Cannes Review: The Afterlife Is Deathly Dull In Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 'Journey To The Shore'

The word "boring" is a problematic one in the context of a film review. It is automatically dismissive, inherently disdainful and wholly disrespectful of the simple fact that there are as many valid responses to the same artwork as there are food preparation scenes in modern Japanese cinema. And it usually says much more about the limited capabilities of the reviewer than it does about the film. But Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Journey to the Shore" which played in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes tests to its very limit my resolve to not use that sneering, thoughtless term in any review, ever, by delivering its glacially paced, maddeningly abstruse, blandly shot and simperingly scored story in such deadening detail. Can I state definitively that "Journey to the Shore" is boring? No, but I can say I was bored by it, stiffer than a corpse at the height of rigor mortis. And then it won the Un Certain Regard award for Best Director, which just goes to show you...