Geekscape Interviews: ‘Kumiko the Treasure Hunter’ Directors David & Nathan Zellner

In 2001, a woman from Japan traveled to the frozen, remote areas of Minnesota in search of the money buried in the movie Fargo. Although one could easily see the absurd humor of a futile journey, two brothers have seen something completely human.

“It immediately captured our attention, the mysterious and vague details intriguing us all the more,” says David and Nathan Zellner, brothers and the dynamic directing duo behind Kumiko the Treasure Hunter. Originating from Colorado but now residing in Austin, the Zellner brothers carved a name for themselves in the independent movie circuit starting with the 2005 film Floatsam/Jetsam, the acclaimed short Aftermath on Meadowlark Lane, and later followed by Goliath and Kid-Thing.

A poignant and meditative look at the human condition, Kumiko the Treasure Hunter follows a frustrated outcast in her odd quest for the suitcase full of money that was buried in the classic 1996 Joel and Ethan Coen film. How coincidental and fitting that a movie directed by brothers features a character influenced by a movie also directed by blood.

In a statement released by the filmmakers, a particular paragraph stood out to me that I believe truly sums up the movie.

The idea that someone in the twenty-first century would cross the globe searching for a mythical treasure seemed strangely anachronistic, as if these sort of tragic, foolhardy quests just don’t happen anymore. Sadly there are no more uncharted or unknown lands. In the age of globalization, social networking and satellite mapping, the world is no longer the mysterious place it once was.

On an uncharacteristically warm New York City winter afternoon, I walked amongst the busy, bustling streets to meet the Zellners and talk to them about Kumiko and everything related to their latest endeavor. I thought about Kumiko and her isolation, about her misplaced priorities and her dedication to her journey. It’s always easy to feel alone, especially in a place like New York. I mused about my own responsibilities, what I was shirking for what I was hoping to gain in return.

I admit: I was playing hooky. I lied to extend my lunch hour to pursue this true passion of mine: to meet filmmakers and artists who do amazing work and poke them in the shoulders for whatever knowledge they’re willing to lend. Like Kumiko, I sacrificed and risked much in order to reap a bigger reward, whether profit waited for me or not.

What dictated the style of the film? A story like this could have been a comedy, or even a horror movie. What led it to be more introspective or meditative?

David: Nathan and I, well we’re brothers so we’ve been working together for so long, [so] it’s more intuitive, I guess, the aesthetic approach and the tone. But I think talking about it now, it just felt like what was most appropriate on a human level and it would have been really easy to kind of cheapen the main character, Kumiko, and make a spectacle of her or the butt of a joke. Especially with the foundation of of the urban legend. It was important for us to humanize it and make it relatable on that basic human level. So [the style] was respectful to the character and because everything from the movie is from her perspective and so ideally you’d want to go with her on her journey.

What is it like to direct, to make art together as brothers?

Nathan: Growing up we just did a lot of home video filmmaking and didn’t really know the difference between an actor or director or producer or editor.

David: Just making stuff.

Nathan: Yeah, just to make it. As we’ve kind of grown up together, David went to film school and I was his assistant on his film projects every now and then. But it’s all sort of been an extension of home movies. Kind of like whatever he needed to make the film and whatever role you have to fill, or skill you have to learn. So we’ve come up learning a lot of the different areas of production.

Dave: Or at least being familiar with them and knowing our limitations. But we don’t really know any other way because it’s the only way we’ve done it. But it works well, and it’s so hard to make a movie [so] it’s good to have someone you can rely on and have a history with. Particularly Nathan and I, but also with other members of our team. The more people you have that relationship with [and talk] shorthand with and everyone is kind of on the same page of making the same kind of movie.

Although Kumiko was inspired by real events, you guys had to fill in a lot of details because no one really knows much about what happened. Can you elaborate on how you filled in those details?

Nathan: When we first started the story, there was such little information and it was all what eventually became this urban legend of a woman looking for the treasure from Japan going to Minnesota, and to satiate our curiosity we just sort of built our own backstory and cultural research on Japan and the differences in the culture. We started filling in what we thought would be necessary for a person to kind of make this journey. And again, like David said, making sure we were keeping the tone so that we were from her perspective and having empathy with her instead of putting her in a certain category where you could easily write her off. So a lot of the decisions were based on that.

