The Con­tes­tant review – dis­com­fort­ing and total­ly immersive

Real­i­ty tele­vi­sion is sup­posed to be a guilt-free excur­sion to the bot­tom of the bar­rel. It’s always easy to return to clips of Matt Han­cock gob­bling camel penis or any­thing fea­tur­ing Gem­ma Collins, at the behest of my ever-expand­ing film watch­list. How­ev­er, real­i­ty tele­vi­sion has dark ori­gins, begin­ning with a naked Japan­ese man called Nasubi. This doc­u­men­tary tells the sto­ry of his humil­i­a­tion, star­va­tion, and sub­se­quent ascen­sion to star­dom after appear­ing on the fledg­ling 1990s real­i­ty tele­vi­sion show Den­pa Shon­en. This is not guilt-free view­ing, clos­er instead to a doom­scrolling spi­ral into despondence.

Mas­ter­mind­ed by pro­duc­er Toshio Tsuchiya, the self-iden­ti­fy­ing Darth Vad­er of the Japan­ese tele­vi­sion indus­try, Den­pa Shon­en saw aspir­ing enter­tain­er Tomoa­ki Hamat­su – nick­named Nasubi or ​“egg­plant” – blind­fold­ed, tak­en to a bare room, stripped naked, and left alone with a rack of mag­a­zines and a cam­era. This is the chal­lenge ​“A Life in Prizes”, where Nasubi must sur­vive on prizes won in mag­a­zine and radio com­pe­ti­tions. Win­nings vary from sacks of rice to dog food, with the ulti­mate goal of accru­ing one mil­lion yens worth of prizes to escape. As if the sce­nario couldn’t get any more dystopi­an, Nasubi is unaware that footage of his plight is broad­cast week­ly and livestreamed, turn­ing him into a nation­al laughingstock.

The doc­u­men­tary rarely devi­ates from the orig­i­nal Den­pa Shon­en footage, fol­low­ing Nasubi’s declin­ing men­tal state close­ly as he stalks the com­pact room in the buff (an egg­plant emo­ji cen­sors his gen­i­tals, pos­si­bly the ori­gins of the dou­ble enten­dre). There is lit­tle cre­ative inter­ven­tion from direc­tor Clair Tit­ley, most­ly man­i­fest in Eng­lish re-dubs of the orig­i­nal Japan­ese voiceovers, mak­ing for a dis­com­fort­ing view­ing expe­ri­ence which is both total­ly immer­sive but narrow.

It is irri­tat­ing fur­ther when the talk­ing heads with the main play­ers, alter­nat­ing with footage from the orig­i­nal broad­casts, use a light touch on a heavy sub­ject. Ques­tions about Nasubi’s finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion and legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions for Tsuchiya aren’t addressed and all par­ties seem weird­ly blasé about the near tor­ture they either expe­ri­enced or orches­trat­ed. Soon, a jar­ring dis­so­nance between the inter­views and har­row­ing broad­cast footage begins to itch, dilat­ing as Nasubi’s hor­rors worsen.

Goal posts are moved, and crush­ing rev­e­la­tions make way for an over­rid­ing sense of hope­less­ness. Any wider com­men­tary on real­i­ty tele­vi­sion or star­dom, not that much is attempt­ed, is sub­sumed by the bru­tal­i­ty of Asubi’s night­mare, leav­ing the view­er to shoul­der his bur­den with no sign of reprieve. There is val­ue in star­ing into the void, but some sug­ges­tions for patch­ing it up would be appreciated.

An uplift­ing epi­logue does swoop in for some relief, but it feels insignif­i­cant next to the injus­tice Nasubi expe­ri­enced. Nihilism has already set in at this point, mixed with a sense of dread akin to wit­ness­ing Nigel Farage enter I’m a Celebri­ty, Get Me Out of Here! Only here, Ant and Dec aren’t avail­able to ease the pain.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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