Director Clair Titley takes us back to 1998 for a real-life 'Truman Show' in Japan.

His name is Nasubi. He sits alone and naked in a small apartment for months on end, trying to win food and clothing as mail-in sweepstakes prizes. He doesn’t quite know it, but his strange predicament is being broadcast to 17 million people. It sounds like a work of fiction about a torturous psychopath — something out of a “Saw” film — but in 1998, it was the premise of a Japanese reality TV show, and is now now the subject of documentary Clair Titley’s wildly intriguing (if often imbalanced) “The Contestant.”

The British documentary, now available on Hulu, chronicles the inception of this cruel and unusual game through the eyes of not only its subject — wannabe comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu, a.k.a. Nasubi — as well as TV super-producer Toshio Tsuchiya, who created the bizarre challenge for comedy/prank reality series “Susunu! Denpa Shōnen.” Starting with six-minute segments of Nasubi’s life, the broadcast eventually evolved into an early, round-the-clock live-streaming event in the vein of Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show,” which the challenge pre-dates by several months, but which makes for a fitting comparison on several fronts.

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In Weir’s film, Ed Harris plays the god-like creator Christof, whose benevolence is questioned. In “The Contestant,” people seem to revere Tsuchiya in similar fashion, though he eventually reveals his methods and intentions to be chillingly manipulative, if not downright devilish. Both he and Nasubi sit down for talking-head interviews in the present, framing the film as a retrospective on the then-nascent reality TV boom with the wisdom of hindsight (today, we have internet celebrities and COVID lockdowns to compare), and the ability to see the cracks in its design.

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For those unaware of the show or its chronology, the documentary lays out the parameters early on and mostly re-purposes the series’ footage, presenting a montage of Nasubi’s isolation and steady descent into hunger and confusion. (He can technically leave anytime he wants, but coercion is part of the equation too). However, just when it seems like the movie may simply be a condensed re-telling with occasional external context, it drops a bombshell revelation halfway through its runtime — revealed much the same way Nasubi experienced this twist in the show’s format, with no prior knowledge or set up — that induces nauseating whiplash. All of a sudden, the film goes from mildly interesting to downright gut-churning, an emotional territory it seldom leaves from there on out.

The colorful on-screen subtitles of “Denpa Shōnen” (a flourish typical of Japanese variety television) have been neatly re-formatted in English for a Western audience, though there’s a flaw in the way its voiceover has been transposed. Its boisterous narrator (another common element of such shows) has been replaced with English-language voiceover too, from comedian Fred Armisen, whose wry, soft-spoken tone doesn’t quite capture the manic energy of the original. However, this is but a minor issue in the film’s cultural translation. Otherwise, Titley proves adept at finding the right balance between Japanese and British commentary (from Nasubi’s own family, and from a BBC correspondent in Japan) in order to illuminate the story’s hidden contours, and its decision-making behind the scenes.  

There’s a miniseries’ worth of plot to be found in “The Contestant,” so information flies at the viewer on a constant basis. But on the flipside, its attempt to bring Nasubi’s story to a point of catharsis clashes with a series of concluding scenes that feel played on fast-forward. Ironically, despite occasionally embodying the sensation of time stretching outward infinitely, the movie doesn’t quite capture the years-long fallout of the game on Nasubi’s psyche the way it intends. Instead, it rushes past its most difficult emotional beats, in pursuit of an upbeat conclusion that can’t help but feel unearned.

However, Nasubi’s charm and candor (and on the flipside, Tsuchiya’s quiet menace) prove alluring enough to ensure that “The Contestant” is never boring. Titley consistently anchors her unfolding chronicle to the kind of backstage emotional truths often hidden from the audience, and in the process, she crafts something halfway between sensationalist exposé and intimate confessional — a remedy to reality TV based on its own format — co-authored by her subjects.

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‘The Contestant’ Review: The Perils of Reality TV Laid Bare in Hulu’s Documentary

Reviewed online, May 1, 2024. In Toronto Film Festival. Running time: 90 MIN.

  • Production: (Documentary – U.K.) A Hulu release of a Misfits Entertainment production. Producers: Megumi Inman, Andee Ryder, Ian Bonhôte. 
  • Crew: Director, writer: Clair Titley. Camera: Mikul Villaluna Eriksson. Editors: Rachel Meyrick and Katie Bryer. Music: Nainita Desai. 
  • With: Tomoaki Hamatsu, Toshio Tsuchiya, Fred Armisen. (English and Japanese dialogue)

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