David: In terms of the true elements, a lot of which are contradictory, we were never really interested in that. It was the legend that drew us to it, and the legend is the one thing that I think had the most consistency to it anyway! [laughs] So that was what drew us in, and anything outside the urban myth, we weren’t interested in doing some kind of biopic or journalistic piece on it. We wanted to embrace the fable, and then impose our own ideas on anything else where we kind of needed to fill in the gaps of the world.

It certainly felt a little mythical. That said, you described the film as “anachronistic.” That adventure-seeking or “treasure hunting” in a globalized society is absurd. Do you believe that we have lost our sense of exploration as a collective society?

Nathan: I mean, yeah, there’s no uncharted lands anymore. There’s less of the kind of “sense of the unknown,” with satellite imagery everything is mapped out. It’s not like the age of exploration, in terms of what an adventurer is or something like that. I mean, that’s long since past. And so, I think it’s human nature to crave this kind of curiosity, this desire to explore elements of the unknown, whatever they are. We don’t have that as much. So I think people historically kind of seek it — unless you someone that was like an explorer  — through storytelling. To be exposed to other worlds that way. So that was something that appealing to us … a contemporary myth [that] had a lot of the elements of folklore that we appreciated growing up.

Kumiko stuck out no matter where she went. She was obviously a stranger in Minnesota, but even in Tokyo she didn’t feel at home. What was the significance of her isolation?

David: The little bit of information we had was mostly about Minnesota, and so we needed to construct a backstory that would lead her on this quest. We’ve only been there as tourists, but in doing research and knowing some people from there, it seemed like it would be appropriate for her character and interesting to make her a fully-realized, three-dimensional person, and it just suited the story. That’s why we wanted to spend so much time in Japan, to really immerse the audience in that world and the cyclical nature she was kind of stuck in. There’s obviously some cultural-specific elements, but I think it’s relatable on a human level.

So it was to remind us that we all have felt alone before?

Nathan: Exactly.

David: Right.

What else can you tell me about Kumiko, her development from conception, and her portrayal by Rinko Kikuchi?

David: We definitely got notes from people trying to make us — you know, the typical terrible notes. She has a boyfriend, or boy-crazy broken hearted girl. It was so tiresome. And our instincts [about what we wanted to do] were right.

Nathan: Kumiko is a character you spend a lot of time with where she’s not verbalizing things. There’s no internal monologue or voice over. We like films where you see people think, and they’re kind of processing or working through problems, in this case putting together clues where you can kind of see the wheels turning. [Rinko is] really great with her expressions and her physicality and gets a lot across without her having to say anything. And of course, that makes it so when she does speak, it’s all the more powerful.

I have to say, as an Asian-American dude, I thought it was funny at times when she was in Minnesota. Like when she was given the Shogun book and was driven to the Chinese restaurant. 

David and Nathan: [laughs]

I was like, “What are you doing?!”

David: One of the only factual elements from the story, from the news items that came out, the Chinese restaurant was one of the most truthful things in the movie.

Wow.

David: So some people saw that and thought, “Oh, that’s ridiculous.” But that’s actually where we didn’t take creative license. That actually happened. And it was so absurd to us that it did, it seemed so perfect. Everyone who helps her, helps her on their own terms. It’s the best they can. Obviously [they’re all] terrible solutions, but in their mind they’re doing what they can.

It’s earnest.

David: Yeah! There’s an earnestness to it. And with the Shogun, growing up I remember being at old people’s houses — like, old white people’s houses [laughs] — and they would have, I mean they’ve never been to Japan and there wasn’t the accessibility of Japanese cinema as there is now, and so Shogun was kind of a gateway to that for a lot of older white people. And I didn’t know if they would read it, but they would just have it. Like, “Look, I know, let me tell you, this is what Japan is all about!” [laughs] And so that’s how it came into the movie.

What detail too. You chose a copy that had the little emblem that said “Now a major TV series!”

David: Oh yeah, also that was the age of the miniseries, you know? So it was like, this is someone’s very short-handed way of saying “I’m multi-cultural.” [laughs]

Nathan: Also, the opposite of what we were trying to do when we went over to Japan. Because we were very much trying hard not to make such a tourist movie in Japan.

David: Or sensationalized.

Nathan: Yeah, we didn’t want to make it look like two white guys…

David: Telling you how it is. [laughs]

Nathan: So like I said, we did a lot of cultural research, especially into the office lady culture.

That was startling.

Nathan: Yeah. It still sort of exists, I mean even the office that we ended up filming in was like that.

