The Contestant – Review

Release Date – 29th November 2024, Cert – 12, Run-time – 1 hour 30 minutes, Director – Clair Titley

Tomoaki Hamatsu (AKA Nasubi) becomes an unknowing overnight star in Japan when taking part in a TV show which leaves him confined to a room, naked for over a year, here he looks back on the effect it had on him and his life.

Despite the background laughs from the watching studio audience the images from hit Japanese reality show Denpa Shōnen’s A Life In Prizes challenge could well be footage used in a court trial. It’s the late 90s and aspiring 22-year-old comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu enters the show in the hope that it could lead to his big break, however producer Toshio Tsuchiya wants to push the boat out and prove critics who claim the show is just a travel programme wrong. Therefore, Hamatsu, referred to as Nasubi (meaning eggplant, after his long face), is stripped-down and confined to a small, windowless room with only magazines, a phone and postcards. He can apparently leave at any time, but the challenge ends when he wins 1 million yen worth of prizes from magazine competitions. It’s a game based on pure luck.

Despite being told that barely anything would be broadcast, Japan receives weekly updates on Nasubi and he comes an overnight sensation, with over 30 million people tuning in to see his progress. The laughter continues to roll in from audiences and hosts, while the unaware star – in a pre-Truman Show era – dances for joy that he’s won dog food; desperate for food he tries some. It’s undeniably shocking, and what director Clair Titley creates is a dark film, although not one that dives into bleakness.

We see Hamatsu provide talking head interviews reflecting on his time, recounting the desperation he had to succeed. Knowing that the could leave, but it feeling safer to stay and achieve the goal he was set while his mental state spiralled and declined alongside his physical one – the longer he spends confined to the one room we see the titular contestant become increasingly wild and worn down. Speaking of isolation and loneliness, even well after the challenge, the effects clearly stayed with him for some time. These interviews sometimes play alongside images of Tsuchiya, also providing talking heads for the film, who admits that he was no God, but the devil. While there may be reflection in the closing stages of the film there’s no denying that when we see what the central figure was put through that he comes across as a force of evil.

Claims from older viewers at the time, many of whom had experiences war and tragedy throughout their lives, objected to the show and viewed it as torture. In seeing what Nasubi goes through it’s hard to argue with that, particularly when we see the producer retrospectively talking about thinking how far things could be pushed in order to keep high viewership, and prove critics wrong. In the present day the man who endured all of this still bears the scars, but openly discusses them in an honest way where he still appears to be constructing things as he continues the thought that he’s put into them. Without his input, and indeed Tsuchiya’s, The Contestant perhaps wouldn’t work as well as it does. Perhaps the bleakness would come through, or there’d be less insight into the mental impact A Life In Prizes had on him whilst a country watched in consistent amusement.

From seeing Hamatsu’s interviews, and elements of his life after A Life In Prizes, there’s a slight sense of hopefulness coming from him in the final stages, although amongst later tragedies which would hit Japan and his life. As a whole there’s a fascinating nature to the film which compels you in the story which unfolds as Nasubi is a clearly determined figure but one tormented by a TV show he doesn’t know he’s a part of. Titley creates a compelling portrait of events which engages you with both the shock factor and the human story which, while further contributing to this, is placed at the centre meaning that the documentary provides some of the same footage as shown on Denpa Shōnen but with a different, human angle and therefore impact.

Shocking without that being the central intention, The Contestant focuses on the human angle and mental impact of the torment gone through by the central figure who contrasts well with interviews with the producer of his experience for a deeper connecting film.