The Whispering Star

A cargo ship in space. Inside it is an android whose job is to carry parcels: small, mostly meaningless-looking objects delivered to the few humans left on scattered planets. A photograph, a pencil, a sound recording. The journeys take years. The subject is not science fiction but the portability of memory. The parcels look worthless, but for the person receiving one it is the only tie left, which makes the android's work less like postal delivery than a form of care. The form is extremely slow and almost entirely black and white. For long stretches nothing happens: water boils, a sound is heard, a door opens. The ship is not futuristic in design; it looks like an old Japanese house. The real note is the location. Sion Sono shot the deserted-planet scenes inside the evacuation zone in Fukushima, and some of the extras were people who had lived there and been forced to leave. The abandoned settlement on screen is real and recent. There is a large distance between this and the fast, loud cinema Sono is known for; the script goes back to a text he wrote many years earlier. Megumi Kagurazaka plays the android. Who it is for: viewers after quiet, slow, poetic science fiction. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for incident; the narrative is built almost entirely on waiting and repetition.