Clair Titley’s The Contestant tells the astonishing and disturbing true story about how one man, known as Nasubi (whose real name is Tomoaki Hamatsu), was fooled into appearing on a Japanese reality television show in which he was asked to live entirely on magazine competition prizes inside of a tiny apartment after having been stripped of his clothes. He had signed no contract, didn’t know the footage was being shown to the public weekly (or that he was eventually live-streamed), and he didn’t know when (or if) it would ever end. It’s a true story that you have to see to believe as it is equal parts Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, and the doc also prominently features the infamous television producer, Toshio Tsuchiya, who essentially was a devilish or sadistic taskmaster to Nasubi. As the film laid out the story, I was again and again shocked by what happened to Nasubi and horrified by how people reacted to it. It was essentially a social experiment writ large.
Unfortunately, the documentary itself is not quite as well-made as the story is astonishing. It is a fairly simple or basic talking-head documentary that settles for limited interview subjects and which could’ve benefitted from being more interrogative. While the footage of the reality show is presented plainly and edited together in a way that makes your skin crawl, only the Nasubi and Tsuchiya interviews go further than skin deep in their study or explanation of the situation. The film is severely lacking with some of these supporting interviews, as they add very little of real value to the narrative.
Despite its otherwise simplistic documentary style, the film keeps you hooked because of how jaw-droppingly awful this situation was for Nasubi (and because Japan was laughing through it, while the pivotal producer was too concerned with the web that he had spun). But, eventually, it does lose its focus. In the last twenty-ish minutes, the film changes gears and shifts focus from Nasubi and his traumatic ordeal to natural disasters, Nasubi’s attempts to climb Mt. Everest, and how he is trying to make the world a better place.
And, while this is a nice and heartwarming message from a person who deserves the kind of celebration that the documentary eventually gives him, you also get the feeling that the documentary is pulling its punches somewhat and failing to actually point the finger (strongly enough) at the producer that is, for the most part, portrayed as quite smug, or the reality tv-culture that put Nasubi through this and made fun of him.
It shies away from making the arguments that it, for so long, feels like it is building up to. This is a real shame because if the documentary had the guts to interrogate the television landscape or public fascination with this kind of ‘experience’ even a little bit, then it could’ve been one of the must-watch documentaries of the year. That said, I’d still recommend this documentary to people who know nothing about this strange and cruel chapter of television history.
6.5 out of 10
– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 