Right off the bat, “Cloud,” the new film from Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, manages to do the impossible: find cinematic expression in the act of staring at screens.
Yoshii (Masaki Suda) works a run-of-the-mill factory job but moonlights as a reseller, buying up “luxury”goods at a discount price and selling them for a profit online. As Yoshii’s first big sale of the movie unfolds (some sort of therapy machine), the camera zeroes in on a computer screen as the products begin to sell out, their icons rapidly blinking before going dark. The camera slowly moves from the screen to Yoshii, who is also staring at the screen – blank-faced, completely engrossed.
In the world Kurosawa has built – slightly exaggerated, but so close to our own – he exposes cracks and fissures that betray the fundamental dearth of empathy in our digital, capitalist age. “Cloud” is a parable – a funny, horrifying encapsulation of how we are slaves to an internet that makes us apathetic. And if we’re not careful, that apathy will kill us one day.
After the therapy machines sell out, Yoshii makes enough of a profit to quit his factory job and move into the reseller business full time. He takes his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) away from Tokyo to a much larger house in the suburbs, progressively getting more merciless with his markups. When he accidentally sells fake designer bags, though, the angry mob that’s begun to form around his online dealings becomes much more real and dangerous.
There’s something about “Cloud” that feels very Coen Brothers-esque: a bunch of guys – some stupid, some scary – getting caught up in a hair-brained, violent scheme. Kurosawa also has a similar talent for creating a world where, even if a plot development feels silly by our real world standards, it makes sense within the tone of the world he has created. The transition of an online mob from angry Redditors to very real people with very real guns is one of his most audacious moves – what if the faceless internet lurkers sending anonymous death threats suddenly materialized at your front door?
The funniest (and scariest) part of this world, and perhaps the most in line with how most of us interact with the screens that are in front of us every day, is how impassive everybody seems. Even when faced with real brutality – say, a projectile thrown through his window – Yoshii barely reacts. When his new assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira), finds the teenager who threw said projectile and beats him, forcing him to apologize at Yoshii’s feet, Yoshii doesn’t bat an eye. If it doesn’t exist in the realm of his digital marketplace, he doesn’t really care. Yoshii won’t fire Sano for assaulting a kid, but will if he touches Yoshii’s computer without his permission.
Kurosawa has a real sense of how resentments breed between us, his 1997 film “Cure” being the prime example. In “Cloud,” the things that create resentment stem from a similar place – jealousy, anger, etc. But the way resentments manifest is far more hive-minded and less personal. The screen that separates Yoshii from his buyers makes it easy for him to treat them with zero dignity or respect. But it’s doubtful he’s the true reason for their bitterness. He’s simply an easy target.
Staring at a screen all day, inundated with slights both small and large, can cause anyone to feel a little crazy. One of the members of the group after Yoshii – the one who sold Yoshii the fake designer bags in the first place – joins the group on a whim after Yoshii beats him up. Another is Yoshii’s old boss. Another is a guy preoccupied with punishing anyone whom he feels belittles him. All of these people form a sort of stand-in for the internet – a formless blob with little connection, ready and willing to threaten, dox, and enact chaos on anyone who gets in their way. When they first meet up, someone asks who the leader is. “There isn’t one,” comes the answer. “We’re all doing what we want to.”