Category Archives: Japanese

After The Storm (2016)

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There is a phenomenon in Japan called hikikomori (pulling inward). It mostly applies to 20-somethings. But in 2017 an article came out in The New York Times to document a different and yet somehow similar occurrence.

Many older people risk the chance of dying alone if they have no family because many live without a network of community and neighbors while in such proximity might still leave them invariably isolated. I have lived there for an extended period of time, granted as a foreigner, and yet I could feel the weight of such an environment

Thus, the dutiful grown children worry about their parents, about being the good son or the good daughter. Ryota’s mother is a wonderful lady. She gives him a playful slug in the stomach, tells him to his face he’s a horrible liar but always in love. Quibbles ensue between siblings over taking advantage of their mother’s good graces since she lives only off her pension following the death of her husband years back.

And yet there is a certain relish in these core relationships because even if it’s not a perfect picture you get the sense that mother and son care deeply for each other. It’s the films most gratifying interaction watching Hiroshi Abe and Kiki Kirin play off each other. Menial events take on the utmost meaning because they manage to color the characters in honest ways and the film has many of these seemingly inconsequential moments. That’s a product of its pacing.

For people who haven’t lived in Tokyo, preconceived notions of it might come from the likes of Lost in Translation (2003). Personified by ultra-hip areas like Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Harajuku touted for their nightlife and shopping. But there are a lot of other places too as director Hirokazu Kore-eda suggests. The Tokyo made up of suburbs, apartment complexes, and more ordinary landscapes. The Nerimas and Kiyoses of the world.

Coppola’s film worked because it was going for the perspective of an outsider. I enjoyed After The Storm immensely because it has the attention to detail and the touches of a local — someone who has known this terrain intimately.  I distinctly remember the first time I ever came back to the states knowing I would soon be returning to Japan. And in that moment I no longer felt like a tourist but someone with a new sort of understanding. It’s crucial because it changes your entire outlook and what you deem important. The big moments aren’t as relevant as the day-to-day.

Abe’s performance is so exquisitely rendered because while the picture is by no means a comedy his various ticks, expressions, even his lumbering figure are humorous without ever truly meaning to be. And they are organic moments that never feel forced. In other words, they are human and so despite his shortcomings, there’s something that resonates about him. When we look at his life we see a bit of his restlessness. He’s still not the man he wants to be. He realizes that.

His ex-wife is seeing another man. The rich new boyfriend feels like a universal trope that doesn’t need much explanation. Meanwhile, Ryota rarely gets to see his son, only on prearranged days were he pays child support. He’s notoriously bad on making their meetings on time. That and other reasons are hints to why his wife left him. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t hold onto some wistfulness, especially where his son is involved.

Though once an award-winning author most recently he’s taken on a job as a private investigator. He says it’s only temporary — research for his latest project — but it’s been going on far too long. He’s started getting used to it and so have his coworkers.

The film’s point of departure and ultimate revelation, if there is one, comes in the wake of a typhoon. Again, living in Japan you understand that this is a fairly common occurrence. But it’s the regular person’s side of Tokyo away from the bright lights.

Trying to field lost lottery tickets in the swirling downpour or shielding oneself inside a slide at a park watching the debris fly by is enough of a diversion because the intent is to consider not so much environmental changes but how our characters change.

Of course, implicit in the translated title is that there is something new (あたらしい) about life. And yet when we get on the other side of the storm it’s difficult to know. That would be the form of a typical film. To make the before and the after drastically different. Here the characters have changed — no doubt — but externally their behavior seems all but the same. The development is incremental and internalized.

I appreciate that. In life, there is rarely a megaphone to announce change for us. Sometimes it’s imperceptible to the eye. It’s even notoriously difficult to acknowledge some changes in ourselves. And yet we know they are there. Because to our last breath, we are indubitably a work in progress. We will never be perfect. That’s part of what makes life and this film thoroughly intriguing. What’s more is that it still glimmers with a certain hopefulness.

4/5 Stars

 

Densha Otoko (2005)

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In English, it means Train Man and it finds its origins in a media franchise that now includes Manga, a book, a television show, and of course this movie. But the events of the story are purportedly based on real life when a young otaku (Japanese tech nerd) in Akihabara came to the defense of a woman on a train who was being accosted by a drunken businessman.

This isolated, geeky 22-year old male was her knight in shining armor and probably had never talked to a girl before in his life. Every syllable comes out of his mouth jumbled, rushed, and breathless. If they were American we would say that she’s out of his league — the head cheerleader or what have you.

But the film is blessed because it is set in Japan. Densha Otoko proves to be part dorky rom-com while also giving us a view into a unique subculture. While it deals in stereotypes somewhat, we see his constant communications taking place over online chat and although it’s dated by today’s standards the Akihabara vibe is unquestionable as is the integration of technology into modern day romance.

