Fukushima 50 (2020)

Tsunami was 43-46 feet high

 

It was one of those what-am-I-going-to-watch moments that I came upon Chernobyl among my files. But I've seen that, so I wondered if there is a series or movie about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant? That's how I came by Fukushima 50, the only movie that came up in a google search. 

According to legend, 50 plant workers remained to save the nuclear plant and the rest were evacuated. In reality, there were more than 50 workers as back up from all over country was already on site, but the zeitgeist had already favored the number 50.

I hate to say it but maybe the movie was too fast for me. It did not hit me emotionally, at least not as much as I hoped it would be. Maybe it is best if this was a series too like its HBO counterpart.

The story hit the ground running beginning with that magnitude 9.0 earthquake of 2011. Characters came in the heat of chaos; I didn’t have time to breath much less be emotionally attached to who they are. 

 

A water drench plant worker reports SBO is due to submerged emergency generators due to the tsunami

 

Who are the characters and what are they feeling? What is the Japanese mind, at least in relation to this point in history? Sure, I can imagine the stress of a nuclear meltdown having watched Chernobyl but that doesn’t help me get anchored in a Japanese story. 

There were flashbacks which gave a backstory. But what really helped was when the crisis became a waiting game. When that happened more time was allotted to the families of plant workers holed up in an evacuation center, worrying if they'll ever see their loved ones again. 

There is nothing more human than people saying their goodbyes. Although it feels too late in my opinion, it set the mood.

 

First order of the day was to power up the monitors with car batteries.

What I really miss, ironically, is that often long drawn out exposition scene typical of a Japanese story. Sometimes these expositions work, but usually it’s a drag. 

For an anime like Slam Dunk, Dr. T interrupts the story by explaining basketball basics. In a live action like Alice in Borderland, Ryohei Arisu always explains in full how he solved everything. Dr. T was always artfully done, but for the climax of Alice in Borderland at least, Arisu dragged away the urgency.

I wanted that calm and lengthy exposition scene. All I can think of while watching this movie are ways of slowing it down. I want to stop the characters from shouting.

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What if Masao Yoshida (Ken Watanabe) and Toshio Izaki (Kōichi Satō) go to work together? If not what if they ate together? As leaders of men, Yoshida and Izaki have the excuse to just talk of the goings on. 

They could have talked about the plant, the town from where they live, the staff, and they could have talked about family. That would have set everything up, calmly.

Izaki especially could have introduced the movie on his own. The story had used him and his daughter Haruka (Riho Yoshioka) as emotional hook, the potential unfinished business: if he dies saving the plant then the last both of them will remember is parting ways in anger.  

What if father and daughter were bookends? Instead of a flashback which the scene actually was, the movie starts with it, with father and daughter fighting. That would have balanced out the scenes in the end of the movie where they made peace. 

 

Haruka starts to worry over a text from her father.

 

Same can be said of the town. There needs to be a town scene in the beginning, not the evacuation, in order to balance out Izaki's apology that he and his neighbors no longer have a town to go back to at the end.

Having those bookends would have wrapped the story in something that's more human. Even if I'd never understand Japan or the workings of a nuclear plant, I can imagine loosing a home, and I've already lost my parents.

I believe some real life stories made into films or TV series look uninteresting because the Director or Screenwriters are unwilling or unable to bend the story to fit a narrative structure. The makers of Fukushima 50 were not as liberal with creative license as I would hope, and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

 

Yoshida and a staff discuss how pump seawater into the reactor against TEPCO's orders

 

Maybe some issues of the disaster are under litigation, maybe its Japanese politeness. The movie did not stray, if at all, from many of the data points I’ve seen in one documentary. If you're not interested in the drama for a real life event like this then documentaries are the best approach.

Chernobyl had an excellent exposition scene. It was when Valeri Legasov explained how a nuclear reactor works. The explanation was very basic, the dialogue was organic – it fits the story, did not drag nor broken any 4^th wall. The visual aids were just blue and red. 

Still even after seeing the movie twice now and at least one documentary, my understanding of the reactor problems is still wanting. I still don’t know that drywall pressure is about and yet it turned out as the movie’s climax. Yoshida and Izaki between them explained the problem and what needed to be done, but none so detailed as Legasov. 

 

A TEPCO executive retreating from questions he cannot answer

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant had 3 explosions over a few days compared to Chernobyl’s 1. It would nice if the movie explained how bad was it? Which was worse Chernobyl or Fukushima? 

In any case, while the nuclear plant has since been "manageable" since 2011, the dangers of the Fukushima is by no means over as there is an impending dump of radioactive water into the ocean, reported just this September 2021, more than 10 years after.

Fukushima 50 got Blue Ribbon Award for best movie in Japan so it did many things right in Japanese eyes.  I am not Japanese and there may be words that don’t translate emotionally as well in English. I can give them that. 

If it means anything I watch in original Japanese audio and read subtitles. Is it possible to get wrong subtitles?

And that brings us to why it is called Fukushima 50, why humanity in the story is important. The 50 are those who remained up to the very end to save the nuclear plant. What caught my eye is how they were chosen, it is the first time I've seen it in a disaster flick.

The young, and at times emphasized as able to have families, are ordered off the plant. Why is that? In any other kind of disaster the responders are the most physically able.

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I had to look it up. It’s nuclear protocol. In an ABC News article Japan's Fukushima 50: Heroes Who Volunteered to Stay Behind at Japan's Crippled Nuclear Plants, it said: 

The crews are not necessarily made up of strong young men. Emergency nuclear scenarios suggest asking older retirees to volunteer, not because they're more expendable, or even because they're more skilled, but because even if they're exposed to massive amounts of radiation, history has shown they would die of old age before they die of radiation induced cancers, which can take decades to develop.

That may be true. There were allusions to it at the beginning of the movie. What’s interesting is that the choice by the end is not presented as a health protocol, as the above article suggests is the norm for radiation.

It seems that the community is taken into consideration. Izaki joked; then again maybe he was serious, that the junior staff he ordered to evacuate be his replacement. It was only then that the dangers expressed in previous scenes hit me. 

How much of what Izaki said is meant for his junior staff, that they be safe? How much is for the long term health of the company that replacements survive? And how much is for Japan?  

 

As if by design the oldest looking actor plays one of those who went into the reactor building

 

When I heard ‘those who can still have families’, what came to mind was the declining population. How much does Japanese society think of it? I am amused that I thought of Japan in this scene when in scenes prior, the Prime Minister was briefed that Tokyo may be irradiated if the reactors blew. 

I felt the desperation of a country. If the population is on the decline in peacetime, how would they fare in a nuclear disaster like this?

I think that's it, the Japanese mind surrounding the disaster. Of course I can never be sure. What must always be remembered is that movies on real life events are always the beginning, never the end. So I need to read up.