Chime (2024)

When we encounter an unstable other who asks if we can hear the chime, who and what do we fear? The other, the chime, ourselves? The answer is D: all of the above. 

The act of recycling comes as a surprise, then grows insidious. Laughter at the supper table is a trigger. Something in the cycle of consumption is off. Communication is a series of empty gestures, two or three people talking to the wind. Exchange is incommensurate. Knives are everywhere.

Among the many things to admire about Chime is Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s implicit insistence that it be only and exactly 45 minutes. Not truncated so as to register as a film short, not dilated to typical feature length. Its duration is perfectly inscrutable: neither brief nor indulgent. Like other Kurosawa films, and the recent Cloud in particular, its sound design is astonishing and consequential, just as every frame feels unfussy and deliberate. If it is true that Chime will never stream or be available for home viewing, what an achievement: a film destined to become a rumor, carried mostly by voice. Do you hear it? 5 out of 5 sacs of blood.

—J †Johnson