At the time we were on the cusp of where we’re at now and you see the signs of it. Flip phones and laptops on the train. People at their computers at work and home. Such luxuries have become increasingly more invasive and some might say they have come at the detriment of human relationship.

What this film does well is to consider both rather implicitly with online friends on one side acting as his constant peanut gallery offering conflicting pieces of advice, constant pep talks, and further considerations as they all analyze his prospects as a body.

Then, of course, we have this demure woman he stood up for on the train. She might be the Japanese iteration of a manic pixie dreamgirl — granted I’m not sure what that means exactly — no matter she’s considerate and sweet. Their interactions continue with a present sent as a Thank You, then a dinner where they split the bill, and several other affable encounters.

The film’s aesthetic might be off-putting to some as it reflects a world constantly interfacing with their screens. Further suggesting the interweb of relationships that are created where people only know each other online, denoted by a continuously split screen and yet their lives spill outside of that and we get a small taste of not just Densha Otoko but all of his fan club. These characters too could have used more definition but they serve their purpose.

Train Man pushes onward and enters territory that none of them could have ever dreamed of. And he does it by being as nervous and frantic and considerate as ever. He gets a haircut (thank goodness), buys some new duds, and tries a few other techniques. Researching dinner conversations and testing the food beforehand. It’s actually quite sweet if he weren’t so uncomfortable to watch. But then again, who am I to judge?

Still, what matters is the time they spend together. It’s pleasant and kind not interrupted by awkward kisses or embarrassing hijinks with best friends. It just the two of them and he tries to discern how to move forward with this girl on that ever perilous tightrope of male-female relationships. They’ll at least have men befuddled for eternity. I can’t speak for the ladies.

That’s not to say there aren’t throw away moments or wacky and slightly peculiar ones that we probably could have done without. I won’t bother listing them because most importantly the film remains in our good graces for what it’s mainly set out to do. Allowing a socially awkward underdog a chance to shine. Through all his tripping and falling, sniveling and awkwardness, he gets some amount of satisfaction.

Consolidate it down to its best themes and scenes and you have a rewarding picture of just that. Because after all, it’s fairly easy to forgive a heartfelt movie like this for its gaffs since even in those very things it’s staying true to its core hero: Densha Otoko.

Likewise, I’m going to stick by my guns and enjoy this film perhaps more than I should have and yet in its innocence and jubilation, I found something that is so often lacking in American films trying to work within the same genre. Tighter editing would have been a major benefit but I’ll always hold that sincerity covers a multitude of faults. Call me an old softie if you will but maybe it’s the fact that I’m probably an otaku at heart. Whether he gets the girl or not, he has my sympathy.

3.5/5 Stars

Review: Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

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Like you I know what it is to forget and yet still be endowed with memory. These are only a couple fragments from this film stitched together but in many ways, they encapsulate the essence of its core themes.

I suppose such words ring true for all of us and Alain Resnais’ film is composed of a plethora of equally perplexing paradoxes that though never quite coming into full clarity nevertheless prove Hiroshima Mon Amour to be one of the most bewitching cinematic expressions born out of the French cinema. Without question, it is an undisputed touchstone of the forthcoming Nouvelle Vague that blew up the conventions of the 1960s.

The first time I ever saw Resnais’ romantic meditation there was something so arresting about it such that I will never forget the likes of Nevers and Hiroshima — the two entities that make up this film as not simply places of past tragedy but crucial to the very identities of the characters who come within the frame.

We never need to know the true names of this French actress (Emanuelle Riva in a riveting performance of immense grace) and the equally candid Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) who fall into the throes of a passionate affair together. They are represented well enough by these monikers — symbolic torchbearers of these names — emblematic of the age they ascribed to.

Like L’Eclisse (1961) or Dr. Strangelove (1964), this film too is in the wake of the atomic bomb and any subsequent discussion thereof cinematically speaking must at least acknowledge such films. Part of the necessity in this specific case is how the film takes a particular event and then extends it and intertwines it with so much more in such a way that it not only a monument to Hiroshima but a testament to human history.

We are people so quick to forget. We lose sight of the past. We bury our hurts deep inside. We are doomed to repeat many of our past mistakes. But still, more so we are capable of passions, emotions, and love that carry us through times of tribulation, pain, and suffering. It’s something to be immensely thankful for.

Resnais film is one of the great visual marvels of the 20th century with its graceful fade-outs and flashbacks — delicate camera zooms connecting memories and realities. Stylistically there’s a continuous poetic cadence of image and dialogue, repetitions with recollections. A solemnity exists in its very purposeful pacing that ties everything together with the utmost elegance which, far from being a muddled hodgepodge, forms a perplexing experience never to be fully elucidated.

