Monthly Archives: October 2019

Rage (怒り)

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  • 怒り (Rage)

10/17/19 (Wed), Tokyo

Lee Sang-il’s 2018 film opens with the murder of an innocent couple in their own home by a drifter, who paints the character for “rage” (怒) on their wall before escaping. This is followed by three unrelated stories in Tokyo, Chiba and Okinawa featuring drifters who could all conceivably be the killer. The film is on the surface a suspense tale keeping us guessing which one is the villain, but its real theme involves the nature of trust and mistrust – “Doubt” would actually be a better title than “Rage”, which doesn’t quite make sense in context. Continue reading →

An Osaka Tale (大阪物語)

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  • 大阪物語 (An Osaka Tale)

10/13/18 (Sun), Tokyo

A highly entertaining piece of 1957 devised by Mizoguchi Kenji from a 17th-century tale and ably taken over after his death by Yoshimura Kozaburo. It was reminiscent of Mizoguchi’s Chikamatsu Story: the lead was a stingy businessman ultimately undermined by his own stubbornness, and Kagawa Kyoko was a put-upon daughter who gets the poor clerk in the end. But this was a comedic approach to the material, which, though not as deep, worked wonderfully on its own terms.

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Every Day a Good Day (日日是好日)

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  • 日日是好日 (Every Day a Good Day)

10/12/18 (Sat), Tokyo

A beautiful meditative film of 2018 whereby the tea ceremony (“the way of tea”) serves as a metaphor for several zen-based ideas: that the meaning of things becomes evident only over time, that we should feel rather than analyze, that we should enjoy every instant in life as an experience that will never occur again.

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Carmen Comes Home (カルメン故郷に帰る)

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  • カルメン故郷に帰る (Carmen Comes Home)

10/11/18 (Fri), Tokyo

Kinoshita Keisuke’s hit film of 1951 was Japan’s first full-length color film, and the director reportedly created the plot around the need to film much of it outside for technical reasons. Continue reading →