Review - A Man Vanishes

 July 20, 2022
 
A Man Vanishes – Japan, 1967
 

Shohei Imamura’s A Man Vanishes begins with a police report detailing the disappearance of a 32-year-old Japanese man named Tadashi Oshima. From the report, we learn the barest information about him – his height, his job, the city he disappeared from, his engagement; and for all intents and purposes, he seems like an average man, certainly not the kind that would up and vanish suddenly. Perhaps it is this everyday disposition that draws Imamura (here playing himself) to the case. In any event, when the report concludes we learn that Imamura and his crew are on the move, determined to learn more about the missing man and possibly bring him home. It’s a noble cause, but it also puts Imamura (the character) in an unenviable position, for if he fails in this endeavor, he will only really have succeeded in memorializing his own naiveté.
 
And so the investigation begins. Interesting, two hours later, Imamura is no closer to ascertaining the whereabouts of Mr. Oshima, yet he has succeeded in destroying the reputation of several people involved in the investigation. One of these ruined characters is Oshima himself, who we learn early on embezzled money from his employer twice. The first time, he seems to have regretted his actions and over time paid the company back. The second time, well, you know what he did after that. We also learn that Oshima was a bit of a ladies man and may not have had a faithful bone in his body. In other words, he was no saint. This leads to a series of interviews with a woman named Kimiko, all seemingly intended to get the juiciest details possible. A love triangle. A dominating woman. A possible abortion. You can practically hear producers salivating. No wonder Kimiko’s face is partially covered – another reputation in tatters. Can you blame her for refusing to be interviewed further?
 
Having lost his sympathetic lead and been unable to coax more of the kind of details one often finds on daytime TV from the missing man’s lover, Imamura turns his attention to Oshima’s fiancé, Yoshie Hayakawa, who initially fits traditional notions of the innocent, sweet, and faithful damsel in distress. After all, who other than a lovely human being would put their lives on hold to search for the man who jilted her? Yet is that really a worthy subject for a movie? Where’s the plot? What’s the desired ending? And so in a quest to find something worth filming, Imamura and his interviewer, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi, begin to question her motives. To them, Yoshie seems too comfortable in front of the camera, too polished. They also suspect that she has fallen for Tsuyuguchi. And thus the film has a new subject for examination and potential humiliation, and, really, it is just getting started. By the end of the film, two additional characters will have their lives upended, with previously stable relationships perhaps permanently severed.
 
In other words, A Man Vanishes is not really about the vanished man or the 91,000 people that the film states go missing in Japan every year. Perhaps it was in 1967 before the advent of reality TV or the push for television ratings and box office results, but I suspect that modern audiences will see in the film a commentary on the media’s and film industry’s reliance of the sensational to get audiences into theaters. A film, this thinking goes, cannot be about a character who is never seen, and it cannot be about a character who the audience loses sympathy for. It must have drama, even if that drama has to be manufactured and never quite feels a hundred per cent authentic.
 
A Man Vanishes ends with two scenes that raise the curtain on the notion that the film was an actual documentary, yet they are a mistake. First, they cast Imamura as a creative wiz who must be looked to for guidance and explanation, as if he is a master-explainer of all things theoretical, but it also strips the film of some of its relevance and strengths. After you invest your emotions and energy in these characters for two hours, being told it was all a ruse can be more than frustrating. Would The Silence of the Lambs have the same impact if it ended with a scene in which Anthony Hopkins (not Hannibal Lector) and director Jonathon Demy talked about how movies can shape the audience’s perception of time? I doubt it.
 
A Man Vanishes has divided critics since its release. According to Wikipedia, director Nagisa Oshima criticized the film for using documentary techniques without having a theme, arguing that documentaries most often start with themes and central figures instead of discovering them as the film proceeds. I agree with that sentiment. Other critics have called it “explosively provocative” and “increasingly complex.” Here, I find myself torn, for while the film is well acted and visually intriguing due to its superb editing and excellent use of live action shots, archive footage, and photos, its ability to be provocative comes from its sensational aspects rather than actual drama. Characters sit around and cast aspersions on one another, yet there’s little in the way of payoff. True, life does not always have tidy resolutions, but they do have something resembling them. No so with A Man Vanishes. It just ends with arguing and a clapperboard. As the credits rolled, I didn’t marvel at Imamura’s ability to tell a story; rather, I questioned his ability to end one. After all, isn’t it a desperate writer that inserts himself into his own story? (on DVD)
 
3 stars

*A Man Vanishes is in Japanese with English subtitles.

Review - Black River

November 19, 2021
 
Black River – Japan, 1956
 

The lively fast-paced sounds of jazz that greet the audience during the opening credits of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1956 film Black River are in sharp contrast to the oddly-shaped snippets of newspaper articles that accompany it. Jazz is, after all, improvisational, an expression of the here and now, while censorship is the result of a concerted effort by the powerful to prevent the awareness of events occurring in real time. And that may have been the point. Jazz had been introduced to Japan in the early twentieth century during overseas trips to the United States and the Philippines, then a U.S. territory, and in the 1920’s, jazz clubs could be found in several of Japan’s biggest cities, a development that was not viewed positively by the Japanese government. Nevertheless, it was really the arrival of U.S. troops, with their appetite for entertainment and night life, that caused jazz to flourish in Japan. Thus, jazz represented a double-edged sword, both freedom of expression and a loss of sovereignty.
 