It has very few equals and remains so as an achievement that can hardly be defined as a typical love story or any such blase categorization. It’s what we might conceive when we think of Film as art worthy of any sphere of discussion.

There’s hardly a meter to begin measuring how it makes us feel or the emotions it elicits.  Somehow connected to fate — two lovers crossing paths — these two individuals seemingly meant to be together and tied together not only by their romantic passion but their own histories. The striking flashback structure subsequently creates tiny microcosms of emotional resonance that flood with abandon.

Recollections of past scars unearthed over the course of the love affair. Both historical and personal. We have the depiction of the devastation in the aftermath of the bomb with images that are all but scorched into our mind’s eye with an unfettered pointedness. We are meant to see these images and take into account how they came into being.

But there’s also the personal trauma brought to the fore and exhumed with a kind of transfixing equanimity that’s hard to fully comprehend but nevertheless leaves us with something to ruminate over. Equally telling is the passage of time as memories begin to fade and minds begin to slowly forget. Again, that is the curse of our beings that we must fight to remember what has come before.

It’s no small coincidence that the cafe that our two lovers rendezvous at is none other than the Casablanca. The yearning and the melancholy are right there in the lyric of “As Time Goes By.” If you’ve never consciously thought about their meaning before then Resnais film might make you hear them anew and be moved.  Love, memory, and heartbreak are often so closely tied together. This is a film that dwells on each and finds some amount of catharsis.

The diversity of the crew is another glimmering bright spot of this joint partnership between nations with an abundance of involvement from both French and Japanese staff taking the shoot on-location to both countries. It’s a lovely marriage and a bond is formed by the picture just as the romance signals a tight-knit cross-cultural relationship on screen.

For some, individuals somewhat attuned to diverse backgrounds, Hiroshima Mon Amour is utterly groundbreaking in this realm. Though its cast is small, it’s a mighty statement having a French woman playing opposite a Japanese man. 50 years on it remains as an image that we do not see all that often, despite the changing of the tides.

Their closeness is palpable. Hands clasping tenderly. Eyes gazing with the deepest longing. The intimacy that they share speaks volumes. Even as it’s undercut by the morose strains of infidelity and wistfulness; this is a love story like few others.

4.5/5 Stars

 

 

 

Ohayo (1959)

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Good_morning_dvdIf Yasujiro Ozu can be considered foremost among Japan’s preeminent directors then there’s no doubt that Ohayo (Good Morning in English) is one of his most delightfully silly films. But that’s only on the surface level.

Young boys are unified in their affection for watching sumo on television and passing gas as a great gag to pull on their friends. Nosy housewives gossip incessantly whether it be the next door neighbor’s new washing machine or the mysterious disappearance of dues for the local women’s association. Meanwhile, most of the men go to work and spend their evenings knocking a few back at the bar noting how much the world is changing around them. Then they go home oftentimes a little drunk.

Ohayo is actually a reimagining of one of Ozu’s most remembered early pictures during his silent days I Was Born But… (1932) and yet he skillfully reworks the storyline into an everyday comedy of family and neighborhood drama that’s full of humor and his brand of quietly observant social commentary.

Ozu always took great care in analyzing family units and matrimonial bonds that affected relationships. Although we have a bit of a fleeting young romance in the works, this film’s greatest concern are two young boys from the Hayashi family who are giving their parents the silent treatment until they are allowed to have a television. Their parents are holding out and it begins a rather humorous ordeal as the brothers Minoru and the ridiculously comical Isamu (constantly exclaiming “I Love You”) try to make it through dinner, school, and so many other daily activities without a word.

As he would dissect many times over, Ozu focuses on the generational divide that was emerging and becoming increasingly prevalent in the post-war years as reflected by technological advancements like television and other such devices slowly turning present Japan into a land of a million idiots. At least that’s what the older generations feel.

Still, it’s just as equally occupied with the moral customs that have long ruled the nation where wives can speak so kindly to their neighbors up front only to slander them behind their backs a moment later. Saving face and personal honor is often cared about far more deeply than anything else — even in some circumstances when it happens to be at the expense of another family member.

Perhaps the most troubling thing is the very Japanese predilection to talk about nothing in particular, filling conversations with salutations, pleasantries, and comments on the current weather patterns. It hardly ever gets to anything of substance and that comes in numerous forms. Sometimes it means a young man never gets around to sharing his feelings with a girl or adults never being particularly candid with neighbors or spouses. There’s very little of that kind of transparency to be had. Few of the words passed along between people in conversation mean all that much.

The irony of the whole situation is that, in one such instance, it’s a young son who calls them out on it and he proceeds to get a heavy scolding from his father (Chishu Ryu) who bluntly tells him that he talks too much. Meanwhile, although Izamu can be constantly chiming “I Love You” in English, there’s an uneasy sense that his parents and most certainly his father, might have never said the words to him.

