Written and Directed by Gakuryu Ishii
From a novel by Yumeno Kyusaku
Photographed by Norimichi Kasamatsu
Edited by Kan Suzuki
Music by Hiroyuki Onagawa
Production Design by Toshihiro Isomi
Starring
Rena Komine as Tomiko
Tadanobu Asano as Niitaka
. . .
“You must never, ever become a bus conductor.”
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
Boredom in a small town out in the sticks.
You’ve got to make your own fun.
Even if it’s all in your mind.
Or maybe it all starts in your mind until you find a real life adventure to displace your boredom.
Either way . . .
Tomiko works as a bus conductor. She punches tickets. She offers an additional pair of eyes at dangerous crossings-especially train tracks. This is in some vaguely delineated Japanese past-1930s? 1940s?-in which the monotony of existence in a small town is all-consuming. No significant reference is made to the world beyond this town. Tomiko’s job as a bus conductor is explicitly presented as a job for women. Only men are permitted to work as bus drivers. Tomiko narrates her story by way of a series of letters to her best friend. We find out that she had great expectations that this job would be more of an adventure, but, alas, it’s a grind like all other things. It becomes exciting only when Tomiko takes on the role of a civilian detective.
Another bus conductor dies in a suspicious accident. There’s a rumor that she was murdered by a bus driver who manipulated and seduced her into becoming a victim. The implication is that this predator has insinuated himself into the job of bus driver because it allows him proximity to his prey. Whether this is the truth or just a creepy folktale is the mystery at the heart of Labyrinth of Dreams.
A prime suspect emerges: the sullen yet handsome bus driver Niitaka, whom Tomiko first sees taking a nap right on the train tracks. This sets up a core ambiguity: is Niitaka just a deeply depressed person, or is he a monster? Maybe he is a monster but also feels remorse over his killings which drives him to various antisocial and self-destructive behaviors. Tomiko takes a very black and white perspective on things, casting herself as a dogged seeker of justice right out of a paperback thriller. She’s convinced that Niitaka is the murderer. But the film outside of her constructed narrative allows us to see Niitaka in other ways. Labyrinth of Dreams uses close-ups of Tomiko’s relentlessly suspicious face to remind us that we’re supposed to be on her wavelength even while other shots create a static of uncertainty. Niitaka himself is so emotionally closed-off that we end up projecting whatever pleases us onto him.
Tomiko finds herself attracted to Niitaka. Niitaka seems to take an interest in her. Tomiko possibly sees their romance as an undercover operation to ferret out the truth, but she also seems to sort of like him. The key scene between these two happens over two glasses of wine. I won’t spoil what exactly occurs but Niitaka challenges Tomiko to play a game of “chicken” involving the two glasses. This is all deeply suspicious . . . but ultimately it's as ambiguous as everything else. The most that can be said for sure is that Niitaka is a deeply troubled person . . . but is he a monster?
Labyrinth of Dreams uses black and white cinematography to evoke harsh feelings of isolation and fear as well as a dreamy romanticism. Everyone that appears in front of the camera is an actual human actor, no deep fakes, no computer generated sidekicks. All of the props, costumes, locations, the bus, the train, the train tracks, the trees, the fog-it’s all there, it all exists, even if it’s all lit, framed, and assembled into a stylish set of sequences that defy easy explanations. Ultimately, Tomiko and Niitaka’s lives are very, very small. They each try to leave their mark upon the world-for good, for evil, maybe just to beat back the oppression of insignificance, maybe they don’t actually know why, maybe they can’t ever know.
Maybe Tomiko’s just inventing a narrative-any narrative, even a ghastly one-to escape a tightly constrained existence in a world that looks down on poor working class women.
Maybe Niitaka’s depression drives him to minimize his own narrative to reduce the surface area of emotional vulnerability.
There is an ending that points to some possibilities, but much is left up to We the Audience to sort through, assemble, discard, and/or frame as significant.
Labyrinth of Dreams asks a lot of its audience, and I respected and admired it for doing so.
