“A poetic ode to family and the often challenging elements that bind us together”

A good film can often have quite a bit in common with a good novel: an immersive experience where a simple but poetic story unfolds gradually, in which absolutely every detail is outlined, and the audience is given the chance to observe and find their own interpretation in places where many others may not look. When it comes to literary works, Maha Harada is certainly as close to an expert as we can find, since she has proven herself to be one of Japan’s most celebrated novelists over the past few decades, many of her works being cherished across many communities. However, after having written the screenplays to a few adaptations of her novels, Harada steps behind the camera herself, taking on the role of director in In My Father’s Room, a slow-burning drama about the lengths we will go to revisit the uncomfortable parts of our past in an effort to find answers to some of life’s more challenging questions. The film follows Satomi, a mild-mannered woman who works at an art museum, quietly observing the visitors as they debate and ponder the nature of the works they are seeing, which serves as a good distraction from her pleasantly lonely personal life. She soon learns that her recently deceased father (with whom she had a contentious relationship) had visited the museum shortly before his death, which leads her down a path of discovering as much as she can about a man who she was always told abandoned his family, but instead had his own burdens that forced him to drift away as time went on. A film that carries an enormous amount of weight in terms of its emotions, but consistently challenges us to look deeper than the surface, In My Father’s Room is a poetic ode to family and the often challenging elements that bind us together.

There is a staggering amount of thematic ground being covered throughout In My Father’s Room, which is most certainly a film that seems to be offering much more than it initially promised at the outset. Evidently, this is the result of a novelist (particularly one with several years of experience and more than a couple of successful works to her name) being granted the opportunity to leap over into a different medium. The primary theme that guides this film forward and makes it such a wonderfully interesting work is also the simplest: the ongoing search for human connection, the desire to find those in our lives, whether it is family, friends or simply strangers who we come across in our day-to-day routine, and forming some kind of bond with them, even if only momentarily. The protagonist of this film is a profoundly lonely young woman whose entire raison d’être is to be at the service of those who need insights and advice into understanding the art that they are presented with, only for her to reveal herself to be an expert on formal explanations of art, but very rarely possessing the necessary skills to make meaningful connections beyond these small interactions. Throughout the film, Harada examines Satomi’s difficult relationship with her parents – her mother is self-absorbed to the point where she feels like more of a casual friend, and her father died without ever truly getting to know his daughter – and while we initially expect the film to become about her efforts to reconcile her own complex feelings about these challenging relationships, it very quickly becomes clear that there is much more lingering beneath the surface than initially meets the eye. This is where the film thrives the most, exploring Satomi’s attempts to understand herself through the process of letting go of the regrets she carries from the past, which can only occur through addressing both the active curiosities and uncomfortable realities that she previously felt compelled to suppress.

To evoke some of the more complicated emotions that make up the foundation of In My Father’s Room, the director focuses on authenticity more than anything else. Films about tense familial relationships and the often difficult process of working through personal challenges relating to loneliness and the desire to find a place in the world tend to be quite melodramatic. This is clearly not something that interests Harada, who is committed to maintaining her clear and careful approach to meaningful storytelling. It is obvious that she is being guided by her literary roots, since the film unfolds like a poignant novel, each scene being a brief episode into Satomi’s daily life built around small clues and details that initially seem arbitrary, but ultimately prove to be exceptionally important as the story progresses. These details have a cumulative effect that underlines its precise and direct approach to looking at her routine as something that brings both order and comfort to her life, but also reveals itself to be oddly very restrictive when it comes to the more difficult existential quandaries that she soon begins to realize she cannot entirely ignore. The film does address themes like family struggles, loneliness and mortality, but it rarely seems interested in looking at them from the more obvious perspective. Instead, the most important moments are those delivered in a more subtle, quiet key – a bowl of food being served, a moment spent waiting at a bus stop or the discovery of a brief poem in the final moments, in which every theme that has populated the previous two hours can be summarized in only three sentences. It’s a fascinating and deeply moving film that may move at a slower and more meditative pace, but for a reason that becomes increasingly clear as the film progresses and we see the extent to which Harada is focused on creating something genuinely and wholeheartedly emotionally resonant above absolutely anything else.

In My Father’s Room is a wonderfully engaging and deeply moving examination of the human condition, crafted by an artist who is technically a newcomer to this particular medium, but who still comes fully prepared as a result of decades of extraordinary written work, which has equipped her with the skill and nuance required to tackle some intimidating but fascinating themes. There are moments where we feel like the film is at risk of succumbing to convention, especially since it is something of a cliché to build a story around the irony of discovering so much about a loved one’s life only after their death – but in Harada’s capable hands this goes from a potentially trite excuse for overly intense emotions into a far more effective drama, in which every emotion isn’t just realistic, but feels entirely earned, which is not easy to accomplish when handling some of these more haunting ideas. Anchored by a wonderful performance by Yû Aoi, who has the responsibility to make us fully connect with Satomi, particularly since so much of the film is internal and requires an actor with the skill and introspection to bring these more subtle themes to life while still maintaining a more genuine depiction of a character who is learning to look beyond the life she has made for herself and realizing that there is always more to be discovered if she steps outside of her comfort zone and embraces some of the more difficult emotions. Beautifully poetic and deeply moving, while also never avoiding addressing some hard truths about loneliness and the yearning for connection, In My Father’s Room is the rare film that manages to be both intimate and sprawling, having a sincerity that cannot be manufactured and an attention to detail that reveals so much about these characters and the worlds in which they inhabit. It may not have the most concrete conclusion. Still, like many good books, we are given the ending the story and its characters need, rather than the one that we would expect – and in both concept and style, Harada truly achieves something truly striking with this stunning and captivating examination of humanity and its many peculiar surprises.