CANNES, May 17 — Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel, set in post-war Nagasaki and 1980s England, needed to be made into a film while there were still some of Japan’s World War Two generation alive to share their stories, director Kei Ishikawa told Reuters.
“The hurdles were high, but I felt strongly that if I had the chance to make the movie, I should do it now,” Ishikawa said at the Cannes Film Festival, where A Pale View of Hills is competing in the second-tier ‘Un Certain Regard’ category.
“In a few years’ time, we might not be able to get to hear their stories, and that weighed heavily on me,” said the Japanese director, whose 2022 film A Man premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
A Pale View of Hills intertwines the central character Etsuko’s memories of life in Nagasaki after the atomic bombing in 1945 with her interactions with her daughter in 1980s Britain.
The film, which stars Suzu Hirose and Yoh Yoshida, premiered yesterday, with The Hollywood Reporter describing it as a Cannes hidden gem.
Adapted for new generation
Ishiguro, an executive producer on the film, is also in Cannes. Adapting the novel, which he wrote when he was 25, was different from taking his other books, including The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, to the big screen, he told Reuters.
“Not just because it’s so very personal, but because at the time when I wrote the book, it was just 35 years after the end of the Second World War,” the Japanese-born British author said.
Now there have been at least two generations since the one that experienced the war that ended 80 years ago, he said.
“For me, that’s a very special thing. Possibly this is the first time maybe the Japanese people are prepared to look carefully at those experiences,” said Ishiguro.
He praised Ishikawa, 47, for making a film that was relevant to younger audiences from what he called an “apprentice book”.
“He’s made the movie really for today’s audience, for his generation and the generation actually even younger than him,” said Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017.
Director Ishikawa said he hoped the film would also alter foreign perceptions of Japanese women, who “are often seen as demure, walking a step behind their husbands”.
But that’s not the case at all, he said.
“There were definitely such strong women in that era,” he said.
“We’ve made this film from our own lived experiences and I believe that if many people see it, it could really refresh the image of Japan itself.” — Reuters