Black River is set in a neglected section of a Japan seemingly still reeling from the effects of World War II. Its roads remain unpaved, and economic opportunities are sparse for anyone not a gangster, pimp, or prostitute. We don’t see much of the U.S. forces, yet they hang over every aspect of the film, not because they are furtively pulling the strings, but because the motivation of so many people is the direct result of their presence.
 
Into this demoralized world steps a young university student named Nishida (Fumio Watanabe). Early in the film, he rents a room in a run-down apartment operated by a landlady who quite obviously has not spent a cent on repairs. (There is even a hole in one of the walls of Nishida’s apartment, through which his neighbor’s curious children occasionally peek through.) We meet the residents and watch as they scatter to avoid paying rent, and even when confronted, each of them finds a reason for not having the funds. It should be humorous, yet it isn’t. Something about it seems ominous, as if portending an even darker truth.
 
We also meet a young waitress named Shizuko (Inuko Arikma). She notices Nishida one day when he is hauling a rather large cart of books, and the two strike up a friendship that seems absolutely destined to become much more than that. I say this because of two items: Nishida’s hat and Shizuko’s parasol. Such items are usually innocuous, yet a close observation of the characters in the film reveals just how rare these items are. The gangsters in the area have donned western clothes, and judging from the appearance of the residents, many of them have spent long grueling hours without any form of protection from the sun. If that celestial body is meant to represent life, it has certainly taken its toll on those it beats down on, the most noticeable casualty being their humanity.
 
Yet there is Nishida donning a white bucket hat, symbolically dragging books into post-World War II Japan even as few, if any, of his neighbors will ever read them. And there’s Shizuko, the lone young woman walking under a parasol, metaphorically shielding herself from the filth of corruption and the threat of violence. It is telling that by the end of the film the hat is gone and the parasol abandoned. Perhaps it is more significant that both items are casualties of the same person, the head of a local gang known as “Joe the Killer” (Tatsuya Nakadai).
 
The film does an excellent job of building Joe up as the embodiment of evil and destructive impulses, yet it also makes clear the hypnotic hold he has on those he encounters, in particular, Shizuko. What the film does not spend enough time developing is the relationship between Nishida and Shizuko. They have just a few scenes together before Joe comes between them, and while it is refreshing to see the honesty with which these characters speak to each other and Arima and Watanabe are skilled enough to make us believe these two characters are so strongly connected, the power of these moments still feels somewhat unearned.
 
Prior to making Black River, Kobayashi had tackled the fate of B and C-level criminals post-WW II in The Thick-Walled Room and corruption in baseball in I Will Buy You. Like Black River, both of these film depict characters trying to maintain their morality in an increasingly compromised world, and tellingly, none of them ends with characters walking triumphantly into the sunset. In fact, of these three films, Black River is the bleakest. In the end, no one escapes either financial or personal ruin. Perhaps they never stood a chance.
 
Movies like this can be challenging because they require a knowledge of both culture and history. They are easy to appreciate, but rather hard to like. I can imagine the ending credits producing a sigh of relief, rather than applause or a feeling of good will, and recommending the film feels a bit like advising people to have a root canal just for the experience. However, films like these, as challenging as they are, are the kind more people should watch. They resonate. They are both protests and calls to arms. They are laments of a time that for too many remains a distant memory. And, yes, they are prayers, meant for a public that may not have the time or inclination to respond. Let’s change that. (on DVD as part of Eclipse’s box set Masaki Kobayashi Against the System)
 
3 and a half stars
 
*Red River is in Japanese and English with English subtitles.

Review - A Street of Love and Hope

 

April 10, 2021

A Street of Love and Hope – Japan, 1968

I wish that this were the film, or at the very least the kind of film, that Nagisa Oshima was known for. Instead, his name will forever be linked to his controversial, frequently banned 1976 film In the Realm of the Senses, a part of a genre of Japanese films known more for its adult content than social commentary. And yet it is in the social commentary genre that Oshima began his career in 1959 with a simple, yet poignant film called A Street of Love and Hope.

Like other films of its time, in particular, those directed by Kenji Mizuguchi, Oshima meant his film to be a wake-up call, a siren calling attention to the divisions that existed in post-war Japan and proclaiming national unity to be a myth. The Japan that Oshima sees is one in which upward movement, both social and economical, is determined not by passion or determination, but by whether one meets the deceptively simple standards of the better off. And their condition seems to be this: “If we could do it the ‘right way,’ you should be able to, too.” So much for empathy.