In these very simple ways Ozu rather delicately and still humorously tackles many of the issues that have long plagued an honor-based culture such as Japan’s but he does it with an adroitness that uses touches of humor and his own understanding of human nature to craft yet another universal tale that’s ultimately sympathetic in its portrayals.

It unsurprisingly feels like it could be a Japanese episode of Leave it to Beaver except for the father never has much of a talking to with his sons and the mother may be as put together as June Cleaver but hardly feels ever as affectionately maternal.

Equally spectacular is Ozu’s mise-en-scene which as per usual is meticulously staged and gorgeous in scene after scene. He offers up each individual image in a flat two-dimensional way that can best be described as taking cues from not only the theater but Japanese woodblock paintings with wonderful symmetry and compositions boosted by color.

He uses the clique of adjoining homes as the perfect set to send his characters in and out of with the hint of comedic forethought. While watching characters walking by on the hillside up above the homes — their figures slowly moving in and out of the frame past the houses — this provides some of Ohayo’s most visually stimulating images pleasing the eye incessantly.

There’s always a visual fearlessness that you see in very few others because he not only has color at his disposal but the staging is on point as is his disregard of the 180-degree rule of perspective. It just works. What is more, he also continues to use what could best be called establishing shots by western audiences. Except they hardly ever need to establish anything. It’s as if he simply put them there because they are vivid depictions of the reality he is painting — adding yet another distinct contour to the world he is working with — going beyond the figures that he places within the frame.

There’s no doubt that this is Ozu but not all that surprisingly this might be my personal favorite in his oeuvre for the aforementioned reasons. It feels like Ozu operating at his most playful while nevertheless maintaining his peak form as a filmmaker.

4.5/5 Stars

 

Tokyo Sonata (2008)

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I can’t even begin to comprehend what it’s like to get laid off in Tokyo. In any city, any place, any circumstance it’s one of the feelings which would instigate the formation of a lump in your throat. But Tokyo is swarming with so many people and so much competition; it seems like you would be practically swallowed up. I’m surprised there are any available jobs at all.

That’s what makes it especially demeaning for Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) to go to the unemployment office. He’s long held an administrative job in a prestigious company but when he is suddenly let go, Mr. Sasaki finds that he is overqualified for any amount of work offered him at the agency. Surely, beggars can’t be choosers but no matter how many times you’ve had that phrase shoved down your throat, it doesn’t make such a reality any easier. A janitor is a far cry from a cushy desk job.

By an act of serendipitous chance, he happens upon an old school chum who has been stricken by the same fate and yet being three months in he’s seasoned at the lifestyle of keeping up appearances even as he attends the food line with the homeless. He still dresses in his suit, carries his briefcase, and feigns taking business calls. It’s an unnerving dichotomy that Ryuhei soon readily adopts as well.

But behind every man, there is usually an entire family and Tokyo Sonata is very much a dissection of the Japanese familial unit after a stressor is applied. All parties are affected. But we see the cracks even before the news breaks.

Kenji, the youngest child is caught in class with an erotic manga which he vehemently denies owning. But as an act of retaliation, he calls out his teacher in front of the class for reading similar material on the train. He purportedly saw him and the man has no defense. They meet later in a quieter exchange and his teacher simply states, “Let’s stop poking each other’s wounds and ignore them.”

It’s a morose response to deep issues of loneliness and isolation and while this particular instance pertains to love and sexual intimacy we can take this very same outlook and apply it to many of the film’s dynamics. If we keep things hidden and disregard them things might still work out.

On a whim, Kenji wants to play the piano and yet it’s for a very understandable reason. It’s because of a girl. He has a crush. Well, actually it turns out to be the woman teacher and she’s twice his age and recently divorced but that doesn’t stop him from using his month’s lunch allowance to pay for lessons without his parent’s knowledge. Again, the family operates in secret deceptions. Little white lies and overall detachment.

The eldest son, Takashi, by some peculiar circumstance, is signing up for the American military as a non-citizen for deployment in The Middle East. Of course, he too has moved forward with the plan without consulting his parents. He ambushes his mother with the news quite suddenly because he needs her written approval. He knows that she is the easier touch and doesn’t even bother telling his father at first because he knows full well the response that will come.

Their home life as represented by the dinner table feels like such a sterile environment and that’s in a scenario where none of the chinks are showing. No one says anything in fact. I feel sorry for the woman of the house. As both wife and mother, Megumi (Kyōko Koizumi ) is dutiful and maternal. She’s not necessarily aloof but the world around her feels so unloving and unfeeling. It’s hard to make a contented life for yourself when the entire atmosphere is dictated by the man of the house based on cultural precedence alone.

