Description

We Can’t Change the World. But, We Wanna Build a School in Cambodia. (2011)
Bokutachi wa sekai o kaeru koto ga dekinai. But, we wanna build a school in Cambodia. (original title)
2h 6min | Drama | 23 September 2011 (Japan)
Storyline:A young Japanese man works to raise money and then build an elementary school in Cambodia.User review:The screenplay is based on the self-published book by Hada Kota in 2008, a medical student at the time, which tells of his real experiences in the gradual transformation from a college professor unaware of his surroundings to a volunteer engaged in a seemingly impossible cause. The story, despite the internal perspective, does not indulge in excessive incensations, and indeed is capable of showing the naivety, the errors and the illusions of the participants, without sparing a criticism of the initial superficiality with which they face the adventure, almost as if it were a simple harp to the boredom of living. Naturally, the film also lingers on those cathartic details that exercise a blackmail lever on the viewer’s feelings – such as the inevitable visit, during the first trip to Cambodia, to an AIDS clinic or to a village still surrounded by landmines. But the tone always remains authentic in describing the enthusiasm of people perfectly capable of positioning their work in the rest of society and on a global scale, as the long title almost ostentatiously summarizes. Using young faces particularly in part – including the idol Mukai Osamu, mainly engaged in television series, but recently also seen inParadise Kiss (2011) and Beck (2010) – Fukasaku cracks the monolithic structure of oppressive drama, and manages to create a suffused generational portrait, of young people who undermine the apathy in which society would like to force them to create, on their own, that sense that they complain about being lost around them. We Can’t Change the World But We Wanna Build a School in Cambodia therefore remains a fragile, incomplete film, even considered the last part, more blatantly looking for simple emotional springs on which to leverage, but still a fragility and incompleteness. bewitching, capable of making people think despite their defects.
Director: Kenta Fukasaku
Writers: Kôta Hada (based on the book by), Shinsuke Yamaoka (screenplay)
Stars: Osamu Mukai, Tôri Matsuzaka, Tasuku Emoto
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Release Date: 23 September 2011 (Japan)
Also Known As: We Can’t Change the World. But, We Wanna Build a School in Cambodia.
Filming Locations: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
IMDB Profile tt1742028