Harmonium

In the riveting, masterfully executed Harmonium, bad karma pays a visit to a family — and overstays its welcome. It’s a bleak film, no doubt, yet it remains engrossing throughout with its genuinely surprising twists and outstanding acting.

Shot in a meticulous yet unmannered style, the film provides the veteran cast with an ideal framework to mount masterful performances.

Throughout Harmonium, writer-director Kôji Fukada works in a rapt and lucid hyper-textural style that suggests a merging of the sensibilities of Alfred Hitchcock and Yasujirô Ozu.

Fukada’s take on family is genuinely bleak — what he sees is loneliness together instead of real companionship, and all the problems that arise from manufactured togetherness. But his storytelling instincts are solid, and his actors always bring humanity to their darkest impulses and saddest epiphanies.

This is a provocative, intelligent movie for those with a strong emotional constitution.

Harmonium remains a deeply affecting narrative of guilt, consequence and failed redemption.

Harmonium is consistently about mood more than anything else. You sink into the film at first. Then, with each new leisurely introduced plot point, you struggle to regain your sense of calm since, after a while, the film's protagonists are doing the exact same thing.