Radiance – Hikari (2017)

Directed by: Naomi Kawase | 101 minutes | drama | Actors: Masatoshi Nagase, Ayame Misaki, Tatsuya Fuji, Kazuko Shirakawa, Misuzu Kanno, Mantarô Koichi, Chihiro Ohtsuka, Nobumitsu Ônishi, Noémi Nakai, Saori

Cinema does not have to hold any secrets for the blind and visually impaired. Images can be translated into texts on the basis of audio descriptions. The more visually the texts are written, the more magical the experience becomes for the target group. Film can therefore come to life for them.

Misako (Ayame Misaki) is the author of such audio descriptions. It is her task to make one of Japan’s most successful films accessible to the blind and partially sighted. The young woman is enthusiastic about her task. She is a good observer of the world around her. With her vocabulary she also knows how to translate that world into words. However, there seems to be something wrong with her translation. The test panel, which has to provide her with constructive criticism, takes her seriously. Above all, they lack experience and emotion.

Much of this has to do with her home situation. Her father has passed away, mother suffers from Alzheimer’s. She herself leads a fairly moribund life in the big city. The grief of the loss and the loneliness have put her emotions in the waiting room. Her biggest critic on the test panel, a partially sighted photographer, only makes her want to go inside her shell more.

Yet she does not give up. While rewriting, she contacts the photographer (Masatoshi Nagase). She learns that just observing her fellow man is not enough. Like the visually impaired man who has lost his sight due to an illness, she must learn to rely on her other senses. After all, imagination is formed by the whole of the senses. Your own experience comes first. She herself will have to be the subject of her observation. Only then will she really be able to see.

The beautiful camera work enthusiastically plays along with that game. ‘Radiance’ makes frequent use of (extreme) close ups. As a result, the focus is regularly out of focus. The view of the viewer is also obstructed in this way. In order to give meaning to the film, more registers have to be pulled out. In passing, the film not only says something about how people should not close themselves off from their own emotions, but it also powerfully exposes how viewers can actively experience a film. You don’t watch a movie, you experience it. Because only then will the medium show its true face. Even a film about loss can be as a result of great beauty.