Day Sixteen: Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter (MotM 2019)

kumiko

This will be really short. Gotta make the time limit.

Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter is a film I’ve kept my eye on for quite a while. The cover image alone is quite striking, and gives the impression of a deep and lonely film. The cover does not lie! This is an incredibly depressing, lonely, tragic film about a borderline neet who wants to get away from all the pressures and suffocating aspects of her life in search for a way out: treasure. She discovers the film Fargo and mistakes it for a documentary, assuming the suitcase full of benjamins is a real thing to be discovered.

Do not let the synopsis or the star adorning the cover fool you: this is a very American film. I don’t really wish to spoil the entire thing, but there’s something I need to get across in order to sum up this film as a whole. If one is at all interested in watching this, look up the mantra of “The American Dream.” That’s all I’ll say. I, as someone who has learned about it extensively through schooling, kept seeing nods to it all over the damn place!

It’s very, very slow, which almost made me not take this film as seriously as it maybe I should’ve, but it picks up tremendously once Kumiko starts actually doing things. Another complaint I have is that there are a number of people who speak English in this film who speak in complete sentences to Kumiko as if she can actually speak English (she speaks little). There may be a point of establishing the point of the characters through their comfort in letting everything fly out to a character who won’t judge them out of ignorance, but that almost seems too blatant. Too often this happened and I thought, outside of an “Ahh, I get it” moment, “Okay, I understand. Move on.”

Lovely film. Would recommend to those who like slow, symbolic films and depressing historical homages. Bring a bunny.

Final Score: 8/10

The rating for all other films can be found at Letterboxd.

For more, check out the March of the Movies Archive!

Thank you for your time. Have a great day.

4 thoughts on “Day Sixteen: Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter (MotM 2019)

  1. This one doesn’t seem like the kind of movie for me. Not so fond of slow moving movies. I might put up with it in anime (provided I’m interested in the concept) but I prefer my movies to move a long. Okay, I am an impatient viewer.

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