RAIRU SUGITA, KANICHIRO IN PROMISED LANDMASASHI IIJIMA: PROMISED LAND (2024) JAPAN CUTS 2025Two young men carry on a forbidden bear huntMasashi Iijima's feature debut gives us solid, intractable materials. The heart of it is a bear hunt by two young men on a wooded montainside, most of the time not talking. The two are the 20-year-old Nobu (Nobuyuki, Rairu Sugita), whom we meet first, and Rei (i.e., Reijiro; Kanichiro), to whom he owes a debt for a blood transfusion when he was very small, though he thinks it's unfair to bring this up to make him come along. It serves its purpose again, thogh, because after cursing Rei,Nobu does accompany him on the hunt for which they risk imprisonment, indeed in Rei's case court it. The environmental agency has forbidden bear hunting in the region this year.
Rei argues the claim that the local hunting endangers the species is false, that it's the reverse, that culling them preserves them, as Peter Beard argued for elephants in Africa.
The prohibition emerges at the film's outset in a meeting of local men, the rest all older. It's 1983 and they are of the village of Hibara, amid the mountains of Yamagata Prefecture on Japan's Honshu Island in northern Japan where there remains a strong tradition of
matagi or bear hunters from ancient times. So this prohibition is paintful, but the boss of the little circle tells them they must obey it, even if perhaps outsiders come to do it purely for sport. For them it's a tradition and a ritual deep in the culture to hunt bears when the snow begins to melt. And so Rei insists. He thinks they must continue the tradition or it will die. And so we follow them.
The two men seem to reverse after this event. Rei is a gardener who seems happy with traditional work, and cites a rich customer with a college education, unlike him, who hates working in a bank and thinks it's like prison. Nobu seems more modern, and is fed up with feeding the chickens on his father's poultry farm. But afterward Rei leaves, while Nobu decides to stay saying he will far better.
I thought of two movies for what may seem at first no clear reason: Julia Loktev's
The Loneliest Planet (2011) (NYFF) and Werner Herzog's 2005
Grizzly Man.. Nobu and Rei are far from "Grizzly Man," and the traditional view they follow of a bear as a noble adversary, however disapproved of by many now, is more sensible than Timothy Treadwell's touchy-feeling falsification of dangerous nature. But many viewers of this film may adopt a Timothy Treadwell stance of outrage. The Loktev arises because this film too shows how men can be radically changed in the wild.
The sensuousness, the withholding of Masahi's film suggest the Claire Denis of her
L'Intrus". And that makes this a very promising beginning.
When the men meet in a circle on the floor drinking sake from cups and. their boss lays down the law, it looks at first like they're yakuza. I liked that. Viewers of this film either lilke or hate that much of it is on the mountain, without dialogue. The climactic part of the hunt is unexpected. It is Nobu rushing breathlessly up the mountain crying to force the bear toward Rei. You feel his growing exhaustion. When they kill the bear the two men prepare and acknowledge it in the traditional ritual way,and they both appear happy. But then other members of the
matagi arrive. . .
The editing of
Promised Land by Shinichi Fushima, with occasional bladkouts, has a nice, even rhythm and preserves a sense of rawness and the score is admirably minimal. The film is an adaptation of the award-winning 1983 novel by Kazuichi Iijima.
Promised Land プロミスト・ランド ("Puromisuto Rando"), 89 min., premiered at Hawaii International Film Festival. It was released in Japan June 29, 2024. Screened for this review as part of July 10-20,2025 Japan Cuts.
Showtime:
Saturday, July 19, 2025
12:30 pm
In-Person Event
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