When the deep-rooted concept of saving face goes so far it means lying to your family I think there’s a problem. Because the lie can’t be kept forever. And even when the people close to you (or not close to you)  don’t let on, eventually they know. It’s devastating to watch since it lacks any of the normal benchmarks we use to measure devastation. It reveals just how matter-of-fact something like this can be. The response is a non-response.

I know full-well that these types of circumstances play out; I’m not sure if I buy every last bit of execution in Tokyo Sonata. It feels a little too contrived. And yet even in the things that feel too perfectly planned there’s no doubt some truth. How everyone in their own way is trying to pull something off behind everyone else’s back. There is distrust in every corner of the house. If even things that aren’t altogether bad are hidden, what about the ones that are catastrophic like losing your job or little dirty secrets like reading racy manga? Multiply that across an entire society and you can readily predict the unnerving implications.

It is a picture where everyone wants to wake up and find out that it is all a bad dream and it very well could be. This is Tokyo Sonata’s true departure from any pretense of the real world and in these moments while the film loses some integrity as a true-to-life drama it undoubtedly gains some inscrutability from visions of hallucinatory nightmares. At these crossroads, we see the clearest articulation of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s background in J-Horror.

But in the end, the darker mood gives way to the most subdued of crescendos born out of an unassuming performance of “Claire de Lune.” It’s one of the few moments of palpable warmth in the film and it embodies the incomparable magnetism that music has. I can’t think of a better way to salvage Tokyo Sonata. It’s a purposeful statement of not feeling the need to say anything directly. Impeccable for a culture such as this. Maybe it serves to only exacerbate the problem. But change is incremental. It will not happen overnight. This just might be a baby step toward a more personable future.

3.5/5 Stars

An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

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an_autumn_afternoon_filmposterThere’s something overwhelmingly soothing about Ozu, simultaneously slowing my pulse and calming my nerves. Yes, An Autumn Afternoon stands as his final film. Yes, he would sadly pass away the following year. But there’s a comfort to watching his films unfold — even his last one. The drama is everyday and somehow disarming and pleasant. We often take for granted that Ozu was not planning to end here. This was not supposed to be his last film. It just happened that way.

However, that is the way that the world turns and with such of an outcome we get one final candid view of the director at work — his confident and streamlined aesthetic that at this point is instantly recognizable. It’s not simply about content, though his film examines many of his usual preoccupations of years gone by. It’s really about the form.

His palette is by this point assured and at the same time vibrant and free. Everything is in its precise place, the colors bright and cheerful — a certain amount of authenticity married with simple visuals that take impeccable staging, facades, and a static camera to tell his narrative in a very particular way.

And he’s willing to break the rules of perspective that have forever been textbook Hollywood law and yet the way he does it is hardly off-putting. In fact, it’s rather reassuring. His figures always looking at us directly, carrying on conversations, sharing in pleasantries or even chortling together over some small trifle. And we get to be fully a part of that both the trivialities and the drama.

Still, I am constantly being drawn to different things around the edges of the screen. Distracted in a good way by various bottles placed throughout the frame, bowls placed in front of our figures, or Suntory logos that hang overhead. Important, certainly not, but still they mesmerize me for some unexplainable reason.

And I have long gotten over any amount of impatience in the pacing of Ozu. Shots of empty rooms. Seemingly pointless conversations. Eating and drinking. It’s all palatable. It’s more about savoring every little moment for what it is. Because that’s what Ozu was truly a master at capturing. So many people behind a camera can capture high drama with enough action, intrigue, and scandal. But it takes a fairly fearless individual to put a microscope (or a movie camera for that matter) up to the banality of life. Yet it’s the true irony, that it’s precisely in those places we kind find so much truth pertinent to our own existences.  Yes, it’s true.

Meals with friends. Family conversations. Husbands. Wives. Fathers. Daughters. Brothers. And so on. It’s no surprise that these are all things that Ozu looked at before and if he had continued making films he would have undoubtedly continued. The same social mores and familial relationships that while uniquely Japanese, still share enough with the rest of humanity to be oddly universal.

In this case, his favorite protagonist (Chishu Ryu) is a widower who lives with his grown daughter and son. It’s his buddies who chide him to let his daughter go so she can get married before she’s an old maid. And while in previous iterations Ozu looked deeply at the heartbreak, the emotional effects are slight. The daughter is relatively happy. The father is wistful but still resolved to live his life. The ever-changing aspects of life are felt but hardly earth-shattering. Instead, mankind is forced to continually wax and wane with the times. There is a time for a laughter, a time for tears, a time for work, a time for play, and so on.

Although the father-daughter relationship is the nucleus the film boasts a surprising depth of character. There are coworkers, old war acquaintances, former teachers, and the brother and sister-in-law. In fact, the venerable Mariko Okada is always one of my favorites in Ozu’s films and she picks up where she left off in Late Autumn with a certain spunkiness and vivacity.