David: We didn’t exaggerate anything with it. That’s exactly how that dynamic was. The social dynamic of that office lady culture where we filmed, with the uniforms and the hierarchy, it was identical to that. Like Nathan said, it’s dying out, but it’s still there, and so it seemed like an interesting dynamic for the film.

It definitely highlighted her crossroads, a modern woman stuck in these rigid structures.

David: Yeah.

Nathan: Exactly.

I understand you previously expressed that production and filming wasn’t as difficult as one would expect, especially considering it was filmed on two continents. Was that just pure luck?

David: It’s a combination. We did our homework. It was a combination of us having a very clear idea of what we wanted. We weren’t, like, making the movie in post. We knew from the script stages what we were going for. We knew what we wanted, and we were able to articulate that to the crew and so there wasn’t confusion over what we’re doing. And then we made it very clear about the tone.

Most of the crew was bi-lingual, but still you can have confusion and the crew structure was different, but you can get over all of those hurdles as long as you know everyone is on the same page tonally with what you’re making and that just kind of bleeds into every element of that regardless of what the crew members’ positions are. That could be the hardest struggle, constantly fighting for all people to be on the same page about what you’re doing. So once that was set up, we were a very cohesive unit. There were other hurdles, like financing and stuff like that, but in terms of the actual functioning of the crew we were an amazing team and it was also a lot of fun.

I personally found the photography breathtaking. Minnesota was a beautiful wasteland, and Japan wasn’t some alien planet in a sci-fi movie.

David and Nathan: [laughs]

It was grounded, in a word. 

David: We wanted to avoid “tourist.”

Like Akihabara.

David: Yeah! Yeah, that was the exact thing we wanted to avoid, just because that’s been shot a million times and also because that’s the tourist side. The crew really appreciated that too, because we explored neighborhoods that felt more true to her character and haven’t seen in western films before.

Can you elaborate on some of the technical photography and the decisions behind them? There were a ton of steady shots and tracking shots. 

David: That was just kind of our sensibility, [to] accomplish something in a wide and just kind of lay everything out. I also wanted to make it very “cinematic,” and not just a series of close-ups because it is a character piece. We wanted to give it scope, and really make the environment characters in the film. And it was also just kind of an aesthetically appealing look. If you could accomplish something in a wide and put a little more thought into it, it’s just more interesting to us and particularly this film.

From the script stage we had it pretty clear how we wanted to accomplish [the shots], but then Nathan and I took that and when [director of photography] Sean Porter came in he was able to use that foundation and build off from that.

So, I have my interpretation of the ending. I’m sure we all do.

David and Nathan: [laughs]

In your individual perspectives, what can you say about the ending? Without giving away too much, of course.

David: I’m not a fan of anything that is didactic. Since we were little it’s been a turn off when someone tries to cram something down your throat of how you’re supposed to think or feel. Even if they have the best intentions, there is something fraudulent about that. It’s nice when a film gives you a little bit of breathing room, a sense of closure but take from it what you want. We always knew that was the note we had to end on. A sense of closure, but letting it breathe.

Nathan and I had been all over the world with it for the past year in front of different audiences, and people have had different interpretations and they’re all valid. I’d rather that be the case than us trying to impose something on it that would not be half as interesting.

The ending was oddly liberating, it was an emotional release.

David: That’s what we wanted! Yeah! That was the goal.

Nathan: On an emotional level we kind of knew what we wanted to end things, but as far as what people, and like David said, [you can] take from it. It’s open to their interpretation.

You’ve said that the film comments on the loss of adventure in our globalized world, but what is the film about to you in your own words?

David: Well, that’s a fine line that gets into us being didactic! [laughs] All I can say is what drew us to it, and stories with characters — especially female characters since there is such a shortage of that, a female character who isn’t there in service to her boyfriend and is there to be a fully fleshed-out, fully-realized human. Also to balance the line between the humor and pathos. I think that’s something we always respond to, something that isn’t so easily categorizable as a comedy or drama.

Sometimes when people do that they’re clumsy with one and not with the other. So we want to be able to ride that line and just know intuitively when it should teeter one way or the other, and have it be about the entire experience rather than telling them what to think when and where. But we also want to make all kinds of movies too.

Kumiko the Treasure Hunter is now playing in limited release in New York and Los Angeles, and will be expanding to more theaters in the coming weeks. You can buy tickets in your city here.