Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud absolutely rips. It’s a grim, nihilistic, and darkly funny satire of capitalism. It channels a particular brand of impotent raging against the machine. Again, it’s a pretty funny film when it wants to be. We laugh so we don’t cry, right? But, for most of its runtime, Cloud is an atmospheric, ruthless portrait of a man and the people caught in his orbit who think they have any control whatsoever in this world. Meanwhile, none of them realize they’re caught up in the gears of capitalism, waiting for their turn to be ground up. But, man, does it go hard for its two hour runtime. Cloud is thrilling all the way through, until its credits roll and Kurosawa shoves viewers back out to grapple with their own place in the world.
Yoshii (Malaki Suda) works a menial factory job, with a life guaranteed to strip away whatever remains of his soul until he eventually retires, gets fired, or dies. It doesn’t really matter which. At home he sits in the dark and resells stuff at a hefty markup (after lowballing the people he’s buying from, of course). The success of his latest sale of medical equipment gets Yoshii thinking bigger. Faced with the upside of the shady reselling game or taking a promotion at work, the choice is pretty easy for Yoshii. Bing, bang, boom, Yoshii is moving into a bigger house with his girlfriend, Akko (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) and brings an assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira) into the fold. Also along for the ride are people Yoshii has been ripping off, both the customers and the suppliers he gets his wares from.
Seemingly impervious to everything, Yoshii goes about his business, while ignoring the bind he’s putting others in, as well as the strange goings on around his home that imply maybe one of his haters is ready to do something with their anger. Why shouldn’t Yoshii be impervious? He’s making money and that’s really the only thing that matters.
Throughout its first half, Cloud is patient as it sets up Yoshii’s ruthlessness and callousness. When his boss at the factory tries to convince him to stay and take the promotion, Yoshii replies, “I’m just unassertive. It only looks like I’m committed.”
It’s only a matter of time until Yoshii’s indifference to the people around him comes back to bite him, and that’s basically the second half of the film. Cloud becomes a first rate thriller as Yoshii is chased and abducted by a group of men hellbent on getting their pound of flesh. Even as the tension cranks up, Kurosawa keeps finding ways to needle his characters and the film’s themes. One nervous abductor, both giddy and terrified at the prospect of actually killing Yoshii, is calmed by one of his cohorts who explains this is his second such instance of vengeance and says to “think of it like a game.”
Thinking of life like a game is arguably what brought all of these characters together. Life is a game, money is the goal, and the goalposts only shift when the money shifts. And this is where Kurosawa’s sense of humor shines through with laser precision. If Yoshii represents the capitalist machine, caring only for himself and the acquisition of more money, everyone else cannon fodder. As more attempts to get revenge on Yoshii backfire on his aggressors, the failures become more absurd and more desperate. The action spirals and the body count rises, and what’s left is a bleak vision for where Yoshii, and us, are headed. I was thoroughly entertained by Cloud, and it’s one of the best films of the year so far, and as I prepare to go back to work at the end of a vacation, I can’t shake the feeling there’s a “Kick Me” sign on my back.
