Life as a Paradox: “The man from the sea” metaphors interpretation

Abstract

This research analyzes the metaphors in Fukada Koji’s The Man from The Sea (2018). This film is a collaborative work between Japan and Indonesia, set in the city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Fukada sets the Aceh tsunami disaster in 2004 as the background of the story while focusing on the story of the “sea” and the main character named “Laut” which is an Indonesian word for “sea”. What’s interesting is the narrative surrounding Laut appears to be dominated by surreal scenes, which indicates that this film is full of metaphorical expressions called metaphoricity. Thus, this paper intends to get the meaning of the film through the interpretation of metaphorical expressions. To achieve this goal, the method used is the combination of the theory of cinematic expressive movements and the concept of redescription. These two concepts are key references for interpreting living metaphors in films. The findings show that there are six metaphoricities in the film that are found through observing expressive movements in the narrative. Furthermore, a review of extralinguistic reference by conducting a review of the socio-cultural-historical phenomena of the existence of the sea for humans, the Acehnese Freedom Movement, and the Japan-Indonesia diplomatic relationship, shows a redescription that “life as a paradox”.