If this must be our exit point from Ozu’s work, it’s a relatively easy place to leave. It’s a beautiful, warm portrait of modernity. Two old war buddies can assert that maybe it was for the best that the Allies won the war. A husband can really want a pair of golf clubs, though he doesn’t have the money to buy them. Old men can gather around a table for a party and joke about their old teachers. It’s a delectable slice of life.

4.5/5 Stars

Tokyo Drifter (1966)

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Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter is a paramount attraction of 60s camp packaged in a yakuza   B-film. It opens with highly stylized black and white imagery injected with almost psychedelic shades of color that never again leave the film’s palette. Its setting is Tokyo, Japan — but far different than any Tokyo humanity has actually seen in recent history. As such it does not exist and never has. Only in the mind of the director. It’s a swinging place of ultra-cool yakuza, jazzy vibes, and a fantastical atmosphere. Oddly indicative of the shoestring budget it was hewn from and still somehow invariably engaging.

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We spend much of the film following in the footsteps of our eponymous lead Phoenix Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari), a yakuza hitman whose every effort to go straight is being challenged and impeded on all sides. He cannot escape the life that defines him and finds himself continually caught in a web of yakuza gang wars that will not give him a moment’s peace. There are gunfights, brawls, even a bit of swordplay. He has a romantic flame, a sullen nightclub singer who serenades the world with her melancholy tunes, but even she cannot redeem his existence. There are always hitmen either after his life or looking to drag him back into the fray that he threw off.

But going into plot points and character arcs already strays too far from what makes this film enjoyable. There’s often the heightened tension found in many of Sergio Leone’s greatest Spaghetti Westerns here, employing many of the same stylized characterizations. The fact that our main protagonist announces himself through song and whistling strangely feels reminiscent to “Harmonica” (Charles Bronson) in Once Upon a Time in the West. But this is a different beast. Rambunctious, chaotic and vibrant as it is.

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Once more Suzuki is gifted in taking the mediocre — a narrative with very little to it — then instilling it with all sorts of energy similar to other inspired mavericks like Sam Fuller. But by the end, he’s transformed the narrative into an incomprehensible bedlam blessed with his own wickedly stylish aesthetic. There are sweet suits and shiny wheels. Nothing feels the least bit realistic. And it’s filled to the gills with surrealist situations conceived out of Suzuki’s own whimsical vision. Still, all the while it’s influenced by pop art and to some degree Technicolor musicals of the 1950s. It’s a sight to be sure, leaving its indelible mark on the b film niche. If anyone says low budget gangster flicks are the dregs of cinema, they’ve obviously never been acquainted with Seijun Suzuki

3.5/5 Stars

Branded to Kill (1967)

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branded to kill 1Branded to Kill is the stuff of legend inasmuch as director Seijun Suzuki offered up this wonderfully wacky, perverse, dynamic film and was subsequently dumped by his studio.  At Nikkatsu they accused Suzuki of crafting an oeuvre that made “no sense and no money.” And if we watch it with the eyes of a rational, money-grubbing business mind, there’s a point to be made. Because this film is ridiculous on so many accounts, absurd in plot and action, starring an unlikely cult hero — a silky smooth hit man with prominent cheekbones and a hyper-sexualized penchant for steamed rice.

Its budget and yakuza genre suggest it has no right be remembered as little more than a throwaway action flick–a petty amalgamation of American film noir and James Bond. In fact, that’s probably what the bigwigs at the studio would have liked, but Suzuki worked his own bit of cinematic magic.

If we set the scene everything looks sleek but potentially uninspired. This is your typical everyday hitman movie where each gunman is deadlier than the next, trying to knock off their marks so they can move of the hit list to the coveted  #1 spot. Except it’s all played off satirically. That’s important to note.

From the outset, Goro Hanado is # 3 and he is joined by a drunken, spineless cohort in protecting a client from other assassins. It’s entertaining action that maintains some sense of stylized reality. But soon enough the cutting and jumps in continuity make Branded to Kill into a full-fledged absurdist trip – simultaneously wacky and deadly. Now we’re getting into stranger territory.

branded to kill 4Phase two follows Goro as he flaunts his tireless inventiveness as a hit man. Hiding inside a cigarette lighter advertisement and shooting his target through an adjoining water pipe for good measure. Then the femme fatale Misako slinks into his life and after a botched job, his life is in jeopardy, an unlikely adversary being his wife.  She rightly characterizes them as beasts and their home life is pure chaos.

