The Uneasy Story of Ghosts I remember reading the book for the first time five years ago and being really shocked. As soon as I learned about the film adaptation, I immediately burst into flames to see, but the Russian translation appeared only in 2016. Now, four and a half years later, watching Nobuhiko Obayashi's film, he again felt the same warm feelings, a slight shade of sadness, and again wanted to read the novel. To be honest, the film largely follows the novel almost verbatim. However, some points were left out. Mainly - the reflections of the hero, because "Summer with ghosts" somewhat loses the depth and sensuality of the book, but remains the same reflection on the lost.
Ghost Stories is one of the favorite genres of Japanese literature and cinema. Few people do not know today has become a classic “Call”, which is considered almost the standard of the genre. Hideo’s story is similar in many ways, filled with chilling and at the same time alluring horror. Only by turning on the film, you almost immediately plunge into the plot and do not come off until the very end. This merit, of course, is largely the author of the script Tachi Yamada, who, like his hero himself, is a famous Japanese screenwriter and writer, who has become a “living legend” of Japanese cinema. The novel “Summer with Strangers” won the prestigious Yamomoto Sugoro literary award as the best novel “for a wide audience”. And the next year after the book was released, it was filmed by director Obayashi Nobuhiko.
Tahichi Yamado successfully combines the sensations of the mystical, the other world and the real world. So the viewer, as well as the hero himself, it is difficult to understand what is the embodiment of dreams and fantasies, and what is true of the surroundings. Immersed in the atmosphere of the plot, after Hideo, you wander through the labyrinths of the mind, the dark corners of his past, in which the true cause of what is happening lies. What does loneliness mean for a person, and what actions can this terrible feeling prompt him to do? Where is the line between our imagination and our desires? Even after watching the film adaptation, one does not leave the feeling that the questions posed by the author do not find their answer to the end. Perhaps this aftertaste is the success of the film and the book.
7 out of 10