Deviation Actions
Description
Contains SPOILERS for Fargo (1992) and Babel (2006).
This motion picture has subtitles in it.
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter was a movie from last year I really wanted to view based on its trailer. Directed and co-written by David Zellner (alongside his brother Nathan Zellner), Kumiko stars Rinko Kikuchi. If her name or face looks familiar that’s because she played the role of Jaeger pilot Mako Mori in Guillermo de Toro’s 2013 motion picture blockbuster Pacific Rim. Prior to that, her performance as the deaf and rebellious Japanese teenage girl traumatized by her mother’s recent suicide Chieko Wataya in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Babel (2006) earned Rinko an Academy Award nod for Best Supporting Actress, a feat that hadn’t been achieved in the last 50 years!
After Kumiko discovers and watches a VHS tape repeatedly of the Coen Brothers flick Fargo, she becomes fixated on the briefcase hidden underneath the snow within its respective narrative. This is evident through a notebook she keeps that is full of scribblings, numbers, diagrams, and other significant information concerning the “treasure” and Fargo. There are also a couple of scenes that show Kumiko continuing to research and refine her notes despite clearly owning a worn-out tape.
Besides a banal job under a boss she loathes (spits into his tea regularly before serving him it) while her overbearing mother chastises her about not being in a relationship or insisting she move back home during phone calls, Kumiko lives a life of solitude with her pet bunny Bunzo.
Not sure if Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is accurate to authentic Japanese culture/society. Man, it certainly seems like it is respectful or faithful to some degree though. Which in and of itself is splendid to witness.
Unlike her co-workers, Kumiko doesn’t care about her appearance. Nor that she arrived tardy for work. Or display the slightest interest in socializing either. There’s a sorrowful look in her eyes if/when she raises her head to make eye contact with people. Kumiko speaks quietly and in monotone the majority of the time. Perhaps her mundane existence has robbed her of anything resembling a cadence? I wish I could of gotten a little backstory on her character, relating to who Kumiko was in the past. What choices, events, and experiences she made and endured formed this individual the audience is looking at now? Has she always been like this? How long has Kumiko lived her life in misery for?
For instance, Kumiko has an interaction with a colleague she knew years ago on the street. During this surprise bumping into, she declares that they should exchange phone numbers leading to awkward silence from Kumiko in reply that the colleague eventually breaks by pretending to stab her with her cellphone in jest. Earlier on, Kumiko attempts to pilfer an atlas from a library for the map of Minnesota, calling herself a “Spanish conquistador” to the guard that halts her exit. After I think Kumiko tries to bribe him he feels pity for her: giving her the page of the map from out of the atlas she wanted.
Why and how Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, works so effectively as a film is because it is simultaneously uplifting and destructive. She’s convinced that this money exists and can be claimed by her. Kumiko remaining deceived by the true story text at opening of Fargo is similar to the viewer being in on a cruel joke or reveling in her being consistently trolled.
On other hand, due to the life she’s living by rejecting/not thinking about social norms, we truly wish for her to succeed. For her fantasy of locating the suitcase full of cash to be fulfilled. Undeterred by those that explain it is “fake” or too far to go to this time of the year, Kumiko continues trudging onward towards her goal. Never underestimate the influence, minor or extreme, media can have on people.
All in all, the performance by Rinko, visuals, the characters she encounters, the score by The Octopus Project, and weaved yarn makes Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, a film I immensely fancied from its surreal beginning to its appropriate closing moments. Definitely in the upper echelon from 2014 with The Skeleton Twins. This peculiar gem demands attention from others.
Unfortunately, I know hardly anybody that’s seen nor even heard of it before. It is on Amazon Prime. Right now.