By the latter half, the film has completely careened off the rails of convention, at times functioning as a widescreen collage of glorious visuals matched with the sweet cadence of sounds and score. Chiaroscuro lighting is pulled directly from the shadowy avenues of noir streets, with the camera, often moving leisurely through modern interiors and human bodies constantly obscured by fountains of water, butterflies or whatever else.

branded to kill 2By now we have the total dissolution of the character we have known as he begins to sink into an all-out state of sniveling paranoia. He finally meets the mysterious number  1 and far from being a tense showdown, it turns into a rather pitiful scenario. They go arm and arm to the toilet, not allowing each other out of sight as number 1 decides how to finish off his hapless foe.The final showdown comes and it’s all we could ask for. Brutal, perplexing and above all undeniably unique – accented with the brushstrokes of an utterly creative mind.

My thoughts thus far feel admittedly disjointed and almost incoherent. I feel like I’m writing chicken scratch crossed with gobbledygook, but that’s the perfect homage to Suzuki’s art. Its aesthetic is hard to comprehend in common terms. Is it a masterpiece? Is it not a masterpiece? I’m not quite sure I can give a clear conclusion. What measuring stick can we hope to use with it? And that’s hardly the point. If you want something immeasurably different–something that will shake you out of the millennial malaise, view Branded to Kill. You might not like it because those Nikkatsu fellows were right. No sense. No money. But there’s more to life, now isn’t there?

4/5 Stars

Review: High and Low (1963)

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highandlow1High and Low (or Heaven and Hell in the original Japanese) is a yin and yang film about the polarity of man in many ways. Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is an affluent executive in the National Shoe Company. He worked his way up the corporate ladder from the age 16, because of his determination and commitment to a quality product. Now his colleagues want his help in forcing the company’s czar out. They come to his modernistic hilltop abode to get his support. Instead, they receive his ire, splitting in a huff. What follows is a risky plan of action from Gondo that is both fearless and shrewd. He takes all his capital to buy stock in the company so he can take over, but his whole financial stability hangs in the balance. He knows exactly what it means, but he wasn’t suspecting certain unforeseen developments.

Then in a matter of moments, everything changes. Gondo gets a menacing phone call claiming that his young boy is kidnapped and an astronomical sum of money is expected in return. Gondo and then his wife are instantly horrified by the news only to be relieved when their boy winds up unharmed. The same’s not true for his chauffeur’s boy Shinichi. The mistake in identity is obvious, but it makes no difference to the perpetrator because he still has leverage. He wants to make Gondo sweat since this is more than an isolated incident. He wants to make the man suffer – bringing him down to the level of all the unfortunate souls who live in the wasteland down below.

highandlow2At this point, the police are called and they arrive incognito, ready to stake out the joint and do the best they can to get the boy back safe and sound. This section of the film almost in its entirety takes place within the confines of Gondo’s house and namely the front room overlooking the city. It’s the perfect set up for Akira Kurosawa to situate his actors. He uses full use of the widescreen and his fluid camera movements keep them perfectly arranged within the frame.

Although the number of bodies also increases the anxiety in the space with Gondo at the center of it all trying to figure out what to do. Moral issues begin bubbling up that no man would have to deal with and yet they end up right in his lap. His whole business empire that he’s given his heart and soul to hangs in the balance of this decision, but he must make it nonetheless. Make the difficult choice to pay the ransom and do what’s moral, or not pay it and maintain his financial stability. For once in his life, their’s a hesitancy.

It’s as if he’s getting pulled back and forth with his wife chiding him, “Success isn’t worth losing your humanity,” while his opportunistic right-hand man is chomping at the bit to get a move on. He’s not going to allow his superior to sink all their prospects at financial gain.

As things progress, we finally move from the living room to the train where Gondo prepares to make the drop, but his adversary has planned out everything and has a clean getaway. The money is gone and now the police double their efforts. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, his backers are prepared to push Gondo out, because of his inability to pay them. Public opinion soars for the selfless act, and we finally meet our protagonist’s unknown adversary.

Really this second leg of the film is mostly about the procedural aspect as they begin hitting the pavement canvassing and trying to close in on the culprit. This section intercuts the reports going on at headquarters with actual police work on the streets and it’s strangely engaging.

highandlow3Finally, with the help of Shinichi, they make a startling discovery that ties back to the kidnapper. And the boy’s drawings along with a colorful stream of smoke help them move in ever closer. What follows is an elaborate web of trails through the streets as they work to catch the culprit in his crime, to put him away for good. And it works.

highandlow5But High and Low cannot end there without a consideration of the consequences. Gondo has been brought low. He’s losing his mansion and must start a new job on the bottom of the food chain once more. His enemy requests a final meeting as he prepares for his imminent fate, and this is perhaps the most grippingly painful scene. Gondo’s face-to-face with the man who made him suffer so much. Toshiro Mifune’s violent acting style serves him well as he wrestles so intensely with his own conscience. And yet at this junction, he is past that. What is he to do but listen? In this way, it’s difficult to know who to feel sorrier for — the man who is resigned to a certain fate passively or the one who goes out proud and arrogantly against death. Both have entered some dark territory and it’s no longer about high or low or even heaven and hell. They’re stuck in some middle ground. An equally frightening purgatory.