Early on in the film, we meet a young girl named Kyoko (Yuki Tominaga) from a wealthy family. On her way home, she comes across Masao (Hiroshi Fujikawa), a young boy selling his family’s pet pigeon. Knowing that pigeons can be expensive and that selling a pet is unusual, Kyoko buys it, ostensibly as a gift for her younger brother. When she asks why Masao is parting with it, his honesty takes her aback: “I need money.

We soon learn that Masao is a pretty decent kid. He is polite, studies hard, and has the grades to get into senior high school. On that last matter, he is realistic, though. In an early scene, we learn that the government assistance the family depends on will be reduced once Masao advances, and he knows they can’t survive on the money his mother makes shining shoes. So, while his mother pleads with him to stay in school, he decides to enter the workforce. Fortunately, two people – Kyoko and Masao’s high school English teacher, Ms. Akiyama (Kakuko Chino) – decide to take up his cause. Ms. Akiyama goes so far as to arrange a meeting with officials from a local factory to try to secure Masao a chance at employment.

And were this a Hollywood film from the same time period, I have no doubt he would get it. However, Oshima has no intention of giving us the kind of ending forced upon so many American films during the 1950’s. Instead, we get a gradual unraveling that is quite revealing, for it lifts the curtain on a kind of classist, one-strike-and-you’re-out philosophy employed by the upper class to deny those less fortunate opportunities to move up. This way of thinking is justified – as such attitudes often are – with stereotypes about the dishonesty of city boys and the belief that broken families produce crooked students. This last remark is spouted by Kyoko’s older brother, despite the fact that his own mother died when Kyoko was very young.

Since watching the film, two scenes in particular have remained in my mind. In the first one, Masao has just been told by a policeman that he cannot shine shoes without a license. As he prepares to leave, the woman working next to him, much older and possibly in poorer health, reaches over and puts a few coins in his cup - empathy from someone who can least afford it. The second occurs after a few neighborhood bullies incur Masao’s wrath by taunting him as he is walking Kyoko home. A skirmish ensues, and after the two youngsters have made their escape, they wind up lying on a rocky, gravel-covered incline, their heads facing each other, their eyes locked, laughter filling the air. You would be forgiven for thinking to yourself that Cupid couldn’t pick a better moment to strike, yet look at the way Oshima films the two characters, Kyoto to the far right, Masao to the far left, in between them a wide gulf. I’d say the message is pretty clear. (on DVD in Region 3)

3 and a half stars

*A Street of Love and Hope is in Japanese with English subtitles. The subtitles were occasionally problematic.

*A Street of Love and Hope is also known as A Town of Love and Hope.

*Prior to making this film, Oshima made a short film entitled Tomorrow’s Sun.

Review - Hiroshima (1953)

April 2, 2021

Hiroshima – Japan, 1953

Hideo Sekigawa’s 1953 film Hiroshima is a paradoxically potent mess. First, a little context. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States, led by General Douglas A. MacArthur, occupied Japan and set about its “rehabilitation.” Over the next six years, the Japanese public heard and saw little about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: photos and documentary footage were deemed state secrets, textbooks avoided mentioning  it, and motion picture studios were told to steer clear of the subject. It seems logical to assume, therefore, that two things happened. First, the public’s emotional response to the bombings lessened. In fairness, most people had more pressing needs – avoiding poverty and starvation, saying farewell to loved ones lost, rebuilding the infrastructure necessary for a society to function. Second, it made people less empathetic to the survivors of the blasts. After all, it is almost impossible to be empathetic to experiences to which you are oblivious.

I believe Sekigawa meant for his film to be a wrecking ball to these trends, to be an agent of re-education, enforcing the dual messages that it was that bad and there are still victims of the blast among us. His intended audience, therefore, was likely the domestic market, for even though it is doubtful that the citizens of other nations knew the full extent of the atomic bomb’s horrors, there are scenes in the film that blatantly seek to shame and blame the United States, including a reading of a German judge’s assessment that the decision to use the atomic bomb was a war crime.

The film begins with a narration of events on the morning of August 6, 1945, and it includes the curious assertion that Theodore Van Kirk, the navigator of the Enola Gay, had a moment of deep reflection and regret just before the bomb was dropped. From there, we enter a classroom in post-war Japan during an English lesson. There is a sudden scream – a student’s nose is bleeding. Later, at a hospital the student, tragically aware of her mortality, looks up and proclaims, “I don’t want to die.” From a doctor, her teacher, Mr. Kitagawa (played by Eiji Okada, who starred in Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour, a film that includes many images from Hiroshima), is given the awful news: leukemia. And if you are unaware of just how devastating that condition is, don’t worry. The movie spends the next ten minutes explaining it to you.

Heavy-handed as it is, this section of the film accomplishes two things. It adequately conveys the notion that there were victims of the atomic bomb long after August 1945 and it gives us a window into the psychological impact that the bombing had the survivors sense of security. In one scene, we hear a student tellingly voice a variation of the slippery slope fallacy, detaining a series of hypothetical events that despite starting rather insignificantly culminate in the United States once again using nuclear weapons on Japan. Thoughts like that must have been maddening.

