Jun 8

Jun 8 'To the Ends of the Earth' film review: Travelogue flick critical of tourist fears, anxieties

A young Japanese travel reporter explores a landlocked nation central Asian nation in the drama 'To the Ends of the Earth' (on DVD and on demand starting June 8).

In short: Japanese travel show host Yoko (Atsuko Maeda) and her film crew explore Uzbekistan - but after filming some failed segments, she ventures off to explore the country on her own.

The duality of Yoko's bubbly on-screen persona clashes with her reserved demeanor when the camera is off is so sharp that it’s actually jarring to reconcile that these two very different personalities exist within the same woman. When her film crew yells 'cut,' it's like a switch is flipped, with "travel host Yoko" instantly disappearing into "quiet, withdrawn Yoko." While her on-camera personality is outgoing and extraverted, Yoko is actually quite apprehensive and introverted. And its this anxious energy that primarily defines ‘Ends of the Earth,’ which follows the reserved young woman as she simultaneously ventures out in an unfamiliar country, typically assuming the worst of the locals (even the ones politely trying to assist her).

The film recognizes the falseness of sanitized "reality" TV, which drops Yoko into planned scenarios that are just this side of scripted. The dark humor of the film, of course, is in watching actual reality undermine the "reality" the film crew expects from each scene. For example, Yoko teases her show's audience with a fishing expedition on the hunt for a rumored large fish - so it's weirdly funny when they just pull shoes and empty water bottles from their fishing nets. Although the film is a low-key jab at reality TV, this sentiment could also be extrapolated to a generalized mockery of tourists who only "explore" the "must-see" locations conveniently listed in any travel blog or popular travel guide.

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Writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film shares distant echoes of Sofia Coppola's 'Lost In Translation,' specifically the quiet stranger in a strange land. Much of Yoko's solo ventures are only subtitled from her perspective - meaning the audience is very much in Yoko's shoes as all the locals she meets speak a language she cannot speak at all. Much of the film intimately follows her experiences exploring Uzbekistan from Yoko's frame of reference - that is, a foreigner's alienation in a country with customs total unfamiliar to her where she doesn't speak the language.

To a degree, 'Ends of the Earth' admonishes the inauthentic nature of simply following tourist traps. The film's most captivating moments simply capture Yoko's travels off the beaten path. Despite her reserved nature, Yoko's curiosity takes her to corners of Uzbekistan that her own TV show's audience would never see. And if anything, her exploration leads her to see and experience a more genuine side of Uzbekistan and its people than any Travel Channel show would bother showing.

It is worth noting: despite the fact that Yoko is in a totally foreign country, she doesn't actually interact too much with the Uzbek people. This is effective in illustrating how misplaced her paranoia and fears might be - but it also means there's very little friction in the film. To this script's credit, this makes 'Ends of the Earth' less about Uzbekistan itself and more rooted in generalized fears foreigners bring with them, warranted or unwarranted. The core elements are so universal that virtually any nation could probably adapt Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film over-and-over, simply by changing the nationality of the protagonist and changing the nation they're in, and still maintain the script's fundamental themes.

Final verdict: 'Ends of the Earth' is a pensive, entrancing and unexpected tourist drama that isn't so much a tourist advertisement for Uzbekistan as much as a dissection of misplaced paranoia foreigners have when exploring unfamiliar places filled with unfamiliar people.