Given the chance to speak to director Shunji Iwai, it would be remiss for me not to bring up how Filmed in Ether was named for the mysterious ‘ether’ from the film All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) and that the team at FIE have been huge fans of his works for a long time (to which, the now 61 year old director smiled knowingly and thanked us for our kind words).
Cutting his teeth in television dramas and music videos, director Iwai began his feature film debut with Love Letter in 1995, led by popstar Miho Nakayama. The film was a huge success in Japan and throughout parts of Asia where its cultural impact can still be felt today from modern films such as a Derek Tsang’s 2016 drama Soul Mate (which references the film and thanks the director specially in its credits) and even into K-Pop, where global superstars TWICE pay homage to Love Letter in their 2018 music video What Is Love?.
Besides filmmaking, Iwai is a writer, composer, producer, and video artist. He has consistently produced works in the three decades since Love Letter, with a string of cult hits in Picnic (1996), Swallowtail Butterfly (1996), April Story (1998), All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) and Hana & Alice (2004). He would dabble in producing and screenwriting works for other filmmakers, before returning to the director’s chair in Japan with the animated prequel to 2004’s Hana & Alice, The Case of Hana & Alice (2015). 2016’s A Bride for Rip Van Winkle marked a new phase of his career, often seeing him adapt his own novels into films.
His latest film Kyrie, is at once familiar yet distinctly unique in Iwai’s storied oeuvre. Musician Aina the End stars as the titular character Kyrie, a street musician who finds it hard to speak after the loss of her mother and sister in the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. Expressing herself through music, she reunites with her high school friend Ikko (Suzu Hirose), who sees her busking and wants to be her manager. At 178 minutes, the film is sprawling, yet its character-driven storytelling is highly immersive and will keep you hooked as we delve into not just Kyrie’s story, but the people that have shaped her life, such as Ikko, her older sister’s boyfriend Natsuhiko (Hokuto Matsumura) and kind school teacher Fumi Teraishi (Haru Kuroki).
A deeply humanistic tale, Kyrie makes an epic out of a young woman’s life, dwelling on themes of human connection, self-discovery and healing through the pursuit of creativity despite trauma and adversity. Ahead of its North American premiere at Japan Cuts 2024, we spoke to director Shunji Iwai assisted by translator Monika Uchiyama about the film and his incredible career so far.
The below interview has been edited for clarity.
How did the story of Kyrie come about? I believe it started out as a novel that you had written first. I also read that Aina The End was always your first choice to play the role? Is this true?
So, [the film] has quite a strange beginning. When I was working on a previous film [A Bride for Rip Van Winkle], there was a book that appeared in the film, and I thought about making a film about the book, but then, in writing that, there is actually a film that appears in the book that appears in the film, and when I started thinking about the plot to this film [that was in this book], I thought that this could also be turned into another movie. And so that’s how that began. The story that came about to me was about a street musician and an amateur manager and their strange relationship.
When I had just started writing the novel, I happened to see Aina perform, and I immediately got in touch because I thought her performance was incredible, and when I discussed this with her she immediately showed interest in participating in the film, even though I hadn’t even finished writing the book yet. I spoke to a producer and friend of mine and he was also really enthusiastic about it, and it kind of snowballed from there. The producer said that if we were to make a film, we should try to work on something that is very broad in scale. There had always already been an element of the earthquake affecting the main character’s life in the story I was writing, so I made the decision to expand on that story, and there were other ideas that I had been thinking about regarding the Great East Japan Earthquake1Director Shunji Iwai is from Sendai, the largest city in the Tohoku region and one of the cities most severely hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake., and I thought I could put those ideas into use and mix that into the plot, and that’s how the story took shape.
Is the narrative in the book presented in the way as in the film? For example, in the film, we cut back and forth with the timeline in 2011 in the lead up to the earthquake, to the present day very quickly that creates a very ‘memory-like’ experience. Was it also written that way in the novel, or were the two timelines separate?
The book is written in chapters, and I think it’s quite hard to write in a way like the film does where it switches back and forth, and I don’t particularly like that structure [in writing], and so although there is an oscillating back and forth, it is much slower in the book.
One of the interesting reactions I noticed from audiences was that many had strong feelings or were confused about Aina the End showing up in Natsuhiko’s memories as Kyrie’s older sister when he tells his story to Fumi, essentially playing dual roles. For me, it made sense since this part is told through Natsuhiko’s point of view, so I interpreted it as a play on memory and perspective. But I’m curious to find out why you chose to have Aina The End also play the older sister as well in the flashbacks?
In preparing the roles, I thought it was quite clear that who she [Kyrie] was depends on who she was with in each of the scenes, and in each of the timelines. So I didn’t think that there would be confusion about why the same actor was playing these two roles. But in making films, it’s impossible to have 100% of the story you planned to be conveyed to the audience. I think that it’s natural for there to be various kinds of interpretations and misunderstandings, and that confusion is also part of the joy of filmmaking. I think the various interpretations that the audience members have created all these different ‘Kyrie’ stories, and if anything, I’d love to ask audience members, what did you think the story was about?
