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The Contestant Turns Away From Reality
After raising approximately 1 million messy, fascinating questions about reality TV’s impact, the documentary opts for tidiness.
Nasubi’s story, and the footage captured on “A Life in Prizes,” is simply incredible, and as directed by the British documentarian Clair Titley, The Contestant is an utterly transfixing retelling of events, one that evokes all manner of questions about the fundamental cruelty of reality television as entertainment. His being trapped in a contained environment brings to mind Squid Game: The Challenge, The Circle, Big Brother, or even The Real World, which first debuted six years before “A Life in Prizes.” Whenever the doc flashes on a montage of Nasubi’s greetings to the camera, it’s hard not to see the faces of so many YouTube or Twitch streamers broadcasting from their bedroom. After finally beating his South Korean goal, the production ships him back to Japan like a piece of cargo: transported by boat to avoid attention, so completely sequestered from the world he even believes he’s being whisked away to North Korea.
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