Eureka

2000
7.7| 3h38m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 04 May 2001 Released
Producted By: Les Films de L'Observatoire
Country: Japan
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

In rural Japan, the survivors of a tragedy converge and attempt to overcome their damaged selves, all while a serial killer is on the loose.

Genre

Drama

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Director

Shinji Aoyama

Production Companies

Les Films de L'Observatoire

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Eureka Audience Reviews

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever
Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Manos Artistically speaking, this movie is excellent. The b&w suits perfectly the film, the camera work and the cinematography are superb, the acting (especially Yakusho Koji's) is great...The movie misses 10/10 because of: a. The duration. I don't have any problems with 3-4 hour films, but I believe Eureka could have expressed all that it was meant to express in 2 and a half hours tops. b. The soundtrack. Very amateurish compared to the rest of the movie. Silence/ambiance would have suited the film better. At least it is used very economically so that it doesn't get (very) annoying.A must watch.
sitenoise After three and a half slow paced, sepia toned hours experiencing emotional pain and anguish I still watched the credits roll. This film starts off with a man hijacking a bus and killing most everyone on it for no apparent reason. The driver and two middle school kids survive, and we spend the rest of the film watching them live with it. We watch them fall asleep watching television and other mundane matters but there is not a wasted frame in this film. There are a remarkable number of plot points to keep things moving forward but it still feels like suspended animation, like time is moving inward instead of along. Koji Yakusho is sublime and Aoi Miyazaki, at like twelve years old--and without saying a word for nearly the entire runtime--is mesmerizing. This film is a masterpiece, a journey exploring the myriad layers of trauma, of metaphorical death, and what three people endure on a path to renewal and emergence from a world of silent suffering. It will take your breath away.
VideoKidVsTheVoid A film beyond film; the rarest transfusion of worlds – a step thru the rift of definition, into the realms of the sublime. Poetry of the unknown chasms of existence – perfect reflections of the ghost and its flight. A journey, a search, beyond incidents, externalizations, time and space; emotions striving to hold on, to decode something of the abstraction of consciousness; of reality; of life (both on the basic primordial level and on the modern plateau). Aoyama has achieved a transcendtion of form, function, media, matter and expression; as if all the years of brooding had channeled into these three hours and forty minutes.A deal no doubt must have been struck with time and space themselves; to allow themselves to be exposed and laid bare before the camera – to be carved out of each other and shaped and molded by human hands; sculptures made of moments and distance. Claustrophobia with the known universe. Movement coerced into a go-between, relaying messages from the outer rims.Intensity is felt with every frame; the intensity of ambiguousness – the intensity of simply living thru time, at existing at the hands of the confusion of existence. Characters sift thru a war of existence. The individual; the self contained star drifting thru space, and the rootless feeling permeating the universe are here held open and dissected as if the individual's confinement were a show of fireworks. Isolation comes as natural drift, as if expected as wind thru the leaves of a tree, never forced or romanticized. Communication is reborn, and language held at bay; its deceiving tendrils plucked from their hold within the brain. The irrational is once again confronted face to face instead of by way of masked handshake in the dark. Open spaces and landscapes externalize the internal scope; playing out a disenchanted dream of reality. Roads, buildings, yards, construction sites, parking lots, fields, sky; all seem to drip with answers beyond their forms. They remain still, but hold the longing out with both hands; one step away from the void.The world has been caught, stripped to the bone; rendered poignant in sepiatone colored fever-(day)dreams (surely here, and to a fishier degree in von Trier's The Element Of Crime (1984), now proved to be the color of at least some part of heaven). Modernity has been deflated, time and space orchestrated, society has been shown limbless, history has retreated to the wastelands, and man is man as he has always been. Aoyama has pierced the skin; broken thru to the inner chambers. The surface has been dissolved and only the hopeful depths remain.
gmwhite I wouldn't give many films a score of ten unless they were truly outstanding, not just better, but in a whole different league. It is a grade reserved for the likes of (if I may indulge in a little subjectivity) Tarkovsky's Stalker;, Kitano's Hana-Bi, In the Mood for Love' by Wong Kar-wai, Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc, Ozu's Tokyo Story; and very few others. It is more than mere technical brilliance, top-class acting, superb plot or camera-work. What each of these films possesses is sheer humanity, simultaneously painful and life-affirming.Eureka deserves to stand proudly in such company, for Eureka is a film that is so human it makes most others seem either shallow, over-wrought, or just pretentious. Eureka's plot is a simple, its action, dialog and soundtrack is sparse, camera movement is minimal. The sepia-toned photography is indeed a marvel to look at, and each of the actors performs with such restrained naturalness that they don't seem like performances at all. The result is a film that is less like a story being told, and more like an experience that is undergone or a journey shared. If there is any 'art' involved, it is in producing a film so fragile, yet so accessible, so desperately and painfully human out of material so grueling and alien to most of us fortunate viewers. And in this respect, the movement of Eureka mirrors that of the protagonists, the three traumatised survivors of a bloody bus high-jacking. They are a brother and sister,and the bus driver himself. In the wake of the tragedy, after some months of wandering and inactivity, they are drawn back together and set out on a bus.As may be gathered, this film is very much about the aftermath of tragedy, about how certain experiences may mark one off from the rest of society, and how with silence, stillness and human company, and most importantly, the passing of time, some form of healing may be glimpsed. And it is just a glimpse. Though the final scene is indeed moving, there is no big payoff, anymore than there might be in life itself. There is only the artistry of the film itself to transfigure the story, and it does this with such quiet, unobtrusive sympathy, that to call it 'artistry' seems almost to malign it. I haven't seen Aoyama's other films, so I can't say whether he is destined for a Tarkovsky-, Dreyer- or Ozu-like elevation to the cinematic pantheon, but this film is a refreshing example of the kind of deep humanity of the best directors, the best artists, one that marks a perfect 10 off from all the rest.