The film then flashes back to early August 1945. School is in session, but little academic learning is being done. Students seem to be seen as either future soldiers or sources of manual labor. In one scene, they are sent to remove the rubble of a bombed-out building. It is on one such occasion when they hear the sounds of a single “B.” What should they do? Seek shelter? Keep working? Their hesitancy is magnified by the lack of an air raid siren. A teacher shields her eyes from the sun to get a better look. What follows is an unforgettable series of events, all detailing the immediate aftermath of the bombing. Students trapped under a collapsed school. The bodies of dead school girls lying in the rubble of a building that just moments earlier had been standing. A naked and burned toddler standing amidst the chaos crying. Trapped students calling out their names so their teacher knows who has survived. A husband’s futile efforts to free his wife from the debris. Processions of shell-shocked wounded survivors shakily making their way toward what they hope is help. A mother dying in the arms of a daughter not even out of elementary school. The unbroken, soul-piercing calls for mom.

It’s powerful stuff, and had Sekigawa ended the film here, I have no doubt it would be better known today. However, Sekigawa overextends the film’s scope, causing it to lose focus and diminishing its power. There are unnecessary scenes critical of the government, and new characters pop up only to be forgotten a moment later. A young boy who survived the bombing is apparently adopted. Good for him, but Sekigawa never makes us understand the boy’s feelings. Does he suffer from survivor’s guilt or post-traumatic stress disorder? We never know. There’s an interesting conversation about marriage that seems to exist just so the young woman can tell the audience that survivors of the blast can never marry. And periodically we go back to the teacher and his and his students’ steps in the learning process. The film even finds a way to weave in themes from Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux and images possibly inspired by Abel Gance’s J’Accuse.

Some of these parts are interesting, yet they never add up. You could argue that Sekigawa’s point is to give us a comprehensive experience, yet the result of this approach is detachment. We don’t feel for characters individually, and while this does not lessen the impact of the parts of film detailing the events of August 6, 1945, it does make the film’s final chapter much less engaging. We should root for characters to reunite, find love, and find homes. There’s simply no time to – the narrative changes too quickly. Another problem: Segikawa wants to educate the public, yet he shows images of long processions making their way to the Atomic Bomb Dome to pay their respects. Such images contradict the notion that the public is unaware of the scale of the tragedy.

So, as I said, the film is a mess, but in its finest moments it moves and stirs you. As I watched the film, I was struck by the survivors’ instinctual impulse to move. Here are characters wh have just undergone a truly horrifying experience, they are wounded and bleeding; their shocked expressions never waver. And yet they have the presence of mind both to move and to take others with them. They demonstrate perseverance, instead of fatalism, and determination in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Potent, indeed. (on DVD and Blu-ray from Arrow)

3 stars

*Hiroshima is in Japanese and English with English subtitles.

Review - The Yellow Handkerchief (1977)

 

October 10, 2020

The Yellow Handkerchief – Japan, 1977

Characters like Yusaku Shima are some of the hardest to get right. No doubt, you know his type the moment he enters the frame – he’s often alone – even when in the company of others, his face is either emotionless or far too pained for any human being, and when he does speak, it is what he doesn’t say that speaks volumes. Sometimes he is a villain – and a cold-blooded one at that, pursuing his victims often without ever explaining why he chose to torment our hero. When he is a more sympathetic character, his silence is often intentional, a cloak he wears to prevent the world from seeing – and subsequently rejecting - who he really is. And more often than not, this caution is warranted.

The challenge for writers of such characters comes when circumstances call for the silence to be broken. This is a challenge easily ignored when the laconic one is on the wrong side of the law – after all, he can just be a homicidal lunatic who simply gets his kicks off preying on the innocent. It is the noble ones who pose the most trouble. Say too little, and he remains an enigma; say too much and the revelation may not seem worthy of the prior investment.

Yoji Yamada’s The Yellow Handkerchief is the story of three travelers, each one making up their journey as they go along. The first one we meet is Kinya Hanada (Tetsuyo Takeda), an immature young man on a quest to prove his luck with women is not as horrible as it has always seemed. In the beginning of the film, we learn he has recently been rejected, an outcome that leads him to quit his job and spend all of his savings on a car, which he drives to Hokkaido. There, he meets Akemi Ogawa (well-played by Kaori Ogawa), a young woman who just learned that her boyfriend is cheating on her, and offers to drive her wherever she’s going. He’s just happy to be in the presence of a lady. At a rest stop, Kinya asks Yusaku (Ken Takakura) to take their picture, and eventually he is offered a ride, which he accepts despite not having a clear destination himself.

The set-up – three lost souls driving aimlessly around a volcanic island (how’s that for symbolism) - is promising, and the film does a decent job of building viewer’s interest in each character. Though Kinya remains an annoyance throughout most of the film, he undergoes just enough growth to justify Akemi’s ever changing feelings towards him. A wiser film would have had her develop feelings for Yusaku, but it is clear from her initial interaction with him that her role is to chip away at the emotional wall he had erected to keep people at a distance.

