95 And 6 To Go

Kimi Takesue is writing a script. It's a love story involving a Japanese American who can't pursue the romantic opportunity that comes his way because he's married. Wanting to better understand the character, she decides to interview her elderly grandfather, but he has his own ideas about how the story should develop and about filmmaking in general.

Tom Takesue lives in Hawaii. The beautiful blue ocean forms the backdrop to many otherwise mundane scenes. On the wall is a framed picture of his deceased wife, wreathed with flowers. Kimi interprets that relationship as a grand romance, but as the two talk, it emerges that Tom's ideas about marriage are far more practical. In fact, he's still hoping to find another woman who will care for him and comfort him in his declining years. He just has to get a few things sorted out first, he says.

Kimi is struggling to finance her film but this is quickly put in perspective as Tom matter-of-factly discusses the challenges of simply surviving back in his youth. His way of looking at the world seems heavily influenced by poverty. Filmmaking is not something one can rely on, he stresses, urging his granddaughter to find a proper job. Romance is a luxury, something to be considered only after the practicalities of life have been attended to. Yet he passionately believes that her film should have a happy ending, going to some trouble to transform the narrative accordingly. He also wants it to include old love songs and he's astounded to discover how expensive this could be - to find that creating the perfect piece of art could be inhibited by profit motives.

Over the course of this accidental film, poignantly named by its subject as he contemplates sport and mortality, generational differences in attitude and expectation emerge. Kimi offers no defining narrative and for all that she has control of the edit, the direction of the film seems to be led by Tom, with the interplay between the two part of what makes it intriguing. There is also the historical narrative one would expect, embellished with intimate anecdotes such as Tom's revelation that he go into the army by stuffing himself full of food just before being measured and weighed. Reflections on the past are illustrate by beautifully preserved photographs capturing formal moments and happy moments; the tone of the film is such that it's impossible not to notice what they leave unsaid.

Slow paced and rambling, 95 And 6 To Go gradually coheres into a potent take on a life all too ordinary. As so often in life, any meaning there might be emerges only at the end.