Watch Eureka For Free

Wonderful Movie

Really Surprised!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

After three and a half slow paced, sepia toned hours experiencing emotional pain and anguish I still watched the credits roll. This film starts off with a man hijacking a bus and killing most everyone on it for no apparent reason. The driver and two middle school kids survive, and we spend the rest of the film watching them live with it. We watch them fall asleep watching television and other mundane matters but there is not a wasted frame in this film. There are a remarkable number of plot points to keep things moving forward but it still feels like suspended animation, like time is moving inward instead of along. Koji Yakusho is sublime and Aoi Miyazaki, at like twelve years old--and without saying a word for nearly the entire runtime--is mesmerizing. This film is a masterpiece, a journey exploring the myriad layers of trauma, of metaphorical death, and what three people endure on a path to renewal and emergence from a world of silent suffering. It will take your breath away.

There's a lot to talk about because this is an extremely psychological film, a fact reflected perhaps in its extreme length and subject matter. That matter is, basically, the people involved and their own interior and exterior movements. The film is psychological precisely because all the action is portrayed as more than just action – the highly personal and subconscious causes and effects are highlighted for each. In fact, the action is only important in that it reflects something deeper. This is a film where everything means something. The editing and composition are all fairly unorthodox – slow, long, and distant. Yet despite this distance and crawling pace, far more is accomplished in character development than most other films. This is because, unlike most other films, this appears to be solely about these developments, with little to no excess included.The idea of verbal communication is downplayed in the story, where the vast majority of the "dialogue" is purely silent, whether it is in the telepathic speech of the siblings or the quiet moments of sympathy and tenderness depicted throughout. Real connections are created not by words, but by actions, which is reflected in the film as a whole as the meanings are likewise transferred to the audience not by soliloquy's and conversation, but by long takes that focus purely on the non-verbal exchanges and movements of the characters. Despite its length (3.5hrs) and style, the film dragged very little because the spectator comes to identify so strongly with the characters that even an uneventful long take of a simple scene can be full of feeling and meaning.

Probably the only thing that has happened to me which i cannot express in words. Maybe thats what the director 'Shiniji' felt and instead of trying to express is it in heavy-Hollywood-dialogs syndrome, he chose the absolutely pinnacle and quintessential form of communication- ...... If you are looking for the definition of that art, you wouldn't just find,because it doesn't exist. You have to see this movie to venture into the world which is way beyond cinema and story-telling.Each character has just defied the very fabric of artificial situations that are cinematic and have stepped into the horizons of real world much real that what we see now. Shiniji's brilliance is not only in the way he picked up the situation and silhouetted it with ever so beautiful backdrop but also in that fact that he hasn't compromised on the lines of letting the movie talk with its aura of silence. Many great directors would have been tempted to use the brilliant characters of Naoki and Kozue to speak up their frustration(a usual ploy in American and European Cinema) to reassure their directorial capabilities, but Shiniji's belief in the movie and its characters was much more intense than both his audience and himself.Now a little about the movie. Eureka centrally addresses the condensed emotions of people who go through a catastrophe which might not be fatal physically but is absolutely draining mentally. The eventual darkness of body and mind that leads such people to imagine heinous crimes like murder without knowing the true essence of its legitimacy. It deals with complete disintegration of human psyche to unwanted darkness. But it also shows the inevitability of human victory of life and happiness over death and darkness. Eureka tours the human road-map of complete disillusionment and back to reclaim its lost grounds.Naoki and Kozue though being kids display a true situation that can drive even kids to craziness. Though not being dumb, words have not been their respite. The killing emptiness within woven with their apathetic vocals drilled them to their core and they became immune to popular practice of existence. Talking and involving with others were a waste, for nothing in the world could bring them what they lost. And if you ask what they lost, they cant describe it, I cant describe it, and neither can Shiniji. We can only feel it.Makoto together with the kids was also a subject to the catastrophe. It hit him so hard mentally that he lost himself to isolation. But he regrouped and returned to his home just to find that things have changed around him, he could not justify but accepted it because he could find himself a reason to it. He visits the kids and they form a small family in which no one has to say that they care for each other, they just have to feel.I can go on for this movie for the rest of my life but if you are alive you will see it.

I bought a cheap copy of Eureka from ebay (I couldn't get the nice UK version because I don't have a region-free DVD player), and was utterly transfixed by it--what a terrific film! However, through some awful twist of fate, the disc is flawed and I missed the ending of the movie. I'm hoping that I only missed the last few minutes, but I'm really p*ssed off nonetheless. I know I was near the end of the film from the chapter menu. Here's the last thing I saw: (SPOILER AHEAD) Makoto and Kazue stop at what seems to be some sort of ceremonial garden. The two previous scenes saw Makoto calling his ex-wife's beauty parlor and then hanging up, and then Kazue forming words with seashells on the bus. It looks like Makoto, having another coughing fit, collapses. thats the last thing i can see before the DVD skips back to the menu screen. If you're seen the movie, please help! thanks!