Artists and the fight against darkness: Review of Yuri Sasamoto’s Bright People

Bright People is a documentary-style film by Yuri Sasamoto, who also recently made the short film, “Can’t Judge: Corona and the Japanese Government.” This film examines the influence of negative roles on entertainers and how to fight these negative effects and remain what she calls a ‘bright person.’ Although the English subtitles leave something to be desired, this film will also be of interest to those who are interested in the arts in Japan.

In Japan, one interviewee says, actors tend to connect closely with their roles and Sasamoto experienced this first hand. Sasamoto, an actress herself, decided to make this documentary after playing the role of a villain and finding that he darkness took over her life. Her thoughts became darker and she could not shake them. As one acting instructor notes, there are many more negative scripts than positive ones in the world, and this makes it much more difficult for actors to escape the power of darkness. It also makes it more difficult for actors to play positive roles.

Over the course of the documentary, Sasamoto interviews various actors, singers, dancers and musicians in order to discover how they cope with negative feelings. In the process, she comes up with twenty six characteristics of bright people. These include things like, “think in a simple way,” “thinking about how to die,” and “try not to think about yourself too much.” There are fascinating insights here that ru counter to a lot of what Westerners might think. For some time now in the west, there has been a trend towards the power of positive thinking, or manifesting (where one uses positive affirmations or other types of positive in order to bring about real positive results in the world). But in Bright People, we find a more black and white picture. The way the interviewees describe the situation is more like a struggle between good and evil, or darkness and light. Unlike the modern west, in short, these actors seem to acknowledge darkness as a real phenomenon in the world; a dangerous phenomenon that must be avoided at all cost. As a demonstration of the power of negativity in an actor’s life, they point to the example of Heath Ledger, claiming that he became a drug addict after playing the very negative role of Joker. Ledger, of course, sadly passed away from a drug overdose not long after making this film. The lessons Sasamoto draws in this documentary are meant to combat outcomes of that sort.

There is a sub-theme in the film about the existence of aliens and UFOs (a theme those who’ve watched “Can’t Judge” will be familiar with). The aliens seem to represent a source of goodness and brightness in the universe that can combat the forces of darkness. One interviewee is convinced that all US presidents are told about the existence of aliens after being sworn in. Kennedy was about to tell the public and was assassinated for this reason. We even meet, in the film, someone who claims to have been abducted and to have travelled around the universe.

Actors, it seems, often inhabit the world of their characters and have a hard time separating reality from fiction. Maintaining this separation is essential to remaining a bright person when playing negative roles.

Interestingly, Sasamoto also interviews singers and other musicians and finds that they too fall prey to darkness and negative thoughts, despite not playing ‘negative roles’ in the same way actors do. One interesting insight comes from a violinist who says that when someone plays an instrument from a very young age, they tend to be too narrowly focused on one thing and are therefore prone to negativity. One way of fighting this, she says, is to broaden one’s horizons and see more of life. That way, when dark thoughts invade, the artist will have enough grounding not to be swayed. The bottom line here may be that all artists are sensitive to what Sasamoto calls darkness, and it seems to be the artist’s perennial struggle to escape it. Overcoming the darkness, though, seems essential to an artist’s success. Some of the interviewees claim that when they were overcome with negative thoughts, their physical appearance became worse and they would not succeed in auditions. When they learned to become brighter, they had brighter auras, their complexion improved and they were able to succeed more often in auditions.