

User Score
25 votes
Two men discuss the nature of accidents and the possibility of nuclear war.
Status
Released
Original Language
EN

Bruce Baillie's Mr. Hayashi might be thought of as a putative East Coast story transformed by a West Coast sensibility. The narrative, slight as it is, mounts a social critique of sorts, involving the difficulty the title character, a Japanese gardener, has finding work that pays adequately. But the beauty of Baillie's black-and-white photography, the misty lusciousness of the landscapes he chooses to photograph, and the powerful silence of Mr. Hayashi's figure within them make the viewer forget all about economics and ethnicity. The shots remind us of Sung scrolls of fields and mountain peaks, where the human figure is dwarfed in the middle distance. Rather than a study of unemployment, the film becomes a study of nested layers of stillness and serenity.

Om, a debt-ridden NRI, wants to sell his ancestral property to pay his debts, but things turn awry when he is kidnapped by gangsters who believe him to be a rich target.