Category Archives: Film

Shoplifters (万引き家族)

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  • 万引き家族 (Shoplifters)

6/15/18 (Fri), Tokyo

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

The family at the heart of Shoplifters, directed (and conceived and written and edited) by Hirokazu Koreeda, does not appear to let dire poverty get it down. The dad is a construction worker, the mom toils at a huge laundry and the daughter works at a dodgy club giving guys thrills through a one-way mirror, and they only manage to get by with the help of the grandmother’s pension from her late husband. Still, their home is full of activity and warmth, and it feels like a loving family. But all is not as it seems. Continue reading →

Yoshiwara

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  • Yoshiwara, 4/7/18 (Sat)

A French-language piece of Japonisme made in 1937 (when Japan was already well at war in Asia) by Max Ophüls. The film is set in Tokyo in the Meiji years, when foreigners have become a not-uncommon presence. Kohana, born into an aristocratic family, is forced humiliatingly by circumstances to sell herself to a brothel in the still-active red light district Yoshiwara, where the girls are now being taught how to give greetings in English, French and such to welcome foreign business. The servant Isamu (spelled Ysamo in the subtitles, but that’s too ridiculous), who delivers her by rickshaw to the brothel, loves her and is desperate to win her over despite the impossible difference in social status, even with her decline into prostitution. Unfortunately a rival emerges in the form of a Russian officer, who begins an intense affair with Kohana. Much to Isamu’s misery, she and the officer are soon deeply in love. The jealous servant gets involved in a scheme by the authorities to entrap the officer, who, it turns out, is in Japan on a secret military mission. Isamu’s actions, however, unwittingly put the girl herself in danger, and things quickly spiral out of control.

Continue reading →

Ballad of Orin (はなれ瞽女おりん)

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  • はなれ瞽女おりん (Ballad of Orin)

10/4/17 (Wed), Tokyo

I was curious about this 1977 movie after seeing the excellent puppet version, which was based on this source rather than the original play or novel. The director, Shinoda Masahiro, was also behind the muddled curiosity Double Suicide.

The story revolves around a lonely wandering blind singer who falls in love with a soldier. While he is clearly devoted, he refuses strangely to engage with her sexually, a source of great frustration to her. Still, she takes happiness where she can. The reasons for his unusual behavior are revealed in a tragic ending.

Continue reading →

Twenty-Four Eyes (二十四の瞳 )

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  • 二十四の瞳 (Twenty-Four Eyes), 1/16/11 (Sun), Tokyo

With the death of the great Takamine Hideko at year-end, I gathered friends to watch one of her most successful films. It is an unabashedly sentimental piece from 1953 about a new teacher and her 12 charges in a poor village in Shodoshima over a 20-year span from 1928-1948, i.e., before, during and after the war.

Continue reading →

Conflagration (炎上)

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  • 炎上 (Conflagration), 1/23/11 (Sun), Tokyo

Ichikawa Kon’s 1958 film version of Mishima’s then-recent novel Kinkakuji (The Golden Pavilion), a fictionalization of the notorious incident just a few years earlier when a crazed monk burned down the centuries-old structure. The novel is filled with ruminations about the nature of beauty versus reality by a narrator isolated from society by his own insecurities over his crippling stutter. His image of Kinkakuji (called here by a different name), described by his father as almost other-worldly, sets him up for a devastating letdown when he encounters the actual dilapidated structure. The temple in his mind represents an ideal that, when violated, prompts him to destroy the former to protect the latter.

The film can’t begin to compete at that level, but it is a dutiful recounting of the main events and is highly effective on its own terms. Continue reading →

Spielberg’s (!) West Side Story

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  • Spielberg’s (!) West Side Story 

Steven Spielberg’s intended film remake of West Side Story is apparently a go, for better or worse. While the original 1957 stage show was a modest success, it was the smash 1961 film that put the musical on the map with the second-highest grosses of the year and ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The love was not shared by its creators, who did not approve of the numerous revisions in song order and such, and it has not aged particularly well, coming off today as rather stagy despite its on-location shooting. Still, it is an historic work with a perfect cast, that amazing score and the iconic Jerome Robbins choreography, making the challenge of a remake formidable. The innovative approaches of recent musical films like Sweeney Todd and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (as well as the NBC Live musicals) do suggest a new path for musical film, and a creative look at old material is always welcome. (The stage show itself could stand some polishing if the Robbins estate would ever allow it.)

So why am I skeptical? Let us count the ways.  Continue reading →

Get Out

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  • Get Out

11/10/17 (Fri), Tokyo

A clever horror flick set in the here and now (like right now – the characters wish Obama could have had a third term) with a great premise and sly social commentary expertly woven in. A black guy visits his white girlfriend’s large family estate in what looks to be an updated Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (“You did tell them I was black…?” “Umm, don’t worry, they’ll love you”). But his isolation in their snow-white society and the clumsy attempts by whites to be hip (“I love Tiger Woods”) are the least of his worries as events take a sinister turn. Continue reading →

Battles Without Honor and Humanity (仁義なき戦い)

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  • 仁義なき戦い (Battles Without Honor and Humanity)

11/9/17 (Thurs)

Duty is the great theme of traditional Japanese Kabuki theater, with characters typically forced to choose between their all-important loyalty to their lord or society and a betrayal of that duty with an act of compassion or emotion. Compassion often wins out but only at great cost, usually death. The best known example of a pure loyalty tale is the ever-popular The 47 Loyal Retainers (忠臣蔵), where duty to a murdered lord leads to a meticulously planned, suicidal act of revenge by his former retainers. That sense of loyalty carries over as well into typical samurai and yakuza dramas, where duty is often itself the point.

The 1973 film Battles Without Honor and Humanity (the name would be punchier without the “humanity”’; also known by the much better title The Yakuza Papers) doesn’t just puncture that ideal but renders it a useless relic of a lost age. Continue reading →

Welcome Back, Mr McDonald (ラジオの時間 )

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  • ラジオの時間 (Welcome Back, Mr McDonald)

11/4/17 (Sat)

The prolific stage/film writer Mitani Koki has his good days [The Last Laugh (笑いの大学), Twelve Gentle Japanese (12人の優しい日本人)] and bad (most of his output), and this 1997 film, based on his 1993 stage show, is one of the latter. Continue reading →