Then there's the elliptical storytelling technique. Unsurprisingly, the storyline is ultra-minimalist. A bus driver and two teenagers are traumatized when their bus is hijacked one day in a small Japanese town. Unable to heal, they wander, literally and figuratively, alone, and, finally, together, until redemption arrives. That's all there is, and that's all that's needed.
Characters do a lot of staring, especially at each other.
It doesn't matter. When the survivors begin to travel toward the sea in search of deliverance, the exteriors become even more glorious than the town's cramped interiors have been, and seem quintessentially Japanese in their reverence for the healing powers of nature. Inevitably, there are flaws. But somehow, in the presence of the sublime moments Aoyama is after here, all the flaws pale into insignificance. The acting is of an order to match the magnificent reticence of the direction.