The Wind Phone (2019) User Reviews (5)

is that you on the line?

[ferguson-6 · 7/10 · 26 December 2019]

Greetings again from the darkness. If there is a phone booth present, we are usually watching a movie that is at least 20 year old, or one that is set in the past. But not this time. Writer-director Kristen Gerweck tells us the film is set in 2012 on a Cliffside in Otsuchi Japan. We are also informed that the story is inspired by true events.

We only hear one end of the conversations at a time, and at first we don't understand how the seven people - strangers to each other - are connected by the phone. What we do see is a gorgeous seaside view with an oddly placed phone booth. The performances are as exceptional as the view.

The film has a haunting feel contrasted with the beauty we see. This is only Ms. Gerweck's second short film, and it has been well received on the festival circuit. With elements of an episode of "The Twilight Zone", her film delivers a curious, tension-packed few minutes.

Greetings again from the darkness.

[enes-01912 · 9/10 · 3 January 2020]

Ferguson, Do you have letterbox? Or a Personal Account?

You'll barely get to grips with the visuals ' sheer power

[eminkl · 9/10 · 1 January 2020]

In Otsuchi, on a hilltop garden, there is a glass-paneled phone booth with a disconnected phone inside, designed to connect people to their dead. Hundreds found their way to this kaze no denwa after an earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear meltdown struck Japan, seeking relief for their cruelly uprooted lives. Through speaking on a line, one could imagine on the other hand that their dead brother, mother, wife or friend were listening-a gentler way of saying goodbye than they had been handing over. The 16-minute Wind Phone of Kristen Gerweck is based on this fascinating farewell station, set by the oceanside rather than the original garden, and all the more striking for it. There's not much of a storyline on the face of it. The camera is waiting nearly a day by the window, watching people silently move through the many stages of grief. If one, living in the past, leaves a disaster alert, another arrives with news that he has kept his dead wife's old promise. Cinematographer Jon Keng produces a spellbinding visual experience; in this film there is no scene or frame that is not profoundly emotional, and all is a blue hue. The water is a cold blue, the sky is a lot of blue shades, swirling around each other. And the men, each wearing a blue shadow. The tougher their sorrow is on them, the deeper the gray. Maybe none of the several striking performances hit harder than the turn of Miho Ando as a poor woman, grieving her dead husband, whom she thought she was cheating on while she was alive. Anger and failure combine in their wringing output almost explosively with each other.

cliff dropper

[catpantry · 10/10 · 14 March 2020]

A phone. 0 wishes. A human being without being turned on. All separated items without capacity. So really it was euphoric because nothing that we believe should happen needed to happen. for these objects, an evening at Denny's was provided by someone that loves these objects and then that person easily leaves.

Beautifully simple and deep film

[srchrnet-653-258244 · 10/10 · 9 October 2019]

Inspired by a story of a telephone booth set on a Japanese cliff, where people come to call loved ones lost to a tragic natural disaster, this short and profoundly simple film beautifully conveys the feeling of loss and desire to stay connected to the people who have perished. The frame filling shot of the ocean, against which the Director, Kirsten Gerweck placed the phone booth-set, bespeaks of the vastness of the grief portrayed by each character who enters and speaks into the old fashion pay phone. The film smartly captures the essence of the Japanese heightened sense of life and death and relaying on simplicity it makes its statement universal. Nice cinematography furthers the poetry of the piece.