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Film: Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (Droste no hate de bokura)
Year: 2020
Director: Junta Yamaguchi
Writer: Makoto Ueda
Starring: Kazunari Tosa, Riko Fujitani and Gôta Ishida
Review:
This is a movie that I got the opportunity to see as a screener thanks to Justin Cook. When reading through the synopsis that was provided to me, I knew that this was not a horror movie. When I saw that it could deal with time travel or loops a bit, that piqued my interest. I decided to go ahead and watch this one and write up this review. The synopsis is a café owner discovers that the TV in his café suddenly shows images from the future, but only two minutes into the future.
For this one here, this movie is quite interesting. It is filmed with one long take or at least they are simulating very well that is how they shot it. We get an interesting establishing shot of Megumi (Aki Asakura), who we will come back to later, but for this movie we are following Kato (Kazunari Tosa). He is our café owner. He has an employee of Aya (Riko Fujitani) who he seems to be quite friendly with. She pokes fun about a show him and his band is doing. Kato’s apartment is also upstairs from his café as well.
It is there that Kato is setting up to practice playing guitar when he can’t find his pick. There is a monitor connected to the CCTV for his café and he sees his image on it. What makes this interesting though is that Kato on the monitor claims to be from two minutes into the future. He helps his former self find his guitar pick and tells him that he must come downstairs in order to tell himself and keep this event happening. From this, Kato tests out what he has discovered.
Things get out of hand when Aya is confused by what her boss is doing. He tells her about what he’s found and she wants to test it out too. Things become even more complicated when his friends of Komiya (Gôta Ishida), Tanabe (Masashi Suwa) and Ozawa (Yoshifumi Sakai) all show up. Our characters are faced with making the future come true that they are setting up to avoid a paradox. It also gets our group into some trouble with a gangster that lives upstairs and a couple of odd guys that might know a bit more about what is happening.
That is where I’m going to leave my recap as this movie doesn’t have the deepest story that it is fleshing out. That’s not to say there isn’t depth though. We are getting more of that from the theories that are being explored here and the more this group complicates what they’re doing, the higher the stakes raise from it as well. It is brought up by someone that they need to ensure the path that is set up is fulfilled or it could create a paradox. Kato isn’t enjoying what they’re doing as much as they are. He’s the voice of reason to let it be, so when bad things happen, he is bummed. I’m interested in time travel, loops and the like, so this hooked me to see where things will play out.
I’m not going to go too scientific here, since I can’t explain the theories that well, but I still wanted to flesh out what they’re doing here. I like taking this idea of a time delay with recording or watching a screen that if used properly, could result in ‘time travel’. Ultimately, the monitor from upstairs is brought down to the café. It is then set up for them to be directed at each other. The idea here is that they can look further into the future by doing this. This does work and it gets to be quite interesting. When it is just upstairs, we see one side of a conversation. The movie then will take it downstairs to show us the other side. With both monitors in one room, facing each other. We see a bunch of events happening at different intervals to ensure that it keeps with what happened previously. The ultimate situation is faced with breaking this or status quo to go along with this path of time. I just like that this movie is setting up the theory that time is a flat circle, but as humans we can only interpret it linear.
Then going along with this, I should cover the cinematography. As this movie is going on, I was trying to figure out if this was done in one take or not. They are selling that it is. I can’t disprove there were any cuts, so making a 70-minute movie like this is impressive. What gets me is the editing done to ensure that what they filmed on one side was shown on the other. I’m not sure if they ran through this twice, filmed it and then used that to show through the monitors we are seeing or if they are doing that all in real time. Regardless, what they did here is a feat and I’m impressed.
The only way this would work though would be the acting as well. I thought our cast was good and distinct where I knew the characters. I might not always know their name, but I know about them. I like that we have Tosa as Kato who discovers this and then at once doesn’t want to mess with it. I like Fujitani’s bubbly personality. Ishida and Sakai are the annoying friends that work for what was needed here in complicating things. It is good to have Suwa who is piecing things together and explaining to his friends as well as the audience. Other than that, the rest of the cast are good to round out for what we needed as well.
So then in conclusion here, this is a fun movie. We have an interesting gimmick here that makes this time travel parts of the movie that much more impressive to me. The cinematography, editing and acting help to bring this all to life in an interesting way. There is even a bit of a feel-good comedy here that warmed my soul. The movie is also exploring interesting theories about time travel, loops and what happens if a different path is taken. There are even jokes that play from it as well. It also delves a bit into self-fulfilling prophecies. Be warned, this is from Japan, so it is subtitled. If that is an issue, I’d avoid this one. Overall, I’d say this is a good movie for me.
My Rating: 8 out of 10
This movie will be available on a number of digital and cable platforms, including iTunes, Amazon, VUDU, iNDemand and DISH, beginning January 25th.