Timeless Melody

Timeless Melody is a film that could only have been made at this time. Filled with puzzles and uncertainties, the film makes elegant use of improvised music as a metaphor for the way in which story and characters can introduce their own variation in rhythm. At the same time, Timeless Melody is in the opulent tradition of the meditative, visual cinema that has fed Japanese film, from Ozu to Kore-Eda. The young Kawamoto spends most of his time in a pool hall and rehearsal space where people play pool and music. It has become his home, at night he sleeps on one of the pool tables. Other regulars are a girl who doesn’t go to school any more and predicts the future with cards, and a man who lives on a boat. The girl works as waitress; she only has superficial contact with her mother who lives in Los Angeles. The man turns out not to exist officially any more; years ago he was lost at sea and assumed dead. In the street, the underworld keeps an eye on him. It’s as if none of the characters in Timeless Melody have a real life: they are left to their fate, without a home. Events in the film that could give the lives of the characters a different course, are not the events Okuhara concentrates on. He prefers to look around. Yet the moments when nothing happens tell the whole story. Okuhara has the courage to show in long sequences exactly what he thinks is most important.