The three of them stay at a hotel, Yusaku in his own room; Kinya and Akemi in another, but just to save money, Kinya explains. Soon, he awkwardly makes his move and is rebuffed; this leads to his being chastised by Yusaku for lacking romantic instincts and being a “third-rate ball player,” the kind whose lack of skills prevents him from ever getting on base. For his part, Yusaku is respectful of women, and in flashbacks, we see evidence of a tender relationship, as well as a possible incident with the police. At a checkpoint, he is forced to reveal a bit more, and it almost results in his arrest.

It is here that the filmmakers find themselves at that proverbial fork in the road. One path has Yusaku decide he’s said enough and renew his prior embrace of aloofness. On the other, one revelation begats another and then the floodgates open. Yamada and his co-writer, Asuna Yoshitaka, elect for the latter, and it is the wrong choice. More than halfway over, the film does not have enough time to do justice to the story that unravels or to the essential character it includes. As a result, what we see does not match what we are asked to believe, and the film’s attempt at a happy ending ultimately feels forced, an emotional cop-out rather than earned relief, and this cheapens the life-altering circumstances laid bare just a few scenes earlier. Yusaku is a man in need of true redemption, not the kind of overtly silly symbolism more reminiscent of a John Hughes or Cameron Crowe comedy than a profile of a psychologically-damaged individual. The result is a journey that ends up being much less worth taking than the first half suggests.

And yet, there’s Ken Takakura, an actor I could watch admiring drying paint and still be enthralled by. He is the perfect choice to play Yusaku, for he has the uncanny ability to express feelings while portraying them being suppressed. We can see in his weary eyes and troubled look a startling distrust in himself, a shame in some prior decision. When he speaks ill of Kinya, it is clear that he is also critiquing himself while simultaneously concealing the why and the how. In his career, Takakura played many such characters, and he did so them exceptionally well. He was a rare breed. He could take a substandard film like The Yellow Handkerchief and make you glad you devoted your time to it. You can’t say that about most actors. (on DVD in Region 3)

2 and a half stars

*The Yellow Handkerchief is in Japanese with English subtitles

*The film was the first recipient of the Best Picture award at the Japan Academy Prize, Japan’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.

*The film’s title was inspired by Tony Orlando’s song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree.”

Review - H Story

June 18, 2020

H Story – Japan, 2001

The Wikipedia page for Alain Resnais’s seminal film Hiroshima mon amour contains the following footnote: “In 2001, Japanese film director Nobuhiro Suwa directed a remake, titled H Story.” It is inaccurate. H Story is actually about a director attempting to remake the film and how his efforts are thwarting by his talented, but temperamental lead actresses and by the director’s own lack of vision and feeling for the subject matter. It is therefore about the failure to remake a classic, and, oddly enough, it is a victim of its own aloofness.

The first hour of Suwa’s film consists mainly of long scenes of filming. In fact, the film opens with French actress Beatrice Dalle (here playing herself and giving quite an effective performance) and Hiroaki Umano (also playing himself) re-enacting the famous scene of the lovers in bed after a night of passion. We also see bits of other scenes – a few seconds of a shower, a brief scene of them descending a staircase, a longer conversation in the hallway outside a hotel room. In between these scenes, we see a movie clap board in action, watch the director (or at least the back of him) give instructions to the cast, and hear his desires converted back into French by Beatrice’s translator. In one scene, we hear Beatrice reveal to Umano that she is growing increasingly disenchanted with the film and, in particular, the methods of its director, not surprisingly played by Suwa himself.

So, just what is there to do with such a set-up? Conventional storytelling would call for the introduction of either a friendship or a romance, something that would awaken Beatrice to the beauty of Hiroshima and teach her something about, let’s say, the importance of bouncing back from adversity, and the likely catalyst for this would be Beatrice’s co-star, if for no other reason than the amount of screen time he is given. Suwa goes in a different direction, though. He introduces a screenwriter-actor named Kou Machida (here playing himself), who is also interested in learning more about the long-term impact of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Machida is introduced in an excruciatingly long and meandering scene in which he quizzes the director about his motives for relying on Resnais’s shooting script and asks whether he thinks today’s actors can adequately understand the emotions of the characters depicted in Resnais’s film, the implication being that those who did not personally experience something cannot adequately convey it on screen.

Thus, instead of Beatrice bonding with the man she has probably spent tons of time with, she begins hanging out with Machida, and this would be somewhat reasonable were if not for the fact that neither of them can speak the other’s language. No problem, you say, just make their relationship purely physical. Well, that might have worked, but it takes much more to establish that than a trip to a museum dedicated to artists inspired by the atomic bombing of their city, a visit to the beach – in which they stand so far apart that you’d think they were trying to avoid a virus – and a long walk down a popular street frequented by young musicians and dancers. And it takes direct acknowledgement of an uncontainable attraction, not slightly humorous conversations in which they frequently concede that the other person can’t understand them.

