• 偉人たちとの夏 (The Discarnates)

1/26/24 (Fri)

I wanted to see Obayashi Nobuhiko’s 1988 adaptation of Yamada Taichi’s best-seller before the acclaimed UK remake, All of Us Strangers, arrives here in the next few months. The Japanese version’s unusual English title refers to a being that does not have a physical body, basically a fancy word for ghosts. That seems to give the game away; I prefer the Japanese title, literally “Summer with Strangers”. The Japanese film is described as a horror story.

*Spoilers Ahead*

Television screenwriter Harada, already depressed after his divorce, is further hit when his colleague and best friend reveals that he’s dating Harada’s ex-wife. He then gets a late-night visit from the only other resident in his complex, a lonely woman who drunkenly rings his bell in hopes of companionship. In no mood for small talk, he brusquely rejects her despite her pleas (“I thought you’d be nicer”).

Some time later, he becomes separated from his associates in an abandoned railway station that he’s scouting for a location. Emerging near his childhood home of Asakusa, he decides to visit on a whim. There he is stunned to discover that his parents, who died in an accident when he was 12, are not only still alive but the same age as they were at that time. They evidence no surprise at his appearance and invite him in for dinner. They live like a normal postwar family, the father an unpolished working-class man and the mother a cheerful housewife. Harada sits with them in his undershirt and underwear while they enjoy beer and meals. It is a scene he was never able to experience before since he was a child when they died, and he returns to them frequently for the warmth lacking in his real life. He says he doesn’t care if they are ghosts, which they acknowledge; he knows only that he’s deliriously happy.

Meanwhile, Harada runs into the woman living in his building. This time, his euphoria at having met his parents has left him more open to friendship, and they become intimate. Telling him she has a bad burn on her chest, she refuses to let him see anything other than her back. The man seems to be regaining his will to live, but at the same time notices himself mysteriously growing older – graying hair, bags under his eye, rotting teeth. The woman blames this on his visit to his dead parents and begs him not to go there anymore. He promises to obey, but can’t bring himself to stop without at least telling them goodbye. He invites the parents out of the house for the first time and takes them to a sukiyaki restaurant, where they are visible to others. They reassure him of how much they love him, then fade away before his eyes.

Harada returns to his complex. Meanwhile, his colleague comes to visit. He wonders why the light is still on in the vacant third-floor apartment and is shocked to learn that the resident had recently stabbed herself to death. When he races up to Harada’s room, we discover that the woman had killed herself after being rejected by Harada and has now become a horrible vengeful spirit who is trying to lure him to his death. The colleague is astounded to see that Harada has become a decrepit old man. The ghost rises in the air and displays the slashes on her chest from her suicide, spurting blood all over the men. Harada is drawn against his will to the ghost but is restrained by his colleague. The woman is eventually defeated, and Harada turns back to his normal self. In the final scene, Harada burns his parents’ unused chopsticks from the sukiyaki meal as a sacrifice to their memory, suggesting that he is finally released.

The theme is the man’s retreat into nostalgia as a substitute for real life, idealizing a time that might have been had his parents not been ripped away from him in his childhood. Harada had written in one of his scenarios that you can bring the past back if you want. “It’s your past,” said the character in his drama. “It’s part of you and is never lost.” I had assumed at first that the meetings with the parents were all in his head, especially as the setting was the summer Obon season, when ancestors traditionally return from the other world to visit their descendants. Also, the photo he took of them at their dinner table proved blank. But the restaurant scene suggests that these are real ghosts rather than his fantasy, which undercuts the idea that he is simply ridding himself of the ghosts in his head. The woman in his building looked to have been part of that fantasy as well in his need for true love, but she also proves real, her final horror sequences witnessed by both Harada and his friend. Obayashi was clearly more interested in the horror aspect than in the more interesting psychological side. Seems an opportunity missed.

Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro”, heard throughout the film, had been proposed by Harada as underscoring for his television screenplay, but to his disappointment was cut as overly dramatic. In the opera, the singer is begging her father to allow her to marry her lover, threatening to kill herself otherwise. Its significance here, if any, is unclear other than the literal meaning of the title (“Oh, my dear papa”) as a symbol, perhaps, of Harada’s feelings for his parents. It is ironic, of course, that a tune discarded in the story for being too emotional serves as the underscoring for Harada’s real-life drama. But that could have been any melody.

Kazama Morio, who I remember most for his flamboyant performance in The Fall Guy, was admirably restrained as Harada, and Natori Yuko made an impression as the female spirit. But the standouts were Akiyoshi Kumiko and especially Kataoka Tsurutaro as the mother and father in wonderfully natural performances; both won well deserved Blue Ribbon Awards as supporting actors. The director does a great job capturing the milieu of postwar shitamachi (the old earthier part of Tokyo). He had a unique way of closing out scenes in the form of a small TV-like screen flickering and shrinking out of sight. I do wish they had reined in the laughably thick makeup for the aging Kazama, which made those scenes unintentionally comical.

A film worth watching, but they might have done well to ditch the horror and concentrate on the mental struggles of the man trying to free himself from his past and move on. I’m eager to see how the UK version handles it.