10/1/23 (Sun)
This 2002 film is the second in Kaurismäki’s so-called Finland/Loser Trilogy. The films are only loosely tied together by theme; I accidentally watched the third one before this, but it didn’t really matter. Actually it seems that any of his films can fall into this category, so not sure what prompted the trilogy label.
9/23/23 (Sat)
The title of Aki Kaurismäki’s 1996 feature, the first in his so-called Finland (or Loser) Trilogy, has the whiff of Naruse’s Floating Clouds and even the same Japanese title (浮き雲 here vs. Naruse’s浮雲). However, the bleakness of the Japanese film is nowhere evident in Kaurismäki, whose dry presentation and pokerfaced characters deliver a black comedy with an unexpectedly upbeat ending.
Mainichi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest dailies, recently published my article on the government’s scandalous mismanagement of the nation’s soon-to-be-rebuilt National Theater, dedicated to Kabuki and other traditional performing arts. The theater’s travails have been widely noted in the Japanese press, but there has been little analysis of why the troubles have arisen or how to resolve them. I offer my view below.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20231228/p2a/00m/0op/003000c
8/9/23 (Wed)
Jules Dassin’s 1950 film does for postwar London what his The Naked City three years earlier did for postwar New York. I learned afterwards that there are two versions of this film: one edited for the UK and Commonwealth, and the other for the US and the rest of the world. Neither was overseen by the director, who was kept away from the Commie-hating authorities in the US due to his liberal past, but he later expressed a preference for this one, the US version. The UK version reportedly treats the slimy protagonist more sympathetically and offers a more positive ending, making me glad I watched this one instead.
8/7/23 (Mon)
A noir film of 1947 by the famed Ealing Studio, which I know more for its comedies; indeed, director Robert Hamer is best known for his fabulous Kind Hearts and Coronets for the studio a few years later.
We are in contemporary (postwar) London’s working-class East End. A convict escapes from prison and finds his way to the home of his former sweetheart Rose, a hardened shrew now married to a dull but stable businessman with two grown daughters from his previous marriage and a son of their own (who, it is hinted, may in fact be the convict’s child). She does her best to clear everyone out of the small house and hide the convict despite a constant danger of discovery. Continue reading
10/12/23 (Thurs)
Kinoshita Keisuke’s unusual 1954 work, which he wrote and directed, was ranked second in that year’s Kinejun poll only to yet another Kinoshita film, his smash hit Twenty-Four Eyes (and amazingly above The Seven Samurai, Chikamatsu Story, Late Chrysanthemums, Sansho the Bailiff, and An Inn in Osaka, among others). It is not nearly in the league of any of those and may have been helped by its sensational theme and starry cast. Still, it is extremely interesting as a portrait of a certain age. Oshima Nagisa says that this is the piece that inspired him to become a director, which makes sense considering the politics of his works. I assume the garden (園) is a reference to a school academy (学園), though the source novel is in fact called Artificial Garden (人工庭園).
10/20/23 (Fri)
Tod Browning’s 1932 film is usually described as a horror flick, but that doesn’t feel quite right. It deals with a deformed cast – Siamese twins, a man without a torso, another without arms or legs, pinheads, dwarfs – but they are not monsters: they are real people with normal feelings and emotions. The title is deceptive, as it’s not clear at the end just who the real freaks are.
10/29/23 (Sun), Tokyo Film Festival
A female judoka from Iran has a good shot at winning the gold at the world championships in Tbilisi, achieving the dream to which she has devoted her life. Blessed with size, strength, technique and deep determination, she quickly disposes of her opponents in what seems an unstoppable path to the finals and glory for her and her country. Things change dramatically, however, when it looks as if she might face an Israeli opponent in the finals. She comes under intense pressure from her government to throw the match, including threats to her family and her future. A fan asking for a selfie proves a government agent who shows her in a video that her father back home has been taken into custody. Her coach, warned by the government that she too will lose everything if she does not stop her protégé, tries desperately to persuade the girl to give up her ambitions and bow to reality, creating a serious rift between them. The coach herself, a former star, is known to have suffered an injury years earlier just before a big match against an Israeli that might have made her a world champion – but the judoka now comes to wonder if that was really an injury. The judoka reaches her own decision, and events spin out in an unexpected way.
This superb Israeli-Iranian co-production (you read that right), playing at the Tokyo Film Festival, is less a sports film than a thrilling suspense story set in the Japanese world of judo. Continue reading
This column from 2014 provides some background for the horrors inflicted by Hamas on Israel this past weekend. I said regarding the tunnels that Israel “should not have to wait for its citizens to be killed to rid itself of this horrific threat”, and that applies as well to Hamas itself. The wanton slaughter of teenagers attending a “concert for peace” speaks for itself, not to mention the stripping and parading and spitting on captives and corpses and the depraved celebration of death. I would like to say that the utter barbarism of the terrorist group’s latest actions has exposed it for what it is, but its nature has been sadly clear for years. It’s time for Israel to deal with the issue definitively.
This is being billed as the last Bunraku puppet drama in Tokyo’s current money-losing National Theater, which will shut down for reconstruction at the end of next month. The government plans to replace the aging theater, built in the mid 1960s as a showcase for Kabuki, Bunraku and other Japanese traditional performing arts, with a large hotel/retail/theater complex, a PFI project reportedly due to cost some ¥80 billion. However, the plan hit a big speed bump last month when it failed for a second time to attract a single bidder, i.e., private developers see no commercial prospects for a building of this type in that location. Kabuki has consistently failed to draw audiences in recent years, while Bunraku, the theater’s one bright spot, only visits from its Osaka base for 2-3 weeks each quarter, which is insufficient to sustain the property financially. The government has not explained why it thinks that rebuilding the theater in this location will attract Kabuki audiences who aren’t showing up now, and as the project is supposed to take an inordinate 6-7 years to complete, the big question for Bunraku, which will be relegated in the interim to a distant corner of the city, is whether there will be any fans left at that point. This is less death than suicide. Continue reading
9/18/23 (Mon), Yokohama
A Japanese production of this lesser known 1980 drama by Arthur Miller based on his own family’s experience during the Depression. Continue reading
9/3/23 (Sun)
This is the final film in Kiarostami’s so-called Koker Trilogy. The second was a recreation of the director’s search for the stars of the first film after the deadly earthquake in the region. This one deals with trouble that the director had when making the second film, especially that between the man and woman who played the newlyweds in that film’s most memorable scene. The unplanned trilogy is like Matryoshka dolls emerging from inside one another.
sekenbanashi 