Put bluntly, almost nothing about H Story works. It does not have anything to say about the wisdom or foolishness of remaking a classic. It has an opportunity to comment upon the difficulty of bringing one’s cinematic visions to fruition, but squanders it. It never seriously attempts to explore whether Hiroshima mon amour still speaks to moviegoers the way it did upon its initial releases, and its exploration of young people’s disconnect from the events of the Second World War remains woefully incomplete. By the end of the film, I completely sympathized with Beatrice. I too had no idea what Suwa was doing. (on DVD in Region 3)

1 and a half stars

*H Story is in Japanese and French with English subtitles.

Review - The Discarnates

May 14, 2020

The Discarnates – Japan, 1988

The central character in Obayashi Nobuhiko’s well-directed 1988 film The Discarnates, 40-year-old Hidemi Harada (Morio Kazama), is having a bad day – check that, a bad month. No, check that, too. It’s is much more accurate to say that he has had a hard twenty-eight years, for while he has succeeded professionally – he is a well-respected TV writer – his personal life is in tatters. We first see him sitting alone in a nearly vacant apartment complex in Tokyo watching a recording of a television show he wrote. Playing is a scene in which a woman lies dying in a hospital bed, an emotionally distraught young man by her side. It is the kind of scene that should bring tears to the eyes or make viewers marvel at the performances of the lead actors. Alas, all Hidemi cares about is that his preferred choice of background music was omitted from the scene. Later that evening, one of his co-workers – and perhaps the only real friend he has – informs him that the two of them can no longer work together. The reason: He loves Hidemi’s ex-wife and intends to pursue her now that their divorce is final. You know what they say about friends like these.

And then a series of increasingly unusual events occurs. That night, a slightly drunk, socially awkward female tenant, one who has an uncanny ability to flawlessly recite sentimental lines from Hidemi’s TV shows, appears outside his door looking for companionship. (She is rebuffed.) The next day, a subway train suddenly thunders its way along a track that has been out of use for some time, almost running over Hidemi in the process. Then after announcing that he is going home, Hidemi abruptly finds himself heading instead to Asakusa, his childhood home, as if drawn there by some internal need for the familiar. Interestingly, the setting does wonders for his mood, this despite frequent interruptions by men offering him the services of barely legal members of the opposite sex. At a local theater advertising “Vaudeville,” a voice in the crowd startles him. “Father!” we hear him think. Then he adds, “Impossible!” Yet there the man is, turning around, smiling at him, and saying, “Let’s go.” A moment later, it’s “Why not go to my place?” Personally, I could think of a few reasons why that would be a bad idea, but Hidemi has his own reasoning – The man’s simply too polite to reject. Never mind that his parents died when he was just twelve years of age. 

If that last part seems peculiar, there’s a reason for that: Simply put, most people would likely react somewhat differently to a possible sighting of the undead - think Bill Murray’s priceless expression during his first job as a Ghostbuster – and a calmer, much more accepting response may strike Western viewers as inappropriate. I remarked as much when I reviewed Yasuo Furuhata’s 1999 film Poppoya, in which a man simply remarks, “So, you’re a ghost” upon being told of the death some years earlier of the young girl he is engaged in a conversation with. Fortunately, Hidemi’s reaction is somewhat more natural. We hear him questioning his eyes, and during their first reunion, there is an unease that never completely leaves him. There are also ample times when he doubts the reliability of his memories, especially after a picture he took of his parents shows a low-lying table entirely devoid of people.

In most American films about ghosts – at least those not solidly a part of the horror genre – there is a purpose for celestial appearances. Not so here. By the end of the film, I was not at all certain what had brought the ghosts back other than an extremely powerful emotional longing to see their son once again, but even that is only really hinted at in one scene. I half-expected the ghosts to bring up the fact that Hidemi seems to be walking through life half dead, but they appear ignorant of this fact, which implies that they have not been monitoring him all these years. So, where have they been, and why did they take so long to return? We never get an answer, and because I expected one, the film felt less rewarding than, for example, Jerry Zucker’s Ghost, which came out two years later than this one. Having said that, the film has an intriguing plotline concerning the physical toll that communing with ghosts exacts on the human body, and it allows for a third, much more horrible explanation for the ghosts’ presence. Maybe they are here to take Hidemi away.

I haven’t mentioned much about the visitor to Hidemi’s apartment, for to do so would be to reveal too much. Suffice to say, she reappears, this time finding Hidemi much more receptive to her advances. Love – or perhaps it is best to describe it as an emotional dependency – blossoms, and her reactions to Hidemi’s physical changes are interesting, to say the least. She is well played by Atsuko Kawata. Also deserving of praise are Kumiko Akiyoshi and Tsurutaro Kataoka, who play Hidemi’s mother and father respectively. They are entirely believable as ghosts who died young and traditional, and have remained so in the afterlife. Absent from their faces is the weariness that so dominates Hidemi’s.

