"Musashino High Voltage Towers" film screening at The Japan Foundation, 5A Ring Road, Lajpat Nagar IV > 6:30pm on 11th July 2011

Time : 6:30 pm

Entry : Free

Place : The Japan Foundation, 5A Ring Road, Lajpat Nagar IV, New Delhi - 110024

Venue Info : www.jfindia.org.in | Map | Events |  Nearest Metro Station - 'Moolchand'

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Event Details : 'Musashino High Voltage Towers' Japanese film screening.

Miharu is in the 6th grade of elementary school. His parents are divorcing and he will move to Nagasaki

with his mother. This is his last summer living in a town in the suburbs of Tokyo. Most of his friends have gone on vacation and he can't bring himself to tell his remaining friend, Akira, that he will soon be gone.

Remembering his father's passion for electricity and the times he would take him to admire the high voltage

towers, Mlharu sets off with Akira on a quest to find the source of the power lines that pass by his house. On their first attempt they run into their teacher, Mr. Ohara and a young woman at a "love hotel" (for adults only), Miharu can never quite understand why Mr. Ohara is so nice to him after that, inviting him to dinner and even giving him a watch.

In his attempt to understand the confusing adult world around him he has constructed many ingenious theories about the source of electricity and its powers. He explains these to Akira as they journey from tower to find the secret that he is sure awaits at the foot of tower #. For example, Miharu feels that It Is necessary to bury a flattened bottle cap at the base of each tower In order to harness their power. He also divides the towers into male and female versions, depending on whether the voltage isolators parallel the cables or point downwards. Miharu also has an explanation for towers with both types of voltage isolator. He even has a particular angle from which he can imagine the female towers as "smiling" at him, and tower #60 reminds him of Akira's mother, a fact that he cannot bring himself to tell his young friend.

As the young couple travel across the hot summer landscape; half suburb and half farmland, they meet

various people. At one point they try to revive an apparently dead stag beetle using a tin can, and are then afraid that they have created a monster that will kill the old man who passes them. Later, they encounter two girls in soccer uniforms, accompanied by a scary dog. The boys are afraid to talk with the girls but later regret it, thinking the pair may have joined" them in their quest; However, we see Miharu's' immediate flashback, in which the girls coldly refuse. This quest is for men only, he decides. They also meet more dangerous characters, for example the construction workers who try to grab Akira and who then seem intent on running the boys down in their truck.

The only way they can understand this is to assume that the men owned one of the towers and had taken exception to them burying a bottle cap at its base.

The boys push on, overcoming obstacles such as rivers and extra towers Interposed between the numbered

ones, until Akira Is too exhausted and afraid to go on. They have argued because Miharu criticizes Akira for

always saying "my mom" exposing the fact that his father is never coming home. Akira replies that neither is

Miharu's: they are both children of divorce, Akira returns home but Miharu calls his mother and pretends to be staying at a soccer friend's house, When his mother gets suspicious that he is calling from a public phone, the boy quickly hangs up. He then finds an abandoned car to sleep in but does not rest well because he dreams that Akira has been electrocuted by the same can that they though electrocuted (and possibly mutated) a stag beetle earlier.

The next day, two power company workers find the can the boys left. The beetle has now revived. Perhaps

electricity does have secret powers after all. Miharu has been reported missing and the power company patrol are looking for him. He escapes by running across the fields and then removing the plank forming a bridge before the patrol man can cross it. Miharu is not so lucky avoiding a golf course security guard, who knocks him down and orders him to leave.

Miharu is eventually caught at tower #4 and never makes it to the end of the line that summer, Instead, he

goes with his mother to his new life in Nagasaki. However, the next summer his father suddenly dies and the boy comes back to Tokyo since his mother, not yet divorced, is the chief mourner, Hearing that his father's last words were "power," Miharu sets off again to find the source of the power lines. This time he succeeds and we last see him hiding in the grass cutting truck that will take him into the plant itself.

Notes : Musashino High Voltage Towers effectively shows us the complex and irrational adult world through the eyes of a child. Miharu cannot do anything about the events that effect his life, but he can seek to understand them by investing the power lines with an almost mystical force. Although he repeatedly fails to understand the significance of the actions around him, his quest leads him back into the nature that is fast disappearing from the plain around Tokyo. The images of nature that punctuate the film, accompanied by ethereal music, underline its nostalgia for a simpler time when boys could play in field rather than in computer arcades. The source novel of the same title won the 6th Japan Fantasy Novel prize.

Director : Nagao Naoki

Year : 1997

Duration : 115 min.

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