Cinema Pacific Film Festival - "Abraxas" Review

The Cinema Pacific Film Festival is an annual event held at the Bijou Art Cinema featuring films from Pacific bordering countries, with this year’s focus being on works from Japan. With a plethora of great films to choose from, such as Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Tokyo Drifter (not to be confused with the 1966 classic of the same name), and A Simple Life, this year’s festival was not only for lovers of Japanese cinema, but also for those looking to introduce themselves to Asian film for the first time. While all the featured films are great in their own right, one of the standout showings this year was Naoki Kato’s Abraxas (original title “Abraxas no matsuri”), the tale of a Japanese rocker-turned-monk as he struggles to find meaning, acceptance, and enlightenment in his life.

The film stars real life Japanese rock musician Kenji Watanabe as Jonen, a former punk rock musician, whose struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction have led him to adopt the life of a Buddhist priest. After years of living with chronic depression, a nervous breakdown makes him realize that without music in his life, he has nothing. Fueled by a desire to perform once again, Jonen receives both support for and resistance to his decision to return to music. The looming performance is the backdrop for Abraxas, but the true goal of the film is to examine Jonen’s relationship with his family, fellow townsfolk, and himself.

Acceptance is the common theme that runs throughout Abraxas’ characters – Jonen’s acceptance of himself, his wife’s acceptance of his passion, and James Dean wannabe Ryuta’s acceptance of his own passions and goals in life. The well-defined characters perfectly blend with the even pacing and rising emotions, building up to Jonen’s cathartic guitar duel with – seriously – the ocean, in a scene that now goes under my top ten cinematic moments of all time.

While the film runs out of steam and focus around the halfway mark, it remains full of inspiring ideas and messages, working to resolve both Jonen’s internal conflict and those of the entire town’s, with the climactic concert at the finale tying everything together. There is much relief to be had when the audiences inside and outside of the film witness how surprisingly beautiful Jonen’s music is. Make sure to stick around during the credits for a moving rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”.