‘I Wish’ is Moving Portrait of a Broken Home

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HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 3.5/5.0
Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Hirokazu Koreeda is one of the most interesting and acclaimed international filmmakers alive and his latest drama is one of lingering power, a film that moves a bit too slowly for its own good but has remarkable cumulative strength by its emotional finale. “I Wish” is about those days in which scope is subjective. The smallest things – physical and emotional – can be given life-changing importance. And a kid can convince himself that a miracle can happen.

Twelve-year-old Koichi (Koki Maeda) and younger brother Ryunosuke (Ohshiro Maeda) are products of a newly-broken home. Their parents have divorced after their mother has tired of their musician father’s lack of focus. While mom has moved in with her parents with Koichi, Ryunosoke and his father live hundreds of miles away. Ryu is young enough that he seems mostly unfazed by the situation (and Koreeda smartly draws parallels between Ryu and his more lackadaisical father and Koichi and his more serious mother) but Koichi dreams about his family being reunited.

Koichi lives in a small town in which an active volcano dominates the horizon. It spews ash, which litters the town and leaves many of the buildings covered in black soot. As Koichi wanders how everyone is OK with the potentially deadly volcano (a symbol for how the young man can’t believe that his parent’s separation is as much a fact of life as the likelihood of lava), he hears a story about how people can wish for a miracle at a unique point on a train track. The story goes that as two bullet trains pass each other, a wish can be made. Koichi plans with Ryu and his friends to trek to the spot where the trains pass and make a wish for a volcanic eruption. If his mother’s town is covered in lava, she’ll have to move back in with her husband and Koichi’s brother.

I Wish
I Wish
Photo credit: Magnolia Pictures

Just as he did with “After Life,” “Nobody Knows” (his masterpiece), and “Still Walking,” Hirokazu Koreeda finds beauty and drama in the simplicity of life. There’s a montage late in “I Wish” of little things that have been collected or highlighted throughout the film and it has surprising power. Kids remember details. They remember little things about a day with their mother, brother, or father that adults might miss. And Koreeda has always had a deft touch with the way children behave (see his masterful “Nobody Knows” as soon as possible).

Despite my obvious respect for “I Wish,” I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the slow pace of the film wore on me a bit. While I adore the realism, I’m not sure there isn’t a more streamlined, emotionally effective version of the story that doesn’t run over two hours. “I Wish” is a slight tale stretched out to a bloated running time.

Having said that, I can’t stress enough how valuable I find Hirokazu Koreeda to the international cinema scene. He’s one of those gifted filmmakers who knows how to find cinematic beauty in realistic truth. There’s nothing about “I Wish” that feels false and this is the kind of material that could have easily become melodramatic pablum in the hands of a lesser filmmaker. This may not be his best film but Hirokazu Koreeda is one of our best filmmakers.

“I Wish” stars Koki Maeda and Ohshiro Maeda. It was written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda. It opens at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago on June 1, 2012.

HollywoodChicago.com content director Brian Tallerico

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

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