American film student Chris Eska’s brilliant debut, shot in Tokyo. The film follows a girl who takes the same train every morning, usually with the exact same people although none of them know each other and never talk to each other. She stars taking notes and paying attention to little things that these people do in the train. Slightly hampering openining, with some use of music and voice over that doesn’t work as well as it should, but the film gets better and better every minute. Eska shot it on digital video, in black and white, edited on home computer, and with a $5000 budget (including plane tickets and crew’s housing). And it’s one of the best and most beautiful films – both visually and storywise – that I’ve seen recently.
Three version of the film exist; short uplifting (approx 30 min), short bittersweet, and long version. The difference between the short versions is a slight edit in the final scene to make it more uplifting, while the long version plays for additional 15 minutes and them brings the story to a completely different kind of ending. I have not seen the short uplifting version, but the other two are both terrific.
There is no officially distributed dvd. You can buy a copy of the film from the director.
http://www.chriseska.com/6.htm
