After beginning his directorial career with two violent dramas – Violent Cop (1989) and Boiling Point (1990) – that each reworked genre material pertaining to yakuza cinema, Kitano Takeshi set up his own production company in order to help control and shape the direction of his work and of individual projects. This company – Office Kitano – would go on to be central not only to Kitano’s own films but also to the work of international auteurs like Jia Zhangke.

A Scene at the Sea has, in outline, a simple narrative – A deaf/mute garbage collector named Shigeru finds a broken surfboard whilst out working and, with the support of his devoted and similarly afflicted girlfriend, he teaches himself to surf – however it encompasses a true rhapsody, a quietly rapturous paean to personal development. It is as existential an image of the writing of one’s own story as it is possible to find, though without exploiting or relying on the melancholy and portentousness that can often mar such visions.

In point of fact, the film is as much about taking joy in others, in their pleasures and their accomplishments, as it is directly about those pleasures and accomplishments and the simple, unadulterated happiness of these scenes and shots is palpable. It is the pure power of cinema that moves us here, the direct, arresting apprehension of action and emotion in an almost primal state.

The Japanese title of A Scene at the Sea – ‘That Summer, the Most Tranquil Sea’ – suggests a looking back. Indeed, the film does precisely this as part of its coda, wherein moments of happiness between the protagonists appear in montage. The visions throughout of the emptiness of the tranquil sea, one that has nonetheless taken the life of Shigeru, suggest the ambiguity of the existential – fear of an empty life but as much of a pointless death. Ultimately, the deceptively simple story encapsulates a profound study of life, passion, and the human condition.