‘Sono Kodo ni Mimi o Ateyo’: An absorbing dive into pressures of the ER

Television dramas have been an effective recruitment tool for hospitals — and emergency rooms in particular. From George Clooney in “ER” to Ryohei Suzuki in “Tokyo MER,” successive generations of TV doctors and nurses have brought an aura of glamor to a profession more often defined by endless night shifts, impossible workloads and lousy pay.

Early on during Takuro Adachi’s “Sono Kodo ni Mimi wo Ateyo” (which translates to “listen to that heartbeat”), Yu Sakuragi, a 26-year-old intern on ER rotation at Nagoya Ekisaikai Hospital, is asked what drew him to this line of work. It seemed cool, he says, mentioning Fuji TV’s hit series “Code Blue” as a source of inspiration (Tomohisa Yamashita has a lot to answer for, apparently).

His resolve will be put to the test during this TV Tokai-produced documentary, filmed over nine months at what’s reputedly the busiest ER in Aichi Prefecture.

The closest thing Yu has to a role model is Koji Hachiya, a charismatic doctor who looks more like someone you’d find propping up the bar at a beach hut on the Shonan coast.

Koji’s enthusiasm for his job is genuine — and contagious. While other doctors specialize, he explains, the ER has to treat every conceivable ailment, from attempted suicides to an unfortunate young lad who’s managed to get an acorn stuck up his nose.

Ekisaikai Hospital’s ethos of never refusing care also means that its staff come into contact with every strata of society and all of its problems.

One of the most obvious of these is Japan’s rapidly aging population. As an onscreen statistic relates, there was a tenfold increase in the number of ambulance dispatches for elderly patients nationwide between 1982 and 2021.

There are also conspicuous gaps in the social safety net. The hospital has a filing cabinet stuffed with unpaid medical bills for people who couldn’t afford their treatment. One patient seen in the film just wants a warm place for the night.

A more acute problem comes with the arrival of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. As the hospital hits full capacity, the ER staff find themselves having to violate the institution’s most cherished principle — and turn ambulances away.

The film started out as a trio of TV documentaries, though Adachi resists the standard televisual tropes: There’s no narrative voiceover, while the soundtrack is mostly unobtrusive. The most heartbreaking scene is depicted without any adornment, which is how it should be.

The production appears to have had an impressive degree of access, even at the height of the pandemic. Roving cameraman Nobutaka Murata is adept at composing shots in a way that allows him to keep filming while respecting patients’ privacy.

Producers Koji Hijkata and Katsuhiko Abuno were also responsible for the superb “Sayonara TV” (2019), and I’d hoped that “Sono Kodo” would be equally probing. Yet while it’s consistently absorbing to watch, the film gets so caught up in the day-to-day pressures of ER life that it has little time to consider the bigger systemic issues.

You’d think the hospital having to break its no-refusal policy would be cause for some serious soul-searching, but the film moves briskly on toward its surprisingly upbeat conclusion. Although it dispels some of the more romanticized notions viewers might have about ER work, Adachi’s documentary ends up being a pretty effective recruitment tool itself.