Rate The Last Movie You Saw

The 'finding beauty in small things' and 'being a diligent worker in a job that exploits him' are obvious critiques of capitalism, but I'm not as interested in or critical of capitalism myself, so I thought a much better part of the film was how his alleged optimism was just a facade.

There's something dark lurking behind the superficial happiness in that character, which is aptly portrayed in the final scene, where sadness and happiness are fighting with each other, both expressed by his face interchangeably. Many more factors support this thesis.

For one, I believe he was abused by his father and therefore ran away from his family. During the meeting with his sister, she asks if he's willing to pay a visit to his father who's now in an old people's home or an institution (maybe suffering from Alzheimer's). What stuck in my mind is his sister saying that the father "isn't like he was anymore" or something like that, but she said it in a way that suggested there might've been something terrible between the protagonist and the father. Another interpretation is that the protagonist is deadbeat and simply left his family, but I like the idea that he ran away from them far more. There's also the overarching idea that he isn't accepted by them. Like he told his niece about how some worlds never meet and he will therefore be never understood and accepted by his own family.

Another potent scene is the one where he meets the ex-husband of the woman he might or might not be in love with. They play the shadow game and at one point they're checking out if two people standing one behind the other make the shadow darker: "Do shadows get darker when they overlap?". I think this might be pointing to the sameness between the protagonist and the ex-husband who suffers from cancer, possibly implying that the protagonist is suffering from an illness, too, but probably a mental one AKA depression.

There are some other self-referential and authorial threads here that talk about Wim Wenders as much as about the protagonist (Wenders might even be projecting himself through Hirayama). Hirayama reads Faulkner (with Highsmith on his shelf - both Americans but the Japanese book he buys is on anxiety...) and listens to American music (except for that one time when he listens to a Japanese (?) song - I wonder if that's meaningful). This isn't surprising as many Wenders films talk about how American culture influences us, often subconsciously. This isn't unlike a film like Rhapsody in August by Kurosawa or even the films of Ozu like Good Morning that all explore the influence of American culture on the Japanese.

I'm not saying this film cannot be seen as life-affirming. But I think there's much more to it than that.

The 'finding beauty in small things' and 'being a diligent worker in a job that exploits him' are obvious critiques of capitalism, but I'm not as interested in or critical of capitalism myself, so I thought a much better part of the film was how his alleged optimism was just a facade.

There's something dark lurking behind the superficial happiness in that character, which is aptly portrayed in the final scene, where sadness and happiness are fighting with each other, both expressed by his face interchangeably. Many more factors support this thesis.

For one, I believe he was abused by his father and therefore ran away from his family. During the meeting with his sister, she asks if he's willing to pay a visit to his father who's now in an old people's home or an institution (maybe suffering from Alzheimer's). What stuck in my mind is his sister saying that the father "isn't like he was anymore" or something like that, but she said it in a way that suggested there might've been something terrible between the protagonist and the father. Another interpretation is that the protagonist is deadbeat and simply left his family, but I like the idea that he ran away from them far more. There's also the overarching idea that he isn't accepted by them. Like he told his niece about how some worlds never meet and he will therefore be never understood and accepted by his own family.

Another potent scene is the one where he meets the ex-husband of the woman he might or might not be in love with. They play the shadow game and at one point they're checking out if two people standing one behind the other make the shadow darker: "Do shadows get darker when they overlap?". I think this might be pointing to the sameness between the protagonist and the ex-husband who suffers from cancer, possibly implying that the protagonist is suffering from an illness, too, but probably a mental one AKA depression.

There are some other self-referential and authorial threads here that talk about Wim Wenders as much as about the protagonist (Wenders might even be projecting himself through Hirayama). Hirayama reads Faulkner (with Highsmith on his shelf - both Americans but the Japanese book he buys is on anxiety...) and listens to American music (except for that one time when he listens to a Japanese (?) song - I wonder if that's meaningful). This isn't surprising as many Wenders films talk about how American culture influences us, often subconsciously. This isn't unlike a film like Rhapsody in August by Kurosawa or even the films of Ozu like Good Morning that all explore the influence of American culture on the Japanese.

I'm not saying this film cannot be seen as life-affirming. But I think there's much more to it than that.