Miles to Go
Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter / directed by David Zellner
In its opening scene, we follow Kumiko’s eponymous heroine (played by Rinko Kikuchi) as she treks across a beach and into a small grotto. A treasure map has brought her to this place - we never learn how she got it - where she uncovers a mysteriously hidden VHS tape, wrapped in burlap and ickily scampered over by crabs and other dank seaside life.
The tape, it turns out, is a scratchy but watchable copy of the Coen Brothers movie Fargo. We don’t see Kumiko become obsessed with this film so much as encounter her in the midst of full-blown obsession -- and not in the manner of a movie buff whose mind might subsequently be blown to hog heaven by an unearthing of The Big Lewbowski, but rather as a person possessed by a literal and absolute belief in what the film depicts: in particular, the scene in which a bloodied Buscemi hides a suitcase of cash in the most anonymous of snowdrifts, then marks the location with what appears to be an ice scraper. Kumiko pauses the scene, approaches the TV and works to measure the distance between fenceposts. She gets some diagrams going, annotated in Japanese but clearly about issues of perspective and distance. One buried treasure, it seems, has put her hot on the trail of another.
Outside the tape and the suitcase of cash, back in the real world (to be innocently provocative), Kumiko exists in a near-catatonic state. Her work is tedious, her boss abusive, her friendships scant; her relationship with her mother might charitably be described as “unsupportive.” In these relationships, or lack thereof, we have clues to what might lie behind Kumiko’s isolation and propensity to delusion - a mother who hectors her over her failure to have a boyfriend, a boss who offers only the toughest of tough love, a society without meaningful employment.
But in describing the film in terms of plot and psychological speculation, I’ve so far given short shrift to the intense way in which it conveys and evokes this very psychological state, and in so doing involves us with Kumiko in complicated and uncomfortable ways. The soundtrack (by the Octopus Project) is eerie and powerful; the cinematography intimate and at times hypnotic. (It may be that I wax overly clinical, work so hard to uncover the buried treasure of Kumiko’s psyche, as a defense against how effectively this film lures us into viewing Kumiko as essentially being on a heroic journey, even as we know, with a sinking feeling, that it’s all a delusion and could very well end badly.) And as her obsession leads the film from closely observed study to epic transcontinental journey, we arrive at a complicated state of detached sympathy, wanting her quest to succeed but knowing that, barring a world that matches her delusion, it's bound to fail.
In making the rookie mistake of confusing movie fiction for fact, Kumiko evokes an isolated Amazon tribe suddenly exposed to the media saturations of the contemporary world. The purity of her delusion, whether or not it arises out of a diagnosable mental illness, is central to the movie’s vision. It is not that she is greedy for the money, although we get the sense that she views it as a way to succeed and attain some independence in her life. The snowbound suitcase represents a transcendent goal, an object whose discovery promises to transform her life, to redeem her suffering and obtain for her the emotional satisfactions she lacks.
Her fundamental confusion, in propelling the action of the film, inevitably keeps us in its grasp as well; just as Kumiko believes wholeheartedly in the buried briefcase, it is as if some part of us equally insistently keeps muttering, in a sort of focused counter-obsessional obsession, “Jesus, if only she knew Fargo was just a film! D’ya see what comes of not being able to separate reality from fiction!?” But I don’t think I’m the only one who followed a second, competing strand of thought: that maybe Kumiko wasn’t crazy after all, despite appearances, that maybe she was onto something mystical and transcendent after all, and would discover, if not the magical cash, then an equally redemptive cache. I don’t think the movie is quite saying that we’re all as delusional as Kumiko; but it toys with our innate desire and ability to believe in stories, their relationship to self-deception, and their capacity to divide as well as unite. And so we wind up in a position I think of as intimate detachment: we understand Kumiko’s quest, and want her to succeed, and even somewhat believe that she will, while fundamentally knowing that of course she won’t.
Another layer of the film’s irony is that Kumiko does sort-of, kind-of find what she’s looking for in her Midwest odyssey, in the form of two kindly helpers, a surrogate mother and father, if you like: only she’s too focused on her objet fixe to realize what she’s actually found. The first is an older woman (Shirley Venard) who gives Kumiko a ride and a place to stay in the midst of a snowfall, and who wisely tries to convince her that Fargo is no place to go in the winter and that she should take advantage of this woman’s hospitality. The other is a more or less bumbling but kindly sheriff’s deputy (played by director David Zellner), who absolutely wants to help Kumiko but whose failing may be that he can’t recognize he’s not able to. But in a sign of a certain cynicism or cruelty that plays around the edges of this film, neither is arguably able to see beyond their own needs and limitations to what Kumiko actually requires; and so even Minnesota nice isn’t enough to save Kumiko from her tragic fate.
I’ve described Kumiko as in part a psychological study of a troubled woman; but I’m bothered by the thought that her psychological confusions are simply used to explore philosophical confusions (i.e., film v. reality) and related questions of storytelling, belief, and human connection. This is a story that, after all, ultimately runs Kumiko through the proverbial shitter; while her quest feels deludedly heroic, it also feels like a cruelty to observe her going through it merely to make an intellectual point --bluntly put, it’s the unease of watching a crazy person hurt herself. From this perspective, Kumiko is a pawn in a filmic game, which may be undeniably intelligent but leaves me somewhat cold.
The gorgeous and unsettling final scene makes me think that this is indeed the filmmakers’ primary perspective on their heroine. Essentially a fantasy after Kumiko has perished in a snowstorm, she wanders colorfully through a fantastic winter wonderland to discover the treasure she has sought, buried in snow right next to a wire fence like it should be. Clothed as Kumiko’s fantasy, this sequence actually provides the audience with its own fantasy, where Kumiko turns out not to be deluded and has her dreams come true. It’s a clever maneuver, and a scene that is deeply melancholy beneath its shiny exterior, yet it reinforces a sense of Kumiko as a puppet; it’s as if her actual torments have been conducted to teach us, not her, a lesson. It is hard not to feel as if we have been subjected to an academic enterprise, provocative and trippy, but also somehow incomplete.