‘Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter’ Review
In “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter,” brothers Nathan and David Zellner have created a film that can only be called surreal naturalism — a film in which a skewed reality seems to be natural yet turns inside out and surreal as it progresses. A lonely Japanese woman discovers a hidden copy of the Coen Brother’s “Fargo” (1996) on VHS, and believing it to be a treasure map indicating the location of a large case of money, she heads out to the U.S. to find her fortune. Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi) is a cubicle-bound office worker seeking to escape her dour working life and the demands of her mother who keeps wondering why Kumiko hasn’t met a man and settled down. Knowing that there’s something more in the world than marriage, family and a job, Kumiko becomes obsessed with a battered tape of “Fargo” and, mistaking it for a documentary, she becomes fixated on the scene where a suitcase of stolen cash has been buried in North Dakota’s bleak landscape. Single-mindedly believing this treasure to be real and waiting to be discovered, Kumiko leaves Tokyo and her beloved rabbit Bunzo behind to recover it, journeying to a snowy land where she doesn’t speak the language and has trouble interacting with the local citizens. Add in Sean Porter’s stark yet beautiful cinematography and an unusual score by The Octopus Project and you have a film so original my heart aches with joy. And it doesn’t hurt that the atmosphere throughout is Jim Jarmusch meets Roman Polanski. The Zellners’ script is partially inspired by an urban legend about a Japanese woman — depressed after losing her job — who traveled to Minneapolis, then to Bismarck, then to Fargo, and finally to Detroit Lakes, where she committed suicide. She had traveled there because it was a place she had previously visited with her lover, a married American businessman. A misunderstanding by a Bismarck police office as to the nature of her visit sparked the false story that she was seeking the money buried at the end of “Fargo.”Vitals: Director: David Zellner. Stars: Rinko Kikuchi, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, Brad Prather. 2015, CC, MPAA rating: NR, 104 min., Drama, Box office gross: $.572 million, Amplify Releasing/Anchor Bay. Extras: Commentary with director/co-writer David Zellner, co-writer Nathan Zellner and producer Chris Ohlson; deleted and alternate scenes. 
