‘The Contestant’ Review: A Sensitive Exposé On TV’s Cruelest Show

★★★☆☆

Claire Titley’s documentary The Contestant (2024) follows the story of Nasubi (real name Tomoaki Hamatsu), a man who took part in one of the world’s first and cruellest reality competition shows. In Susunu! Denpa Shōnen, Nasubi is left in a small apartment for 15 months with no clothes and no food. His only way of surviving is by ‘winning’ these basic needs through entering magazine sweepstakes. He cannot leave until he wins prizes that amount to one million yen. All the while, Nasubi is unaware that he is being broadcasted on national TV. 

From the get go of the documentary, we are shown a montage of clips from the original show: scenes of Nasubi, naked, jumping for joy at the prizes he has won, eating dog food, being woken up in the middle of the night by his torturous producers, and other images of depravity. It feels too bizarre to be real, but the talking-head interviews of those involved reveal how such a sadistic endeavour was able to last for so long. In some ways, however, this feels like the highlight of the film, where its success is solely down to  the shock value of its subject matter rather than the framing and production of the documentary itself.

The film is heavy-handed in the way it sets up the two main characters, Nasubi and producer Toshio Tsuchiya, who created and ran the show. The film continually places their testimonials side by side on the screen, pushing a villain and victim narrative. That’s not to say that this dynamic isn’t there; Tsuchiya presents as almost sociopathic in his testimonial. He is calm and collected and he continuously smiles as he recounts, with little remorse, how he wanted to push Nasubi further—to see how much more depraved the situation could get. On the other hand, Nasubi reveals that what was never shown on air was how his social isolation resulted in a deep descent into loneliness and depression, one that left its mark on him for many years after the show was filmed. 

This question of editing and what was or wasn’t available to the audience at the time is one that is loosely touched on in the documentary. A crew member on the show recounts how much they would need to cut down: “twenty-four hours of filming, seven days a week on two cameras… I then edited that down to six minutes.” It’s easy to see how millions of viewers could have been swept up in what, with hindsight, seems a very cruel form of voyeurism. Even knowing the horrific context, montage clips of the series have a certain levity. They’re all edited down to show Nasubi’s happy-go-lucky performance for the camera, with jovial and funny comments inserted over the top. While reality TV isn’t quite at this level anymore, to this day much debate surrounds the unchecked, absolute power producers have to curate and manufacture a particular image through editing alone.

Unfortunately, the relationship between Tsuchiya and Nasubi is presented but never fully examined. We see the former’s iniquity and the latter’s suffering but the psychological drives of either aren’t analysed much further. There isn’t a strong enough voice here, no formative question driving the initial investigation, which leaves the film feeling rather shallow. As a summarised, play-by-play of the show, with commentary from key participants to add context, we get a solid sense of what happened and how the characters at play felt, but little more. Why did Denpa Shōnen start? What was Tsuchiya’s obsession with this particular kind of brutal exposé? How much was Tsuchiya and the company making on the back of such suffering and was there any capital gain for Nasubi? Was this simply a cash grab in the way we understand a lot of today’s reality television, or was there something deeper? When Nasubi learns that they’ve extended the show to a Korean edition, he initially refuses, citing the string of suicidal thoughts he began to have as his main reason. We are told that, off screen, a long conversation between him and the producer took place. Tsuchiya mentions that he finally convinced Nasubi to continue on by ominously claiming, “If you could hold on a little longer, you could grow another level as a human.” There is no further discussion in the film of what this means, how exactly it managed to convince Nasubi and why he continued to partake in a show that was demonstrably destroying his mental health.

There was a chance here to have a much more nuanced discussion on how power in culture and media works. It’s natural to question, if not judge, Nasubi for his naivety or his masochism. He can, technically, leave at any time. We learn that the door isn’t locked and he doesn’t have to suffer such brutality. Why then does he stay? What element of Nasubi is Tsuchiya exploiting? Is it simply Nasubi’s desire to make it as a comedian in the entertainment industry? The dichotomy between villain and victim that the film insists on falters as we begin to question Nasubi himself. It keeps both its subjects at arms length, Nasubi’s motivations underexplored and Tsuchiya’s coercive power left lingering in the ether of the film. 

The Verdict

The Contestant raises questions without ever really interrogating them. The end of the film is definitely cathartic, as we see Nasubi and Tsuchiya reconcile, but it comes off a little lacklustre due to the documentary’s failure to probe deeper into the psychological and emotional world of its subjects. Whilst the film is unquestionably empathetic, it never takes the time to dig beneath the surface.

Words by Kit Gullis

The Contestant is previewing in cinemas from 27 November before hitting cinemas nationwide on 29 November

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