Category Archives: Film

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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The Servant (1963)

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  • The Servant

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.

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A Look Back: Le Placard (The Closet)

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  • Le Placard (The Closet)

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.

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Mishima

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  • Mishima

5/3/20 (Sun)

Paul Schrader’s 1985 film biography is to this day not available in Japan despite being entirely in Japanese and featuring some noted Japanese stars. Mishima is known for his extreme conservative views, but his criticism of Emperor Showa for renouncing his godliness (Mishima felt that this meant that Japanese soldiers went to war for nothing) was a step too far even for his fellow far-rightists, who do not take well to any bad-mouthing of the imperial family. Mishima’s works are one thing, but a story about his life, which must inevitably deal with the circumstances of his self-disembowelment, is politically an untouchable subject – and the right wing in particular can be very unpleasant about these things. Mishima’s widow was also upset by the references to Mishima’s homosexuality, which she was not entirely able to purge from the film. So I was surprised at a friend’s house to find a copy of the DVD that had been purchased in the US, which I promptly borrowed.

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Silence (沈黙) (1971 film)

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  • 沈黙 (Silence) (1971 film)

4/30/20 (Thurs)

Shinoda Masahiro’s film adaptation of 1971, just two years after the novel was published, was supposedly co-written by the novelist Endo Shusaku, but I have to wonder how much he contributed given the way the movie veers from the book in some important respects, especially the ending. It follows the general contour of the story fairly straightforwardly, but gives precedence to the drama over the religious and philosophical themes at the heart of the tale. That makes an interesting contrast with Scorsese’s 2016 remake, which had greater sweep (and clearly a budget to match) and delved more deeply into the priest’s struggle with his beliefs.

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Parasite

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  • Parasite

12/27/19 (Fri)

Did the reviewers see the same movie I did? This Korean film has won rhapsodic praise as a social satire and is being talked about as an Oscar candidate, but it seemed to me an overblown attempt at farce relying on impossible situations and questionable characterizations.

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