Stolen Desire (盗まれた欲情)

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  • 盗まれた欲情 (Stolen Desire)

3/16/22 (Wed)

Imamura Shohei’s directorial debut of 1958 is a rather silly comedy about a traveling theater group. Not much of the later provocative Imamura on view here, though he does concentrate on the lower classes in a struggling troupe that mixes popularized versions of classical pieces like Chushingura with titillating girlie shows to bring in unsophisticated rural audiences. In a sign of the future Imamura, it features numerous loud outbursts among the actors and crowds, leering audience members and peeping Toms, pilfering of money and geese, a reference to eating dogs, actors picking their noses, and an impressively vicious catfight between two actresses, among other delights. But this was all in a broadly comic mood.

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Vengeance Is Mine (復讐するは我にあり)

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  • 復讐するは我にあり (Vengeance Is Mine)

3/5/22 (Sat)

Imamura Shohei’s hard-hitting 1979 film is based on the case of an actual serial killer in Japan active in 1964 just before the Olympics. The title is taken from Deuteronomy, where it is God who insists on that honor (“Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord”). But it is not clear here what the main character is taking vengeance against. Continue reading →

Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し) (stage version)

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  • 千と千尋の神隠し (Spirited Away) (stage version)

3/22/22 (Tues)

Spirited Away, the worldwide anime hit, has been retooled as a major stage show by British director John Caird of Les Mis fame. It’s always a thorny business bringing films to the stage since few producers have the creativity or guts to stray too far from familiar material, as way too many Broadway duds have proven in recent years. This one was particularly tricky since they’re dealing with an animated feature involving supernatural elements. Anime/manga has been a rich vein for producers here to mine, such as the hugely successful Kabuki version of the One Piece epic and a musical rendering of video game phenomenon Token Ranbu. It is now its own genre, known in local parlance as 2.5D shows. But Spirited Away is based not on a series but on a single highly popular film – it reigned for years as Japan’s biggest-selling movie by far of any genre (until eclipsed by another anime last year) – with iconic characters and scenes that its legions of fans will be eagerly awaiting. The trick for a long-running success is how to balance between lovers of the film and audiences less familiar with the material if at all.

That’s not necessarily a problem in Tokyo: the show is only being done here for four weeks (followed by a national tour) and boasts familiar stars. That ensures a full house for the brief run – tickets were quickly snatched up – and the high-for-Tokyo ticket price of ¥14,500 should guarantee a profit despite the elaborate staging (they were going for over 10 times that price on online resale sites). Given the familiarity of the movie and the family-friendly material, I’m at a loss why they didn’t book this for a longer run, especially with the money they’ve put into it. I have to assume they’re aiming for a future production in London or New York considering the creative staff – in addition to director/adaptor Caird, non-Japanese handled the music arrangement, orchestrations, art design and puppetry design (in the land of classic puppet theater). That would make this a trial run of sorts. The Japanese theater world works in strange and mysterious ways.

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Coda

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  • Coda

2/6/22 (Sun)

An entertaining if by-the-book feel-good story about the only hearing child of deaf adults (= CODA). Ruby (a superb Emilia Jones) is literally the ears and mouth of her parents and deaf elder brother, who run a fishing boat. Interpreting for them in their business dealings and accompanying them on the boat, she makes it possible for them to maintain their independence. But it also deprives her of a normal life. Their idea of family experiences includes farts and dating-site photos, which engage senses that they can share. She joins the choir at school on the spur of the moment when she notices a certain boy putting his name in. There she finds that she has talent, discovering her own voice in a way. She wants to break free and become a singer, especially when she gets an offer to audition for a major music university, but that would mean leaving the family without a voice of their own just as they are attempting to rally other fisherman to oppose the greedy fish brokers. The story is thus not only about her need to break free but theirs as well.

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Dinner at Eight

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  • Dinner at Eight

8/27/21 (Fri)

George Cukor’s all-star 1933 comedy based on the Kaufman/Ferber stage play of the previous year. It seemed odd to see a play set among the rich and their swanky dinner party at the height of the Depression. But it turns out that there was more than meets the eye.

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Noh: Ataka, Shakkyo (安宅, 石橋)

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  • Noh: 安宅、石橋  (Ataka, Shakkyo)

3/13/22 (Sun), Kanze Noh Theater (Ginza)

The pairing of these two lively crowd-pleasers was almost completely sold out despite the state of semi-emergency in Tokyo at present. The only reminder of the fading pandemic was the ubiquitous masks, though I noticed a lot of exposed noses, which I’m going to take as progress. Continue reading →

NY Times: “That entrenched macho bias”

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  • NY Times article: That entrenched macho bias

3/10/21 (Wed)

I came across this article that I wrote a year ago but never posted. It’s pretty funny rereading it, so I thought I’d throw it in now. This critic recently complained feverishly about unmasked West End audiences on a trip to the UK, where masking is not mandated. Talk about the ugly American. The NY Times is sounding more and more like the Babylon Bee.

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Someone needs to give Laura Collins-Hughes a real job. The NY Times critic wrote an article asking film stars to return to stages around the nation to get things hopping again, a fine sentiment, though I suspect it wouldn’t take that much to get people back to the theater; as Japan has found, demand for communal cultural events even amid the pandemic is a lot stronger than many people think, especially among younger audiences, as long as the product is attractive.

What grated was her notion of the supposed disdain that “this swaggering cowboy nation of ours” has for theater, including “an entrenched macho bias, bound up in misogyny and homophobia, that makes it hard for the industry to be taken seriously”. Anyone know what she’s talking about? Continue reading →

Gohatto (御法度)

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  • 御法度 (Gohatto)

1/27/21 (Tues)

Oshima Nagisa’s fictional 1999 film conjures up a story of nanshoku (male-on-male sex) in the famed Shinsengumi samurai corps in 1865, just three years before the collapse of the shogunate. A certain amount of fooling around can be expected among samurai given the not-unknown phenomenon throughout Japanese history of male-on-male sex (not exactly homosexuality) as documented in novels, popular Kabuki plays and shunga prints. Within the Shinsengumi, at least as portrayed here, boy love was looked down upon not because of morals but from concerns over discipline and was basically ignored if held in check. The film is also known in English as Taboo, but something like Forbidden would be more accurate; gohatto literally means “against the law” or in this case “against the samurai code”. Putting historical figures like Hijikata Toshizo and Kondo Isami in this context seems unfair to their memories, but I guess that’s Hollywood (well, the Japanese equivalent).

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