The name “Kyrie” comes from the Christian phrase “kyrie eleison” which means “Lord have mercy”. What made you choose this name for this character? Did the meaning of the name influence how you developed the character?
There was a kind of Christian element to the story when I first started writing, but this was all the way back in 2011, around the time of the earthquake. I thought about infusing some names with Christian meanings into the story, and in Japan, it’s not so uncommon for people to take on Christian names but to take on a more Japanese-sounding pronunciation so they sound more like a Japanese name. For example, there’s the name “Jobuki” which takes from the name “Job” from the Bible. So you have people changing the pronunciation or adding letters to the name to make it sound more Japanese. In thinking about that, I was trying to find a name that had this kind of double meaning or cross-cultural meaning. ‘Kyrie’ itself is not an uncommon name. It’s a name that does exist for Japanese women, and so its Christian meaning came afterwards.
In Love Letter you worked with Miho Nakayama, with Chara in Picnic and Swallowtail Butterfly, with Coco in A Bride for Rip van Winkle and now Aina the End for Kyrie, you have worked with many female singers in your films to create such memorable characters. What is it about musicians that draws you to cast them in your films?
Actually I don’t see a separation between people and their roles. They could be television reporters or are various comedians or talent that appear on television. For example in All About Lily Chou-Chou, the mother character is actually played by a newscaster from Fuji TV. Of course, she was very surprised when I offered her the role. So it’s really just about whether they are fitting for the role and whether they are able. It’s not that musicians are particularly deft at acting, it’s more that I’m always searching for people that might appear as the cast in my films. When you see a person, of course you still have to try them out [in the film] before you know for sure. But I feel that when you meet a person you can kind of get a sense whether or not they would be good in a film or not.
Music plays such a huge role in all your films. It is one of the key elements of why people love your films. Can you talk about how you developed the music in the film? Was it a collaboration between yourself, Aina the End and your usual composer Takeshi Kobayashi?
So all of the songs that Aina the End sings, besides the very last song that she performs are all songs that she wrote for the film, because she said that she wanted to write her own music [for the film]. When we cast her in the role, I was also listening to her solo album and I knew that she was a very talented writer and lyricist, so I wanted her to write her own music. So to have her say that she also would prefer to write her own music was really wonderful, and I was really grateful for that. As for [Takeshi] Kobayashi’s work on the film, he was in charge of all the rest of the music and the soundtrack. That came about through various discussions with myself. Sometimes I would have him listen to samples of my own. And as far as the Christian themed elements of the film, that was all church music, and I would talk to a friend of mine who’s also a musician and a pastor. He would introduce me to various songs, and show me church music and worship songs and I would select music from there.
(Writer’s note: You can stream the compilation album of all of the music featured in Kyrie on Spotify here, and the album DEBUT, which is Aina the End’s album as the fictional musician Kyrie, following in the tradition of the fictional bands and musicians of Shunji Iwai’s films such as Yen Town Band from Swallowtail Butterfly and Lily Chou-Chou from All About Lily Chou-Chou also releasing music in character.)
It has been almost thirty years since your first film Love Letter. You once said in an interview that you want to make films that evoke feelings months or years later, not just immediately after the film. What do you hope people will feel after watching Kyrie and all your films?
It’s hard to put into words. But as the person making the film, through the act of filmmaking, I was able to experience the lives of all of the characters, be it Kyrie, Natsuhiko, Ikko or even young Luca. With that experience comes a lot of different feelings. It’s not that I know all of their lives—in fact, I was only able to see into a fragment of their lives. That, I think, is a kind of experience, and so for audience members I would like for them to take in that experience. As for how I want them to feel, I think that will vary between each audience member and so if anything, I would love to ask them how the movie made them feel, and hear from them on social media if they want to share their comments.
Your films are really unique in their story choices, characters, and visual style. You’ve tackled so many genres and topics. What are you interested in exploring next?
There’s so many things that I want to do, and so many things I need to do. There’s so many books I’ve written that I haven’t been able to translate into film. There’s a spin-off of Last Letter that I’ve already written a script for but haven’t been able to make into a film. I’ve been a director for thirty years, but I have to say that manipulating film as a medium is incredibly difficult, and I’ve spent these thirty years trying to figure out how to make films. I stepped into the film world when I was eighteen years old, as a student, and I made student films for about six years, and then after that I was making music videos and short dramas. There was even a point of time where I tried to become a manga artist. But I think the throughline between all these different attempts is that I really want to tell stories.
Today, I think I finally feel like I can truly “start making films”. It feels like I’m debuting for a second time. If I were to try to use the metaphor of being a painter, it feels like I finally have all my painting tools in front of me. It’s funny, I look around and I see some of my friends from when I was a student and those people are all going on into the second chapter of their lives and doing something completely different. And I noticed that I’m still kind of trucking along with filmmaking, and that is just kind of my personality. I hope to continue at my own pace, and the films that I make from this point on, I hope that they will be films in the truest of sense. Of course, I love my previous films too, but I think for each film I make from now on, I want to challenge myself to make a ‘true film’.