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
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.
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.
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.
9/9/20 (Wed)
Another live program from TV’s Golden Age, this is a beautiful show about an uneducated washed-up boxer in NY trying to move on in life. Continue reading
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.
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
8/16/20 (Sun)
Hitchcock’s 1948 classic, an updated version of the hit British stage show of 1929 that was loosely based on the then-contemporary Leopold and Loeb case. Continue reading
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.
6/20/20 (Sat), Tokyo
Almodovar in an unusually contemplative mood in this semi-autobiographical film. Continue reading
6/28/20 (Sun), Tokyo
Harold Pinter’s 1963 film script portrays a manservant (a superb Dirk Bogarde) who insinuates his way into the home of an apathetic upper-class gentleman (Tony Fox) and proceeds to turn the tables, the new guard displacing the old. It’s a familiar Pinter setup, unrealistic by any standards other than Pinter’s own plays. Pinter was already a highly bankable playwright at the time and did not appreciably change his cryptic theater-of-the-absurd style for the screen. Still, it’s done with great flair. The director of what seems a quintessentially British work is in fact an American, Joseph Losey, who was blacklisted in Hollywood in the McCarthy era and made his name in Europe. This was the first of several acclaimed films he made with Pinter.
5/17/20 (Sun), Tokyo
With bars (and shops and restaurants and theaters and on and on) shut down now by the coronavirus pandemic for far too long, I was worried about a friend who runs a drinking spot in downtown Tokyo. So I suggested hosting a movie night on the big screen in his bar just for his regular customers. He liked the idea and chose this film, figuring that a light comedy would be a safe bet for the trial run. I didn’t recognize the choice at first because of the bland Japanese title メルシィ人生！(“Merci, Life!”), which could apply to hundreds of films. If they couldn’t find an equivalent to The Closet (an exact translation of the French title), surely there was a more interesting alternative out there. Some in the bar speculated that the distributors may not have wanted to emphasize the gay part when the movie debuted in 2001, but this is not, after all, a gay film – the gay angle is played for laughs if anything. I wonder if their obtuseness actually hurt the film’s commercial appeal. In any case, after weeks of watching movies at home, I really enjoyed being with a group of people laughing at the same film. I’m ready to get back to the movie theaters, and I suspect I’m not alone.
sekenbanashi 