Michiteiku みちていく

And yet another great little project from Japan that manages, somehow, to hit all the right points with barely a single BGM for support! Like, how do they do it?! Even more impressive is the fact that this movie was written and directed by a graduate!! Yeah sure, one can argue that this is no regular graduate being a Todai graduate (Tokyo University graduate) but still, a graduate is a graduate!

You know I have come to the conclusion that if you want real characters in movies, especially female, you want a female director! Women directors really know how to push for emotions! They rarely rely on BGM to enhance emotional scenes but rather on the characters! Yes, this is directed by a woman (Takeuchi Lisa)! ‘A Girl At My Door’ – another great movie that relies mostly on its characters, was directed by a woman (Jung July).

Women directors know how to conceal emotions and knowing what level of yuri I prefer, you best know it that I am praying for more female directors to make more yuri movies in the future! Now of course there are plenty of good male directors who also understand characters but even then when it comes to female characters, there is something missing there. There is a bit of realism missing and though sometimes it takes a female assistant to help bridge the gap (a la ‘The Handmaiden’ and ‘As One’) it is just not the same!

Back to Michiteiku, Japan is still plenty relevant and only in 2nd place because South Korea has given us more better home-runs, because they are very good at these silent movies! By this I do not mean those early 1900s style movies! I mean that there is very little BGM if it is even used! Only Japan seems to have the guts for these movies where they rely mostly on the actors, script and nature! I really love these movies! No emotion gets passed you because there are no distractions! Directors and Writers can hide little meanings within actions and you will pick them up easily if you know what you are looking for!

Michiteiku is that movie I got with my Christmas swag and it is now time to talk about it. If you haven’t yet watched it and you do not want to be spoiled, you know what to do, or not to do. But really, I am no critic so it should be expected that there are going to be spoilers in my posts, especially the way I write about stuff!

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