From Omeleto.
A man gets lost in New York.
TRUMPET is used with permission from Kevin Haefelin. Learn more at https://kevinhaefelin.com.
Chioki is a Japanese man who arrives in the middle of the night in New York City, where he has hopes of exploring the city’s jazz scene. He is a trumpet player himself and is excited about his pilgrimage, but he speaks no English at all.
Armed with just a small machine translator, his luggage and an address of the midtown business hotel he’s booked for his stay, Chioki is dropped off in the wrong borough by his cab driver. When he discovers that he left his wallet, passport and phone in the car, he sets out on an odyssey that turns into one hell of a bewildering night.
Directed and written by Kevin Haefelin, this loose-limbed, subtly quirky short dramedy follows the arrival of a Japanese jazz musician arriving reverently in one of the birthplaces of the music he loves. Yet that pilgrimage goes awry as one mishap follows another, making for a funny yet thoughtful comedy of errors. Chioki arrives wide-eyed and full of wonderment, but through a bruising night full of equal parts danger and unexpected joy, he arrives at the spirit of his destination, if not the place itself.
Starting with a chaotic cab ride, the storytelling piles on a series of misadventures, and Chioki is pulled from one strange encounter to another, made surreal by the late-night atmosphere, conveyed with cinematography that veers from warm and immediate to as alienated and distant as a Hopper painting. As Chioki contends with the dilemmas and obstacles of displacement — an angry neighbor whose doorbell he keeps ringing, a family party he stumbles into — Chioki often unwittingly creates more chaos for himself, due to his inability to communicate, his puzzling openness and the suspicion it engenders in the grizzled Brooklynites and New Yorkers he meets along the way.
The storytelling has a deep affection for how its protagonist keeps rolling with the punches, but as the night wears on, it also begins to wear on Chioki as he realizes how unwelcoming and alienating his situation has been. He can’t prove who he is; he has no money, no resources, no way to communicate. His situation is ultimately precarious. As Chioki, actor Mao Sone — who is himself a well-known jazz musician in Japan — offers less a performance than an inhabiting of his sweetly hapless, kindhearted character. But he also deftly travels the arc of a man left with nothing but his music. With his trumpet as his only companion at the end of a very long, very weird night, Chioki expresses his melancholy, disappointment and loneliness in an impromptu song — and taps into the very spirit of New York jazz itself.
With its late-night urban setting, its hipster jazz soundtrack and an ineffable sense of cultural cool, TRUMPET evokes comparisons to filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki, who have a similar deadpan, dry sense of humor, an eye for the unique poetry of a late night and a feel for the stranger stranded in a strange place, contending with a growing pile of absurdities. It’s a charming, often delightful watch, though not without melancholy — and ultimately as plaintive as a lone melody ringing out in an indifferent night.
