A new short doc paints an unforgiving portrait of… | Little White Lies

A new short doc paints an unfor­giv­ing por­trait of human stupidity

31 Jan 2021

A large, shaggy brown bear foraging in a lush, mossy forest clearing.
A large, shaggy brown bear foraging in a lush, mossy forest clearing.
Otto Bell’s The Tox­ic Pigs of Fukushi­ma shows the dev­as­tat­ing after­math of a nuclear disaster.

Otto Bell’s new doc­u­men­tary The Tox­ic Pigs of Fukushi­ma is a half-hour immer­sion into the scarred, for­got­ten world left behind by the 2011 earth­quake, nuclear dis­as­ter and mass evac­u­a­tion in Japan. The film doesn’t set­tle on one the­sis or nar­ra­tive strand, but it does prod uncom­fort­ably at how quick­ly human beings can for­get about the impli­ca­tions of a dev­as­tat­ing dis­as­ter – an unnerv­ing reminder at a time when the world faces a sec­ond dead­ly wave of coronavirus.

Bell – the film­mak­er behind 2016’s The Eagle Huntress – col­lects snap­shots of a few res­i­dents who stayed behind in the fall­out zone and are liv­ing very changed lives in a desert­ed town. The half-life of radioac­tiv­i­ty has now made it pos­si­ble for more peo­ple to return but the invis­i­ble tox­i­c­i­ty still lingers in the landscape.

The Japan­ese government’s push for reset­tle­ment includes enlist­ing local hunters to dis­pose of radi­at­ed wild boars roam­ing the emp­ty streets and build­ings. One of the film’s vignettes fol­lows a hunter named Goru-San as he snares and shoots the tox­ic pigs that can­not be eat­en. In oth­er frag­ments, res­i­dents describe absent chil­dren, robbed ances­tral homes, iso­la­tion and can­cer diagnoses.

Bell tells LWLies that he very delib­er­ate­ly left it to be an impres­sion­is­tic thought-pro­vok­ing almost frus­trat­ing film by not clos­ing the sto­ries or giv­ing all the answers.” He aims to incite peo­ple to think, to ask and to engage in this place, which feels glanced over and for­got­ten. The res­i­dents’ tes­ti­monies come as unteth­ered voic­es rather than talk­ing heads. Their tales echo over shots of bro­ken traf­fic lights, ani­mal bones, over­grown grave­stones and dilap­i­dat­ed buildings.

Abandoned building with Chinese signage, overgrown vegetation, and a person walking through the foreground.

Ambi­ent artist Midori Takada’s orig­i­nal score also haunts over the entire film, cre­at­ing an effect that Bell describes as dys­pho­n­ic and slight­ly jar­ring.” The direc­tor also nods to Yasu­jirō Ozu by using tata­mi and pil­low shots to cap­ture the desert­ed town. This includes the cam­era sweep­ing an emp­ty class­room, still lit­tered with music sheets as if frozen at the very moment the pop­u­la­tion upped and left. It all works togeth­er to cre­ate a ghost­ly por­trait of a town that’s emp­ty of peo­ple but full of unheard voices.

Of these res­i­dents, Bell says: Here are the peo­ple who are forced to make sac­ri­fices every day that have been some­what for­got­ten. They are fac­ing this hor­ren­dous sit­u­a­tion thanks arguably to a vac­u­um of lead­er­ship and mis­man­age­ment above them­selves.” The hunter Goru-San, who we con­stant­ly return to through the film, encap­su­lates this plight as he car­ries out his killing with an unde­ni­able sor­row and solemnity.

The tragedy behind the boar cull is only rein­forced by pre­vi­ous glimpses of adorable lit­tle piglets run­ning after their moth­ers in rice pad­dies. At one point, Goru-San says, Tak­ing the lives of ani­mals is what I’m doing.” His jour­ney par­tic­u­lar­ly dri­ves home the extent of the col­lat­er­al dam­age still being cleared up nine years later.

Bell nev­er pulls one sin­gle strain of com­men­tary into focus but he leaves us with a bru­tal and unfor­get­table part­ing shot. The Fukushi­ma pow­er plant final­ly comes into the frame as anoth­er hunter explains how wild boars nev­er for­get dan­ger once they encounter it, a trait that appears to be miss­ing in most of mankind’s lead­er­ship. Only humans are ever fool­ish enough to make the same mis­takes over and over again,” he says. Only humans are stupid.”

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