Yasuo Takamatsu’s Journey Through The Ocean
by Sebastian Erb
The Diver is a 9-minute documentary directed by Anderson Wright that tells the story of Yasuo Takamatsu’s search for his wife, who died during the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Over a decade later, Yasuo still dives into the ocean’s depths in pursuit of her every weekend. The film’s use of silence, media technologies, and voiceover helps render Yasuo’s journey in coming to terms with the consequences of the catastrophe. Wright personalizes the tragedy by focusing on Yasuo’s search for his wife’s remains while working through the absent presence of her mediated memories.
The film opens with almost complete silence. For the first thirty seconds, all that can be heard are the sounds of raindrops hitting the ground: Yasuo is alone. Still, white text appears on the screen describing the tsunami, setting the catastrophe in stone and with it the atmosphere for the rest of the film.
Yasuo’s voiceover details the last day he saw his wife. As he recalls his final moments with her, everyday life can be heard, such as cars driving, people shopping, and nature. These sounds abruptly stop with the shutting of a car door—a device Wright deploys as a sonic “cut.” Next, the emergency evacuation message from March 11, 2011 is heard, accompanied by amorphous and eerie music, adding to the sense of uncertainty and fear evoked by the emergency broadcast. The music continues after the broadcast, ending with a video of his wife that was taken before her passing. The sequence concludes with the shutting of a car door, as if Yasuo is snapping in and out of memories.
Videos and photos of Yasuo’s wife recur throughout, allowing the viewer to access Yasuo’s thoughts. As Susan Sontag famously noted in her seminal essay on On Photography,“ photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making stand still.” The Diver calls upon these videos and photographs to recall a moment in time that seems lost forever. The video is slowed to the point that it almost mimics stillness, yet the frame-by-frame movement offers something even more powerful than a photograph alone: it makes it possible to discern otherwise unseen nuances of emotions as they flash across her face, akin to what Walter Benjamin called the “optical unconscious” whereby photography makes it possible to see something we have never seen before. By editing the video in this way, the viewer can feel that she was not just another victim of a tragedy but a real person with a family, a life, and a future that was ultimately taken away. However, the film also illustrates how media preserves her memory and continues to shape the present. While Yasuo can never reach the past, his search for her body becomes a way to move forward. The theme of stillness versus movement is apparent in these segments of the film.
One of the most poignant sequences in the entire film is when we finally observe Yasuo dive. Amid breathtaking shots of the ocean, Yasuo’s emotional voiceover reflects on the nature of love: while other cultures may use the phrase “I love you,” in Japan, love is expressed without words. Yasuo’s searching of the ocean for her body says that much. In contrast to the earlier parts of the film, there is constant motion taking place throughout the diving sequence. One could argue that the physical movement reflects Yasuo’s mental journey as he attempts to both honor their love, by finding her body, and also move forward.
The film manages to portray the complexities of loss and tragedy while utilizing a simple framework. Céline Roustan, in her essay on The Diver, expands on this idea, emphasizing that “Wright opted for a more quiet approach than usual with the film’s sound design and employs this to immerse the audience in Yasuo’s headspace.” Roustan highlights that Yasuo “reveals his vulnerabilities on camera,” with the film portraying “emotionally powerful moments even when he isn’t saying a word, almost turning his wife’s absence into a character of its own.” By not having atmospheric music, it allows the audience to focus on the silence that takes place. Expanding on this, the combination of amorphous music and silence over time takes shape, behaving as a character to the viewer. The story revolves around this idea, with the sound design mirroring the thoughts and emotions of Yasuo.
The concluding portion of the story highlights that Yasuo has been unsuccessful in tracking down his wife’s remains, however, her cell phone was retrieved a month after the tsunami. Similar to a message in a bottle, the cell phone carries a fragment of his wife’s existence that survived the catastrophe. In this way, it acts as a device that delivers mediated memories to Yasou. Yet, while the message has been delivered, the messenger remains absent. This provides Yasuo the opportunity to relive memories of his wife, but also physically cements her absence, as the message is only a part of the messenger. Ultimately, the phone acts as a reminder of how the past can feel both profoundly close and unreachable at the same time. The film’s final scene further emphasizes one of the central themes of the film: the silence of absence. The concluding shot displays teardrops that have accumulated on the floorboards of Yasuo’s house. Mirroring the opening shot’s silence and stillness. As the screen cuts to black, the audience is reminded of one thing: he is alone.
