There’s absolutely no reason for me to find this meditative Japanese film so compelling… and yet I do. It disobeys most rules of drama and simply chooses to let nothing happen of dramatic merit for almost the entire runtime. And yet… here we are. I kind of loved it… but am bothered by its finale so it doesn’t get the 4.5 stars it probably deserves.

The flick is about a small town outside of Tokyo that has a real estate developer trying to set up a glamping tourist trap. The film follows a local handyman and then the two corporate types who have come to town for a sit-down meeting with the townsfolk.

Seriously… that’s 95% of the movie. Just long, languid shots of nothing or even longer casual, almost banal dialog. It refuses to obey the rules and gives us a five minute tracking shot/opening credits of tree limbs blowing in the wind. Or an extended town hall where grievances are aired. Or the handyman chopping logs… one log after another after another.

How did I find this so compelling is a mystery… and yet I was never bored and fully engaged. Just because there’s no thrills or melodrama or gun fights or arguments doesn’t mean the content can’t be interesting in the right hands.

I was going to score the film higher if it had just remained the simple pastoral narrative it was being. But it winds up with a suspenseful plot element in the final act that has left me unsettled, disquieted, and unsure. One that had me mentally begging and pleading to not go in a particular direction. But that means I cared… but also would have preferred a different finale that left me more zen.

But since it wound up slightly sour, I’m giving it a perfectly good 4 stars, but not the 4.5 that I wanted to go give it.

Score: 88