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Brilliant and touching

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Since the composition is so delicate, the harsh texture of the editing should be made deliberately. The gloomy and horrific interior space and imaginative outdoor wanderings seem to tear the movie into two parts, but when the fences, rainstorms, feathers and other details are fully expressed, the metaphorical irony is gradually replaced by a purely romantic atmosphere. Although some part of the film it's going too far, the integral effect is quite remarkable.

To watch this film about three patients from a fairly grim looking mental institution you have to suspend one belief: The belief is that all three can just leave without being detected. Once you get beyond that, and you should, you are left with a film that is oddly both ugly and beautiful. The three patients are Coco (the wonderful Chara), Tsumuji (the equally great Tadanobu Asano) and Satoru (Koichi Hashizume). They are sent to the institution for reasons you find out about eventually, and once they leave the film really expands into a somewhat atmospheric but beautifully shot film, with you watching these three supposedly crazy people interact with themselves and, in my favorite scene, a priest. The film is not long, only 65 minutes or so, but I was deeply affected about what these three young people are all about. So, get beyond my little caveat and watch the world with them. I think its a richly rewarding film about the frailty of life.

This was one of the worst films I have seen in a while.I really think that I or any student could have written or filmed this movie, as long as you have some pretty faces to use as 'characters'. The movie attempts to portray the main actors as actually having mental visions of another human affecting their lives, ala A Beautiful Mind, in the first part of the film. Only toward the very end was this menacing vision revisited. In the rest of the movie, we see the main character happily and mindlessly drifting from neighborhood to neighborhood ending up at the ocean. An occasional reference to the meaning of life or the belief or even existence of GOD is supposed to lend this movie some credence.. a lame attempt.This is the state of Japanese Film making and acting,(in 1996 I know), and you wonder why Chinese actors were used in Memoirs of a Geisha! LOL

This is a short story about three teenagers in a mental institution (I'd prefer sanitarium because that is what it looks like) who, embarks on a trip to watch the end of the world. No need to analyze why but there are a lot of things they carry on their shoulders and when they get a bible from the minister it hints at consolation and they are quick to grab it. What is really apparent in this movie is the air of freedom; when they leave the gray, run down sanitarium it is all blue skies, refreshing winds and funny music (I'd love to have the sound track). I like this movie because of that, no matter how hard their lives are, there is always room for happiness, however fragile it may be. For fragile it is, in a blink of an eye it may vanish even though it may seem that it will last forever. It is a beautiful, yet tragic movie that I really recommend to anyone with an interest in the fate of people and their lives.