By Miguel Louis Galang
When Haruka proposes to her siblings to sell the family shop after their mother’s passing, she is met with dissent and some indifference. The young entrepreneur, who had just been forced to resign from her job due to harassment allegations, was ready to move on. That meant letting go of the last vestiges of her former life to start a new, and ideally, more prosperous one. So, why can’t her siblings meet her eye to eye?
Lonely Glory offers an intimate glimpse into how our pursuit of greatness often leads to emptiness and detachment from our surroundings. In the film’s opening, Haruka tries to justify her overbearing attitude during a disciplinary meeting with her boss, owing to her commitment to meeting her goals. However, she remains oblivious to her hurtful actions, which are detrimental and antithetical to the company’s vision, which is, ironically, to provide quality mental health services.
Undeterred by her dismissal, Haruka returns home and sets her sights on selling the old family udon shop to gain a bit of capital. In the process of convincing her siblings to make the big sale, she forcibly inserts herself into their daily affairs and crucial life decisions like some domestic dictator. She plays matchmaker to her elder brother, job recruiter for the youngest one, and even goes so far as to bring her older sister’s estranged daughter to their household.
One might ask what Haruka’s objective is, and the answer is fairly simple: she wants to be the greatest. As an enterprising woman, she yearns for that sweet success; to be able to control everything around her. The only problem is that her motivations are myopic and purely self-serving no matter how hard she tries to prove that it’s for the sake of her brother or her sister or their family. In her pursuit of greatness, she neglects the one thing to keep her grounded: empathy. What would my siblings feel if I did this? What would my business partner do if I said this? These questions could’ve saved her career, but then we wouldn’t be here scrutinizing her life.
Director Keitaro Sakon cleverly disguises Lonely Glory as a family drama to tackle on a micro scale what is essentially a macro-level discussion of our (precarious) relationship with the economy. Throughout the film, we witness Haruka and her siblings, especially her brothers Keisuke and Takuji, struggle with employment and finding a means to be sustainable. For them, it’s the antidote to their romance woes, career stagnancy, and general discontentment with life. Because let’s face it: happiness is monetary. But firmly holding on to that notion alone will lead to dead ends or worse — a lifetime of regrets.
After watching the film, I thought how fitting the title “Lonely Glory” was in that it captures the journey of Haruka and her family to understanding where true greatness, and ultimately, true happiness, lies: not in your career, not in your partner, and especially, not in meddling with your siblings’ lives. And because I was just curious, I ran the Japanese title through a translator and found it to be even more encompassing of the film’s thesis: all the world I see. Indeed, Haruka saw the entire world before her yet she also didn’t. And that’s just called being human.
