Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Drawing Closer
2024 · Takahiro Miki · Drawing Closer on Sightlines
4 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch for lens flare and backlight in every scene. (light)
Miki shoots Akito and the girl through diffusion and blown-out highlights, treating overexposure as beauty rather than a mistake.
Payoff: The light floods the frame instead of shading it, which is the film's way of saying the world itself is running out. In the reading: lyrical abstraction. This is what the reading calls lyrical abstraction: light as flood rather than shadow, the spiritual alternative to expressionism.
Watch how long the camera holds on a still face. (performance)
Reaction shots run long, and Nagase spends most scenes almost shy, holding one quiet feeling rather than working through a range of expressions.
Payoff: That restraint makes every small shift in his face count for more.
Watch for a shared drawing, notebook, or checklist. (setting)
The couple keeps a running list of things to do together, and the film returns to it again and again as the relationship develops.
Payoff: Crossing an item off gives them something to actually do, a small action inside a situation neither of them can change. In the reading: symbol. This is what the reading calls a symbol: an object that condenses the whole relation the film is built on.
Notice the seasons changing around the couple: blossom, summer glare, rain. (setting)
In the film's wordless montage passages the two go nearly still while weather and season carry all the motion around them.
Payoff: They aren't going anywhere. Time is, and the seasons are the film's honest picture of that.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the light flood every frame. Miki uses overexposure to show a world running out of time, not gone dark.