Category Archives: Film

Crazed Fruit (狂った果実)

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  • 狂った果実  (Crazed Fruit)

1/5/21 (Tues)

Nakahira Ko’s seminal 1956 film, which put the so-called taiyozoku (太陽族) or “sun tribe” on the map, is essentially Japan’s Look Back in Anger, a sensationalist look at disaffected youth in the postwar era that electrified the staid Japanese film world. It was adapted by Ishihara Shintaro from his novelette, which was bundled with two similar stories that were all made into films the same year (this being by far the best). The series includes the notorious Season of the Sun (太陽の季節), known infamously for the scene in which the main character slams his erect organ through the paper shoji screen. The title of that story led an interviewer to refer in an article to the Sun Tribe, a label that came to define a generation. (The story is alluded to in this film in the boat’s English name, Sun Season.) Ishihara makes a brief appearance in the film as one of a group of thugs, but more important was his insistence that the filmmakers cast his younger brother Yujiro, creating a legend.

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High and Low (天国と地獄)

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  • 天国と地獄  (High and Low)

11/14/20 (Sat), Tokyo

This 1963 Kurosawa work is really two films. In the first half, a well off industrialist (Mifune Toshiro) is battling for control of a major shoe company with other board members who want to cut corners on product quality for greater profit. The industrialist refuses to give in and throws his entire fortune into a secret deal that will give him a majority stake.

Just when that deal is set to go through, he receives a call that his son has been kidnapped. Frantically, he agrees to pay the enormous ransom with the money he had gathered despite knowing that this will ruin him financially. Then unexpectedly the son wanders in. It turns out that the kidnapper has mistakenly taken the chauffeur’s son instead. The industrialist is now faced with a moral dilemma: does he save the boy at devastating cost to himself, or save his own family from a bleak future? Continue reading →

Stray Dog (野良犬)

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  • 野良犬 (Stray Dog)

11/13/20 (Fri), Tokyo

Two veterans of the recently ended war, we learn, had their backpacks stolen when they were younger. One channeled his anger into a desire to help the world and has become a policeman. The other let his anger destroy him and has become a criminal. That thin line between “stray dog” and “mad dog” is the film’s theme in a nutshell.

Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949) is nominally a detective story, a stylish film noir, but it digs much deeper. Continue reading →

Sanze Tangen and the Million-Ryo Pot (丹下左膳余話 百萬両の壺)

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  • 丹下左膳余話 百萬両の壺  (Sanze Tangen and the Million-Ryo Pot)

11/1/20 (Sun), Tokyo

The Tokyo International Film Festival is featuring a special section on director Yamanaka Sadao, a prolific film director from the 1930s who tragically died at age 28. He made over two dozen films in a brief period at a pace of 4-5 per year, but only three survive, all of which are highly regarded. That makes it easy to do a retrospective of his career, and all three have been digitally cleaned up for the occasion. That includes one of my all-time favorite Japanese films, Humanity and Paper Balloons. Today was the oldest of the surviving films, dating from 1935, when sound was just taking hold in Japan. The theater is not practicing social distancing, so we’re back to crowded seats (the theater was around 60% full even for an old flick readily available on YouTube). I guess I should be careful what I wish for, especially since everyone was concentrated in the center. Still, it was good to be in a packed house again.

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A Cornered Rat Dreams of Cheese (窮鼠はチーズの夢を見る)

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  • 窮鼠はチーズの夢を見る (A Cornered Rat Dreams of Cheese)

10/5/20 (Mon), Tokyo

Yukisada Isao’s adaptation of a best-selling BL (boy’s love) manga. For the uninitiated, BL are comic series written by women and for women focused on love affairs among males, not necessarily gay. The former sub-genre is now a genre of its own and a full-fledged phenomenon. The idealized portrait of men falling for each other allows the overwhelmingly female readership to fantasize about sex while remaining apart from it. It shares that quality in a way with the all-female Takarazuka and all-male Kabuki theaters, where the knowledge that all characters are being played by performers of the same gender (and the restrictions that places on intimate scenes) ensures that love affairs remain in the realm of fancy. (A recent NHK television series featured a fervent BL fan who becomes disgusted when she discovers that her supposed boyfriend is gay – she can accept male-on-male sex only on the page. She eventually sees the error of her ways, of course, and they live happily ever after as best friends.) I was dragged by a friend to the theater, where I was the only male in the house as well as the only non-Asian. I pulled my mask up tight.

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Thunderstorm (雷雨, 1983 film)

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  • 雷雨 (Thunderstorm, 1983 film)

9/26/20 (Sat)

One of numerous film versions of Cao Yu’s seminal 1934 stage work. Sun Daolin (孫道臨), a major film star of the 1950s to 1970s, adapted, directed and starred in this 1983 version. The groundbreaking stage show was immensely influential in China as the first successful Western-style drama, helping to transform the entire course of Chinese theatrical history. The story comes off as melodramatic, involving as it does family struggles, class warfare (making it popular in the Communist years) and incest. But the characterizations are compelling, and the story flows nicely, though depending on one questionable coincidence.

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Marty (1953 TV)

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  • Marty (1953 TV)

8/31/20 (Mon)

Paddy Chayefsky’s 1953 television play, telecast live back in the day when they did that sort of thing. Its favorable reception spawned a slightly expanded and largely recast movie version that became a sleeper hit, snaring an Oscar against Hollywood heavyweights and sparking a boom in TV-to-movie adaptations.

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Swoon

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  • Swoon

8/23/20 (Sun)

Tom Kalin’s artsy 1992 film based directly on the Leopold and Loeb case, a contrast with the fictionalized Rope. Leopold and Loeb are presented outright as sexually involved, though the former appears more serious in the relationship than the latter. The boys, rich and extremely bright, would seem to have everything to live for. But through boredom or cynicism or apathy, they have turned to livening up their existence by pursuing various crimes such as fires and larceny to see what they can get away with. Loeb now ups the ante, setting his sights on murder, specifically the murder of a child. The movie basically follows the case after that, including the murder, their capture, their reaction (each trying to blame the other) and ultimate fate.

Whereas Rope was more interested in the motives and intellectual back-and-forth of the murderers, tying this to Nazi ideology, Swoon is a more personal look at Loeb’s controlling nature and Leopold’s obsessive desire to please him. Continue reading →

The Farewell

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  • The Farewell

10/12/20 (Mon), Tokyo

I was eager to see this much-praised film from last year, which has just arrived in Tokyo theaters. I’m not sure what took so long for it to get to Japan since it deals with issues that are relevant here and features a minor Japanese character, though Asian-themed US films aren’t always as popular as American filmmakers think they should be – it flopped big-time in China despite a Chinese cast and extensive Chinese dialogue. The English title is much better than the Chinese 别告诉她 (Don’t Tell Her), but the Japanese is worse as it simply uses the English as is, which has no meaning to most audiences here.

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