic tone of much of the proceedings. But the sudden shift in Mikami’s fortunes chimes with the moral quandaries that have infused Nishikawa’s films and which set her work apart: for a career criminal who has always lived by a code of honour, a life in denial is probably one that’s not worth living.

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