GoKawiilAcclaimed Japanese director Sho Miyake has arrived in the States. He’s brought with him two feature films: Small, Slow But Steady and Two Seasons, Two Strangers, a pair of naturalistic portraits that deal with the uneasy human desire to relate to other people. Seclusion and unease are bedrocks to Miyake’s growing filmography. “I like these characters that have a sense of discomfort that slowly starts to distance them from society,” he tells The Verge.
I first saw Small, Slow But Steady at New Directors/New Films (lowkey one of the better film festivals New York has to offer). It’s an affectionate story of a deaf boxer, Keiko (Yukino Kishii), who is on the heels of winning her first bout. Miyake delicately balances the tension of Keiko’s ambition with the tepid malaise she feels from her success, exacerbated when her longtime trainer’s health deteriorates and her routine is upended.
Sho Miyake’s latest feature, Two Seasons, Two Strangers, has its own friction to resolve. The film starts and ends with a screenwriter, Li (Shim Eun-kyung), writing at a desk. But in the middle is Miyake weaving in separate stories of human connection and isolation based on renowned cartoonist Yoshiharu Tsuge’s A View of the Seaside and Mr. Ben and His Igloo — a film within a film, or a manga within a manga. Its structural innovations is earning Miyake praise; he recently took home the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival.
The Verge sat down with Sho Miyake ahead of Two Seasons, Two Strangers US theatrical debut. (Small, Slow But Steady is available on demand now.) Speaking through a translator, Miyake answered the big existential questions — like why we, as humans, tell stories — and what he thinks about AI.
Director Sho Miyake Robyn Kanner
This interview has been edited for clarity.
You did an interview recently in Nowness Asia where you said you really liked characters that are clumsy but honest. What about that do you like?
To be honest, I think for myself, almost in a bad sense, I’m a bit too slick in that I can find ways to kind of be dishonest with myself or lie to myself. So I think that it’s aspirational when my characters are clumsy, but at least very honest. It’s something that I aspire to.
Small, Slow But Steady was the first film of yours that I saw. When you look back on it, are there any lessons that you take away?
I think that there are many things that I learned from making Small, Slow But Steady, but I’ll give one example and I think it’s just reflected in the title. I feel that that is how I approach filmmaking. I think that Small, Slow But Steady reflects not only my approach to filmmaking, but also how I see that the world might change. When I was younger, I thought things don’t change overnight, but now I see that these small invisible efforts, the culmination of these can lead to greater changes both in society. But also when I think about my filmmaking, each cut, each scene is incredibly important that I need to approach them very carefully so that maybe that one scene isn’t enough to impress anyone. But the culmination is what creates a good film.
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