Prolific as he has been across his four-decade-long career, for Western audiences Kiyoshi Kurosawa will seemingly always remain synonymous with his landmark contribution to J-Horror, 2001’s Pulse. It would, therefore, be appear trite and obvious to analyze his latest film, grimy crime drama Cloud, through the lens of that seemingly disconnected work.
Yet there is a thematic connection that goes beyond the fact that both the doomed protagonist of his earlier ghost story and the central character of his newest film are both called Ryosuke. Both films are really about the disconnecting effect of technology. But while Pulse was a warning, Cloud seems more like a funeral bell, a despairing look at life on the online economic periphery. This new Ryosuke (Suda) may as well be a ghost, his face implacable and emotionless. He has a girlfriend, Akiko (Furukawa), a decent job with prospects at a nearby factory, and he’s even stayed in contact with an old school friend, Muraoka (Kubota). But he is a passive presence whose real job is to be little more than a middleman. He’s an internet reseller, hunting down strange bargains like electrotherapy units and rare collectible figures, which he then flips in online markets. His true purpose is to just sit there, staring at the screen as the items sell. It’s like a dispassionate casino, and only in the slightest trembles can you find any indication of an emotional response, high and low. He is as disconnected as Pulse’s Ryosuke but seems to have embraced this state of nothingness.
Cloud places Kurosawa at one corner of a triangle of Japanese filmmakers that are perhaps most familiar to Western audiences. The criminals of Takeshi Kitano’s are stylish barbarians driven by a merciless honor code. Meanwhile, the works of Hirokazu Kore-eda are rich with a love for those many may see as beyond the fringes of acceptable society. But here Kurosawa finds no honor or hidden humanity in this shadowy world of petty commerce, and in doing so probes absolute isolation and solipsism. Suda achieves the seemingly impossible task of making Ryosuke both fascinating and a non-entity. His cruelties are casual and coincidental. Conversation is a struggle for him as even the most basic edicts of the social contract seem to pass him by. It’s one of the most startling depictions of absolute self-possession since Adam Sandler’s coke-mouth fury in Uncut Gems, but with none of that film’s required histrionics.
There is instead a horrifying understatement as it becomes clear what kind of moral vacuum Ryosuke lives in, and how oblivious he is to the needs of anyone around him, whether it’s the manufacturers he lowballs on merchandise or the dealers he fleeces with bootleg gear. For all his protestations about wanting a better life, of moving to the countryside with Akiko, of becoming an actual businessman with an employee (Okudaira), he seems completely disinterested in what happens before or after the goods leave his hands. His home becomes a warehouse, the people in his life mere assets. This is pure capitalism expressed as sociopathy.
The way this all comes crashing down in a vengeance-fueled slow-motion gun battle could seem like a radical change of pace. But Kurosawa’s slow, patient direction throws just enough stones into the stagnant waters of Ryosuke’s life to make the vengeance of those he has harmed seem almost justified. Yet, like him, they are merely shabby men incapable of dealing with their own flaws and failures, a disparate gang brought together by lurking on the same forums. As with Pulse, technology is merely a gateway to a kind of limbo. It may not be Hell, Kurosawa warns, but that doesn’t mean we’re not all damned by it.
This article appears in August 1 • 2025.
