The Contestant

Cert - 12

Run-time - 1 hour 30 minutes

Director - Clair Titley

Tomoaki Hamatsu (AKA Nasubi) looks back on the effects that becoming an unknowing overnight TV star, being confined, naked, to a room for over a year, had on him. It's the late-90s, 22-year-old aspiring comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu enters hit Japanese reality show Denpa Shōnen in the hope that it will provide his big break. However, while told that what he goes through will barely make it to air, A Life In Prizes is broadcast weekly in a pre-Truman Show world to an audience of over 30 million viewers, not including the eventual 24 hour livestream.

Confined naked to a cramped, almost empty, windowless room Hamatsu's (nicknamed Nasubi, meaning eggplant after his long face) goal is to win 1 million yen worth of prizes from magazine competitions. A game based on pure luck. While he can leave at any time as his physical and mental state deteriorates over the course of a year Nasubi tells himself that it's easier, and likely better, to stay and go through with the challenge. The footage is undeniably shocking and there's a darkness to the film, enhanced by the laughter of the watching studio audience, but director Clair Titley's reframing of the Denpa Shōnen footage never feels bleak. There's a sense of hope from seeing Nasubi in the present day through a set of talking heads which run throughout the film. Even in the closing stages where we see further tragedy which hit him and Japan as a whole there's a humanity to his presence and a hopefulness to his attitude.

His perspective is countered by interviews with show producer Toshio Tsuchiya, who admits that he was no God but the devil. Despite some retrospective apologies he still comes across as the face of evil, admitting that much of what he put the film's subject through was to prove critics wrong and keep high ratings.

Just how far could he push the boat out without killing the star of the show? We see the scars that Nasubi still wears as the film explores the mental impact that A Life In Prizes had, and still has, on him. He provides an open and honest discussion about these effects, particularly relating to isolation and loneliness, and his own personal views and feelings, and without him and Tsuchiya the film would likely enter that aforementioned feeling of bleakness.

Other heads crop up briefly here and there, but the documentary knows who the focus should be on in adding detail and insight into this story and it does so in a way that makes the film what it is. Providing it with interest, shock and fascination for the viewer as the engaging story unfolds. Through the slight reframing of the same footage that was shown on TV, translated voiceover and graphics intact, there's a connecting human angle running throughout the documentary.

Footage which, despite the background laughter and reminders of the Olympic-level viewership, could easily be being played in a court trial.

Four stars