You couldn't shoot this movie in any other town. What first time director Kogonada finds in Columbus is a simple thesis; modernist architecture, by the likes of designers such as Eero Saarinen, Harry Weese, and I.M. Pei, their great planes of glass, jutting edges and spires, sharp dividing lines, and the lonely citizens that are framed by them, their lives impossibly tangled, their pathways weaving in and out of these pillars. For Casey, one of the sleepy town's youngest inhabitants (that has the freedom to leave), they may be her small consolation prize. She works in one of the fabled buildings, the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, but spends most of that time shelving dusty books instead of gazing at the ceilings. Her first scene betrays her passion, a smoke-break turned daydream as she mumbles out imaginary tour guide sound bites across from the First Christian Church, teasing out the intricacies of its deliberate asymmetrical design. Yet these sleek walls and panels have little appeal when they reveal their contents; a heartbreaking scene where Casey surveys the glass interiors like a prison made for her mother, a recovered drug addict who cleans all night long.
If you study her wardrobe you'll notice key design choices made to indicate Casey as an old soul, matured much beyond the confines of the titular town. Baggy mum jeans, loose-fitting blouses, long dresses bunched around her sandals. Yes, she's the responsible parent of the family, chasing up her daughter's missed phone calls, charging up to school with a firm reminder of her pick-up time. There's a slightly off-kilter moment where she declares her allegiance to old technology, "Smart phone, dumb human." Haley Lu Richardson delivers much of her dialogue gazing off-screen, with a wistful smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. The mood in the Columbus air is melancholy. That draws John Cho's Jin closer, who can't wait to get out of town. Together they excavate the baggage of their difficult parent relationships, with conversations that tiptoe lightly around the subject, but withdraw quickly. Cho in particular does well with what he is given. His father only briefly graces the screen in the opening of the film, with Jin's actions made to outline the rough sketches of their strained relationship; a slight hesitant step before entering the hospital room, a retreat from the suffocating confines of modern living to nature outside.
Even without knowing much about the man behind the mysterious pseudonym, you could pinpoint his favoured sources of inspiration. But we don't have to dig too deep. For those invested in the video essay scene, Kogonada will be a familiar face, known for years for his Vimeo-uploaded super-cuts exhibiting the immaculate centred frames of Kubrick, the flattened, scrapbook formalism of Wes Anderson, Ozu's penchant for boxing in his subjects with doorways and windows and walls. It's all there in Columbus, which embraces austere formalism like an old friend. If it wasn't already obvious enough, the director's alias is seemingly taken from Kogo Noda, Ozu's longtime scriptwriter collaborator. Kogonada has written and edited here, and he might as well be the DP too; the film's tableus are constructed from ground up, with the characters arranged around the architecture and dictated by the strong lines, not the other way around. While they weave in and out, and trudge to and from mirrors and showers, the camera is still. They'll be obscured behind glass, or heard from behind a corner, or framed through a corridor. Even strolling through an office, the line of desks are arrow straight, and the sticky notes are placed impeccably. Rarely does Kogonada cut to a closeup. When he does for what should be the most revealing moment of the film, where Jin presses Casey for what truly moves her about these buildings, it's merely to resort to a disappointing indie cliché - deigetic sound cuts out, and she confesses wordlessly over soft music.
I should be feeling more for this girl. She veers a little into cliché, but there's a worldly weariness about her that separates from the usual archetype. Richardson's ability to sudden crumble under the weight of all her anxieties, seen in another muted moment in the car, is extraordinary. She suddenly reverts to the child that had to see her mother as an addict at fourteen. Yet her overall journey is so isolated from the rest of the plot. She weeps on behalf of her mother, who doesn't even get a say in this decision. And what of her and Jin's tumultuous relationship? They're willing to aim barbed insults at each other and then be cordial the next meeting. He doesn't even eventually get the chance to shed tears, or muse on the lack of them.
If you study her wardrobe you'll notice key design choices made to indicate Casey as an old soul, matured much beyond the confines of the titular town. Baggy mum jeans, loose-fitting blouses, long dresses bunched around her sandals. Yes, she's the responsible parent of the family, chasing up her daughter's missed phone calls, charging up to school with a firm reminder of her pick-up time. There's a slightly off-kilter moment where she declares her allegiance to old technology, "Smart phone, dumb human." Haley Lu Richardson delivers much of her dialogue gazing off-screen, with a wistful smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. The mood in the Columbus air is melancholy. That draws John Cho's Jin closer, who can't wait to get out of town. Together they excavate the baggage of their difficult parent relationships, with conversations that tiptoe lightly around the subject, but withdraw quickly. Cho in particular does well with what he is given. His father only briefly graces the screen in the opening of the film, with Jin's actions made to outline the rough sketches of their strained relationship; a slight hesitant step before entering the hospital room, a retreat from the suffocating confines of modern living to nature outside.
Even without knowing much about the man behind the mysterious pseudonym, you could pinpoint his favoured sources of inspiration. But we don't have to dig too deep. For those invested in the video essay scene, Kogonada will be a familiar face, known for years for his Vimeo-uploaded super-cuts exhibiting the immaculate centred frames of Kubrick, the flattened, scrapbook formalism of Wes Anderson, Ozu's penchant for boxing in his subjects with doorways and windows and walls. It's all there in Columbus, which embraces austere formalism like an old friend. If it wasn't already obvious enough, the director's alias is seemingly taken from Kogo Noda, Ozu's longtime scriptwriter collaborator. Kogonada has written and edited here, and he might as well be the DP too; the film's tableus are constructed from ground up, with the characters arranged around the architecture and dictated by the strong lines, not the other way around. While they weave in and out, and trudge to and from mirrors and showers, the camera is still. They'll be obscured behind glass, or heard from behind a corner, or framed through a corridor. Even strolling through an office, the line of desks are arrow straight, and the sticky notes are placed impeccably. Rarely does Kogonada cut to a closeup. When he does for what should be the most revealing moment of the film, where Jin presses Casey for what truly moves her about these buildings, it's merely to resort to a disappointing indie cliché - deigetic sound cuts out, and she confesses wordlessly over soft music.
I should be feeling more for this girl. She veers a little into cliché, but there's a worldly weariness about her that separates from the usual archetype. Richardson's ability to sudden crumble under the weight of all her anxieties, seen in another muted moment in the car, is extraordinary. She suddenly reverts to the child that had to see her mother as an addict at fourteen. Yet her overall journey is so isolated from the rest of the plot. She weeps on behalf of her mother, who doesn't even get a say in this decision. And what of her and Jin's tumultuous relationship? They're willing to aim barbed insults at each other and then be cordial the next meeting. He doesn't even eventually get the chance to shed tears, or muse on the lack of them.