Illusions take many forms in Gekidan Hitori's Bolt From the Blue. Right from the start, we're shown a series of sleight of hand tricks but the magician performing the tricks isn't an illusionist, he's a bar attendant. Haruo seems to have given up on any desire to be a successful stage magician, disillusioned with the direction his life has taken. When he goes to pick up the belongings of his estranged father who has just died in somewhat in far from pleasant circumstances, the reality of just who his parents were and what really happened in the past hits him like a ... well, like a bolt from the blue when Haruo is flung back to 1973.
The time-travel science is a bit dodgy as Bolt from the Blue is not an exercise in nostalgia, as it often is in Japanese reflections on the past, nor despite appearances is it an attempt to look back at an idealised past and question where it all went wrong. Gekidan Hitori's film - adapted from his own novel - might seem to use the illusion of cinema to force an fantasy of the possibility of second chances, but in a film about illusionists, appearances can inevitably be deceptive...
The time-travel science is a bit dodgy as Bolt from the Blue is not an exercise in nostalgia, as it often is in Japanese reflections on the past, nor despite appearances is it an attempt to look back at an idealised past and question where it all went wrong. Gekidan Hitori's film - adapted from his own novel - might seem to use the illusion of cinema to force an fantasy of the possibility of second chances, but in a film about illusionists, appearances can inevitably be deceptive...