All stories documenting the personal anecdotes making up the #MeToo movement are courageous. Speaking up about a painful truth, knowing that if society at large was going to listen with generosity or empathy, well, it wouldn’t need a movement to get these tales told. They are brave alliances between survivors and journalists, battling entrenched sexism with unrelenting professionalism and mutual trust. Black Box Diaries tracks a moving #MeToo story that brought the movement to Japan, from the crime itself, through the journey of going public and to the uneasy closure of its long war of attrition. Its devastation is familiar. But because filmmaker Shiori Itō is both survivor and journalist, and recorded her own investigation into her assault in real time, the documentary becomes a thrilling testament to her exceptional, tenacious agency in the face of a hostile world.
A bit like how Navalny saw Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny pursue the men Vladimir Putin sent to assassinate him, there’s a macabre adrenaline running through the first-person perspective of Black Box Diaries. Nobody has the same incentive to bring about justice than the survivors themselves. There’s also the same interconnectedness of sinister power on the other side: Itō’s attacker is Noriyuki Yamaguchi, biographer of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose government maintained the same sexual assault laws for over a century. Yamaguchi’s political and police connections protect him from arrest at least once, and gets a helpful detective removed from Itō’s case. If all sexual assault cases are uphill battles, Itō’s is a Sisyphean conspiracy. And we get a front-row seat to the endless struggle.
Itō transitions through her journey with snippets from her diary, phrases preserving her state of mind as she shows us contemporary recordings—like a voicemail from her sister, supportive yet with that familiarly protective condescension. You’re going public, that’s great. But shouldn’t you hide your face? This raw intimacy springs from the same material used for Itō’s memoir, Black Box, which documents her experience with the inscrutable inner workings of how the establishment buries cases like hers.
That opacity extends to Black Box Diaries’ aesthetic. Itō gives us plenty of webcam confessionals and conversations with friends, all holed up in an apartment they only really think is secure once they sweep it for wiretaps. Sometimes the home videos are disturbingly interrupted by video evidence of her attack. Harrowing CCTV footage underscores not just the obviousness of her case, but the always-shifting goalposts for what proof counts as “enough.” Sometimes, it’s broken up by snippets from news coverage, like Itō holding back tears at a press conference while the cacophony of camera shutters sound like a hundred hounds snapping their jaws. But the most striking sections occur when she physically leaves her comfort zone, and the clarity of the world fades into an uneasy blur. Out there, morality is a muddled mess and the truth lies buried under bureaucracy.
Because Itō’s taking this case into her own hands, much of her investigation—like talking to the unidentified cop who was moved off her case, confronting the driver who took her to the hotel that night, or chasing after the head officer who called off Yamaguchi’s arrest—is captured through blurry phone camera footage. Some is recorded secretly, faces tastefully out of frame, the lens lingering on static images of parking lots, buildings or other innocuous objects while riveting, disturbing audio plays out. Not just clandestine, these sections evoke a calloused stare into the middle distance, emotions necessarily masked while the dark web around Itō’s attack comes into focus.
A fascinating non-reenactment in a hotel uses intentionally blurred focus and corrupted quotidian imagery to accompany Itō’s testimony as she rehearses for her civil suit against Yamaguchi. As we stare at, for example, a bed, the everyday is tainted as we empathetically enter Itō’s perspective. Soon enough, we also just want it to be over.
And then you have the personal betrayals. Itō not only faces hate from all corners of society—from women screaming at her on the street to politicians disparaging her in the National Diet—she’s trying to get any of the men whose job it allegedly is to help her…to actually help her. Officials with the governmental offices specifically targeting violence against women? Useless. Police? Trash. The one cop who’s willing to talk to her? Get a few drinks in him and the Nice Guy’s concern gives way to flirtation. When Itō actually does get a little help late in her trial, from an unexpected source whose aid comes with no strings attached, we’re just as moved by this small gesture of basic humanity as she is.
Black Box Diaries so easily immerses us in Itō’s point-of-view through its personal, close-up footage of her face—the beats and reactions of a life, translated into dogged journalistic pursuit—and unrelenting emotional openness, that her triggers become our own. She has a panic attack from seeing Yamaguchi’s forehead when scrolling down a New York Times article. When the film starts inching down the words towards the inevitable photo breaking up the paragraphs, it becomes a horror movie. Yamaguchi is not fully revealed until the film’s finale, but even that is a choice in line with Itō’s personality: We first see him at a press conference where he half-heartedly admits regret but no illegal activity…and, cold as stone, Itō is in the back, reporting on it.
There are deeply badass moments like this throughout Black Box Diaries, which are only possible because Shiori Itō so assuredly tells her own story in her directorial debut. Not shying down from the crushing interconnectedness of powerful forces set against her, Itō’s journalistic rigor and personal vulnerability prevents a landmark moment in a movement from becoming a simple summary in a history book.
Director: Shiori Itō
Release Date: January 20, 2024 (Sundance)
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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