The Discarnates ends with a scene of surprising power. It does not provide all of the answers you might have by then, but such is life. With The Discarnates, Obayashi has given us a look into an event that Asian films and literature are far more likely to present as being somewhat normal. Ghosts exist. The dead can return. They may linger here out of love; sometimes their motivation is much less benevolent. But sometimes they just appear. There doesn’t always have to be more to it than that. (on DVD in Region 3)

3 stars

*The Discarnates is in Japanese with English subtitles.

*The film ranked #3 on film magazine Kinema Junpo’s list of the best films of 1988. 

Review - Three Resurrected Drunkards

April 16, 2020

Three Resurrected Drunkards – Japan, 1968

My first experience with Nagisa Oshima – and I don’t recommend this as a starting point – was his 1976 film, In the Realm of the Senses. I knew nothing about it, but it came with a glowing recommendation from two classmates of mine, both of them teachers, one of them a self-professed witch. I left the film shell-shocked, and given its final scene, that’s hardly surprising. What I remember most vividly about it, though, is not one of its many sexually graphic moments. Instead, what has resonated over the years is a quiet scene in which Tatsuya Fuji’s lost character makes his way to his town’s main road and witnesses a parade of young soldiers. His shame is palpable, and it is clear that he is comparing their patriotic discipline to the lazy depraved lifestyle he has allowed himself to settle into. It is not long before he makes his fatal request of his paramour, Sada Abe That scene represents about a minute of screen time; the less said about the other hour and forty-eight minutes the better.

I would likely have stopped there were it not for the fact that my classmates had also praised Oshima’s follow-up, In the Realm of Passion, a film which had a more traditional narrative and much more accessible characters. I liked that film so much that I eventually decided it was time to give his other films a chance. So, I watched Taboo and eventually worked my way to his earlier works – The Pleasures of the Flesh, Violence at Noon, Sing a Song of Sex, and Japanese Summer: Double Suicide. You can’t say I haven’t made an effort.

In 1968, Oshima made Three Resurrected Drunkards, and the film is a continuation of some of the themes he explored previously. The protagonists are young men with limited world views and an inability to recognize the seriousness of the moment, similar to the thugs who embrace guns and violence in 1967’s Japanese Summer: Double Suicide. In Drunkards’s opening moments, we watch them trying to imitate perhaps the most infamous picture from the Vietnam War – one of them standing with his fingers in the shape of a gun, the other trying to reproduce the expression of the doomed, unarmed prisoner. To them, this constitutes great fun. The adventure that follows is an education of sorts. Politics enters into the film in the form of four illegal immigrants from Korea, and some of the messaging resembles that found in 1967’s Sing a Song of Sex, which Oshima intended to shed light on the discomforting treatment of South Koreans in Japan.

In the opening moments of Drunkards, two of the young men’s clothes are stolen while they are swimming. In their place appear two Korean uniforms and some money for the inconvenience. They don the new clothes, their only real concern being the cigarettes that were in the pocket of one of the pilfered outfits. At a local stand, they try to save a little money by offering the clerk a lower price for cigarettes, not realizing that the town has been warned to be on the look out for men doing that very same thing. Soon they’re on the run, suspected of being illegal Korean immigrants.

They meet a young Korean woman who advises them to steal someone else’s clothes, her maniacal, opportunistic husband, and, eventually, the thieves that made off with their clothes.  The protagonists are sent to fight in Vietnam (or are they?), slip on ladies clothes in order to hide their identities (they’re not successful), and only escape because their intended killer fusses over the neatness of his uniform (which is being worn by a young man he intends to fill with lead). And just when you think the film is leading somewhere, there we are back on the beach with the young men once again joyfully assuming the positions of the figures in the famous picture. Jarring, sure, but remember, the title of the film is Three Resurrected Drunkards.

I suppose buried deep in Drunkards is a political message concerning the relationship between Japan and Korea or the treatment of Koreans in Japan. If it is there, it is located in a layer so distant that it might as well be invisible. The three men are aware of their second lives, yet they don’t seem that interested in avoiding the mess they found themselves in in their previous incarnations. They still leave their clothes unattended, stay to meet the girl, and in one scene confuse their antagonists by being one step ahead of them verbally. Some of this is mildly amusing, but if it is intended to convey the message that the men are beginning to sympathize with their pursuers, it fails dismally. The only sympathetic Korean character is the young woman, and while the protagonists pretend to be Korean, there is nothing in their behavior or experience that resembles the kind we normally associate with a change of heart or a newly-gained perspective. All of this makes the sentiments expressed in the film’s final scene ring rather hollow.

I suppose all critics have their kryptonites, esteemed films or directors that they just don’t understand the appeal of. Having now seen eight of Oshima’s film, it is time to proclaim him one of mine. His films, with the exception of the aforementioned In the Realm of Passion, leave me cold. Often unevenly acted and consistently underwritten, they are puzzles that do not stir me to pursue their opaque answers, filled with characters that leave me feeling incredulous instead of fascinated. In short, I don’t understand their appeal, but I sincerely wish you better luck with them. (on DVD as part of Eclipse’s Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties)

2 stars

*Three Resurrected Drunkards is in Japanese with English subtitles.

