Synopsis
Two friends who work together at a Tokyo laundry are increasingly alienated from everyday life. They become fascinated with a deadly jellyfish.
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Bright Future
Cast
Director
Producers
Writer
Editor
Cinematography
Executive Producers
Production Design
Art Direction
Composers
Sound
Costume Design
Studios
Country
Language
Alternative Titles
Akarui mirai, 밝은 미래, 光明的未來, Jellyfish, 光明的未来, Świetlana przyszłość, Světlá budoucnost
Genres
Themes
Releases by Date
Premiere
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Japan
13 Jan 2008
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Czechia
Eiga-Sai Film Festival
Theatrical
18 Jan 2003
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Japan
23 Apr 2004
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South Korea12
Releases by Country
Czechia
13 Jan 2008
- Premiere Eiga-Sai Film Festival
Japan
01 Dec 2002
- Premiere
18 Jan 2003
- Theatrical
South Korea
23 Apr 2004
- Theatrical12
Popular reviews
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Filled with all kinds of hip references that are pointedly laid nonchalantly in backgrounds as signifiers not of taste but of a grasp of global culture that already feels cheap and homogenous from ubiquity. A La Chinoise poster is nestled behind a vase and a printer in an attorney's office, while a character's offhanded comment that he appreciates music is borne out in the somewhat careless way that Charlie Parker and classic film soundtracks litter his home. Though coming on the heels of Kurosawa's string of international breakthrough J-horror and thus somewhat neglected, this feels like a prime entry in that transition from his turn-of-the-century mastery of dread toward his present state as an unpredictable cross-pollinator of genres.
The use…
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa coming thru with another apocalyptic banger. I’m not sure of the reason for him using different cameras in this film but I think it works? and I just loved that he did it because why not, right??. A lot of filmmakers are so afraid to take little risks like that.
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I think this film is more in the same vein with License to Live, like with the tone and the pacing. Once again, great score. I feel like people don’t talk enough about how great the scoring is in his films.And then, that final scene... how is he so good with endings??
Final Score : 88% 🍎 -
Acclimation vs. adaptation.
A fluid metaphor illustrating the dangers of a psychological severance from the world around you, Bright Future sees Kiyoshi Kurosawa and his idiosyncratic brand of auteurship at perhaps its most cryptic and enveloping. Unfolding as genre-bending, existential surrealism meshed with apocalyptic dread, the surface of the film is very micro, but its implication couldn’t be any larger in scale.
What makes this movie so brilliant is how, like most great figurative stories, it can be seen from many different perspectives. What makes the jellyfish such an interesting surrogate for the themes Kurosawa is tapping into? Perhaps what makes it such an apt vessel is its elusivity. Not only tangibly—the physiological makeup of the animal, both its slippery bell…
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Can my life wait any longer? Fascination. You wished you lived as long as the jellyfish. You wished you were thinking about the radiant glowing ones underwater. Away with cities. The digital camera is in experimentation, switching from low quality fuzz to early clean imagery. The Kiyoshi Kurosawa statement about psychological meditation, there are hours for our drowsiness (though it could be too much for some). After this, there is dreaming. Post-idealism. Beautiful venom.
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The ghost generation goes down the river. It has Kurosawa's gift for suggestive images and for such a bleak film, it is also one of his funniest.
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One thing is for certain that Kiyoshi Kurosawa's ability as a metaphorical writer is increasingly astonishing. What seems like an aimless character study devoid of plot contains layers of themes and meaning. The main aspect that is holding the film back is ironically within the technical department in which Kurosawa also usually excels.
The technical flaws in which I speak of have to do with the potential of the film's cinematography and it being wasted with cheap and multiple cameras. There were distinct differences between certain scenes in the quality of the picture obviously showing that Kurosawa used more than one type of camera and things as simple as that can really take the viewer out of the film. His…
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Y2K-era works are underrated. Bright Future is a great genre blender from him during that time, and it's so lovingly unique and cryptic, if not outstanding compared to his more established works.
A poisonous jellyfish connects two colleagues, who go on different paths after a murder case. Kurosawa's mastery of depicting unconventional, sometimes hairraising ways humans react was impressive, especially for lost, disillusioned souls who only see a "Bright Future" in dreams. For the most part, this is highly reliant on a mysterious atmosphere and vibe to convey a hard-hitting, metaphorical modern tale the exact moral of which unfortunately escapes me. Is this a take on the inherent evil in humanity, or just a sympathetic ode to a generation that has betrayed their forefathers? Either way, I still enjoy this experience, especially when I get to see the legendary Tatsuya Fuji as a beautiful grandpa.
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It was a tiny revolution
You touched my shoulderNumbing emptiness in labour and everything the city touches, the concrete, the fences, the canals, the people shaped in dollars and barred windows and exchange rates for human contact. It all feels catastrophically hopelesss as do so many of Kurosawa's films, but what also connects them is their delicate approach to relationships - in the face of apocalypse (an actual collapse or something felt) genuine connections form and flourish and become beautiful and destructive. But in the end, a way forward, a path towards freedom is inherently destructive; there's a nihilistic edge to Kurosawa's work, but it never overshadows beauty in humanity, nor does he condemn a struggle for something better,…
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"Figure things out for yourself."
It's clear almost immediately that the title of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Bright Future is dripping with irony. It follows two young men of few prospects, Yuji Nimura (Joe Odagiri) and Mamoru Arita (Tadanobu Asano) as they drift through their days working at a warehouse, hitting up an arcade and caring for Mamoru's pet poisonous jellyfish. The only way they can even conceive of a future at all is through Yuji's dreams, and he is considered crazy for having them. Mamoru has more murderous dreams of his own that involve a scheme to acclimate the jellyfish to fresh water and unleash it to breed throughout Tokyo. Things would likely have continued on this way for the pair…
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Bright Future is a film about disillusioned youth and their hope for a better future. This appears to be a common theme for Kiyoshi Kurosawa, with his film Pulse tackling the same subject matter by making good use of the horror genre. Pulse came out two years earlier and had more striking imagery, but Bright Future excels at being more relatable and less nihilistic.
As a jobless 23 year old in graduate school with very little clue of what I truly want to do for the rest of my life, this film really resonates with me. It is easy to feel like everyone and everything is working against you when you're a young adult. Any hope for a more enjoyable…
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"I inherited Mamoru's pet jellyfish. But I let it escape. I know it's somewhere, here in Tokyo." //
"Don't Jellyfish need saltwater?" /
"We acclimated it to fresh water so it could survive in Tokyo." //
"I see..." /
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