Review - Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?

December 7, 2019

Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? – Japan, 1932

The great Yasujiro Ozu had no qualms about returning to material he’d previously used as inspiration for a film. He remade his 1934 film, The Story of Floating Weeds, as Floating Weeds in 1954, and many of the films explore similar themes, so much so that a common comment about Ozu is that he made his first film in 1929 and then remade that film over and over just with varying titles. It is a joke made by those who are either unaware of his complete repertoire or are exaggerating for comedic effect, and yet it is impossible not to see the similarities between Yasujiro Ozu’s Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? and his earlier “student films,” Days of Youth, I Flunked, But…, and The Lady and the Beard. In many ways, Where Now Are the Dreams of My Youth? is almost an amalgamation of his earlier films, albeit with an ending that is jarringly different that what came before.

Like those earlier movies, Where Now Are the Dreams of My Youth? begins in those jovial days of university, which, as seen in I Flunked, But…, mostly includes playing, hanging out with good friends, and being on the cheerleading squad, and there’s not a whole lot of studying going on during the interim. We first meet a young man named Taichiro Saiki (Tatsuo Saito). He’s such a studious fellow that he walks around the school grounds with his head buried in his books and a pencil in hand; he is not, however, bright – at least not according to his professor -  and he is a bit of a social misfit. In one scene, Ozu shows him watching his friends leading a pep rally from afar, with a look in his eyes that show unmistakable envy.

Soon we meet Tetsuo Horino (Ureo Egawa), who is very much Saiki’s opposite. In fact, it’s highly unlikely he has picked up a book for weeks. In one scene reminiscent of one from an early Harold Lloyd film, he gets so involved in a chess game that he and his opponent carry the game out of a bakery and play it as they are walking and even after they have entered the classroom. Early on, we also meet Oshige (Kinuyo Tanaka), a young woman whose family owns the bakery Horino and his friends frequent often. It is clear where her heart lies from her early interactions with Horino, yet later events caused me to reflect back on Saiki’s reactions during those early scenes in the bakery and see many of his facial expressions and physical movements in a new light. Things take a dramatic turn - at least momentarily – when Horino’s father dies and he elects to take over his father’s company instead of completing his degree.    

Ozu’s student films were made during a worldwide economic downturn, and that reality permeates through most of those films. In Ozu’s lost film, I Graduated, But…, a young man’s degree fails to land him a decent job; here, Tetsuo’s friends are graduating into a world where job prospects are bleak. In I Flunked, But…, the luckiest character is the one who doesn’t pass his exams because he gets to continue basking in the bright glory of student life, while his friends face rejection after rejection. Here, graduation is unnecessary for Hirino to achieve success; for his friends, it sends them ill-prepared into a job market reeling from a global contraction. Days of Youth is a different kind of film, focusing more on comedy and a love triangle, but even in that film, we see similarities to the romantic narrative found in Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?

Where it diverges is in its finale, and I suspect it is this part of the film that contemporary audiences will have the hardest time with, for instead of embracing the notions that the passage of time creates permanent changes and that accepting that is part of growing up, it reinforces the idea that all that is needed to restore strained relations is an old-fashioned heart-to-heart. Here, said talk involves a confrontational discussion and a discomforting one-sided physical altercation. Voila, they’re all smiles, and life is as it should be. Except that it isn’t. The economy is still lousy, his friends are still woefully unqualified for employment, and Horino still does not have the experience necessary to run a successful company. I guess none of that is more important than whether four young men stay friends.

In fairness, with the exception of a few fleeting remarks here and there, the film doesn’t try to extend much into this reality, but by avoiding any real depiction of what was happening in 1931, the world these characters inhabit feels trivialized. It is as if Ozu is saying that all you need to survive trying times is family wealth and/or connections in high places. I don’t see that message resonating either now or in 1931. It reminds me of a Hollywood movie made during the Great Depression in which the lead character turns down a job because it doesn’t pay enough. Not many people in the audience could afford such considerations, and it is said that the line elicited laughter,

Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? is a more enjoyable film if you ignore the real world. Set aside the drum beats of war and the shattered dreams of those unfortunate enough not to find comfortable employment, and just watch it as the story of four friends whose camaraderie is tested by extreme changes and, for two of them at least, an interest in the same woman. Viewed as such, the film mostly succeeds. It is humorous, employing wit and warmth reminiscent of the early works of Chaplin, Lloyd, and Keaton. The film is extremely well acted, and several scenes involving Horino and Oshige resonate emotionally. As for the film’s climactic moments, I will not sugarcoat it – they are off-putting and certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. However, after that wore off, I could reflect upon the film’s more uplifting and humorous moments and recall that I’d had a pretty good time up until that point. That should count for something. (on DVD in Region 2 as part of BFI’s The Student Comedies)

3 stars

*Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? is a silent film.