Yes, this works as an indictment of the justice system and even the capitalistic framework of an industrialist post-war Japan, but it’s even more so an acknowledgment of man’s own morality and mortality. We are far from indestructible, unfaltering beings.

4.5/5 Stars

Late Autumn (1960)

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lateautumn1Yasujiro Ozu has the esteem of being christened “The Most Japanese Filmmaker.” It’s certainly a high honor, but at first, it can feel rather counter-intuitive because after all, such a great master of cinema cannot be considered average or a composite in the scheme of Japanese film history. And I don’t think that is what this title is trying to get at. The fact is that Ozu, over time, really experimented with the conventions written by classical western filmmakers and he built his own unique aesthetic that is quite evident later in his career. That being said, his film’s are very Japanese in the way they interact with and dissect the culture that he comes out of, and I think that is paramount to understanding and ultimately appreciating his work.

It’s no different with Late Autumn, Ozu’s penultimate film, a social-familial drama that shares a great deal of similarity to some of his earlier work. The fact is, he’s constantly returning to these ideas of marriage, family, generational differences, and the underlying etiquette that is so prevalent in Japan and Asian cultures in general. But of course, much of what he examines is universal and that’s what allows his films to remain timeless.

With Late Autumn, in particular, it’s easy to marvel at how the director frames his space because he seems to have tremendous spatial recognition. He’s confident in his aesthetics which he highlights with colors and axis lines, which are then further embellished with human subjects. Not many directors are brazen enough to show us an empty room, a hallway, or the mundane facade of a building, but Ozu is so self-assured in his composition. They are too long and occur too often to be establishing shots. He wants to continually convey to us the space that his characters inhabit and he’s meticulous. Everything is placed with pinpoint precision just the way he wants. And it shows.

On a basic level, Late Autumn can meld nicely with many of the director’s other works also based around the seasons. In this color installment, three adult men gather for the funeral of one of their mutual childhood friends. It’s a sad occasion as they wistfully remember the good old days when they were young and in love. But as a service to their deceased friend, they agree to find a husband for his sweet sunshine-faced daughter Ayako (Yoko Tsukasa). However, they also worry for his widower Akiko (Setsuko Hara), who is equally beautiful, since the years have been very good to her. What follows is the typical fumbling attempts at matchmaking, trading manners, and so on. When Mr. Mamiya inquires if he should ask for a young man’s picture and resume, we assume it’s a joke, but he’s quite serious.

What makes Autumn different than earlier classics like Late Spring or even Tokyo Story, is that it shows the next generation of young people.  The kids embrace the rockability of Elvis while reading Mickey Mouse cartoons. The young adults are folks who have grown up in the specter of WWII. They want to leave behind the world of useless honor and restraint.They speak their minds and show their discontent.

lateautumn2I enjoy the light touches of humor injected into this film because the three chums sit around the bar making observations with a bouncy score that seems more at home in a Tati comedy. Sometimes they’re genuinely trying to be funny, but more often it’s hilarious because they’re actually so dysfunctional. They take on this task of watching over their friend’s family with all seriousness, but they get sidetracked by their own desires and personal concerns. They stir up rumors, make waves, and ultimately cause a lot of trouble. Everything gets muddled and it’s the blunt and frank assertions of young Yuriko (Mariko Okada) that points out their failures. She sees how they have made a mess of things and calls them out for it. Perhaps it feels abrasive, but I think they like her for it and the audience does as well. She’s a reflection of this new generation that’s not looking to mince words or hide behind social etiquette. They’re fed up with that type of lifestyle. In fact, Yuriko is the one who says marriage is the worst. The ideal would be if love and marriage always went together, but they don’t.

lateautumn3Thus, although the relationship between Ayako and her mother takes center stage as the film progresses, Yuriko is extremely pivotal. It’s the lives of the first two women that are affected by the unintentional bungling of these men, but it is Yuriko, who signifies change for the better. In many ways, this story feels very similar to Late Spring in particular, but the interest is not so much in original ideas as it is in re-imagining ideas. It’s a film for the 1960s where men are slowly losing their vice-like grip and societal norms are changing as women move to the forefront. But what remains are the suggestion that it’s alright to push back against societal pressures, and interpersonal relationships are delicate flowers that must be cultivated with care. So easily they can be trampled and destroyed. It takes a certain type of person to acknowledge their own faults while persistently loving those around them.

This is the utmost compliment, but in many ways, Setsuko Hara reminds me a great deal of my own grandmother, a woman who radiated a genuine kindness that was apparent to everyone who walked through life alongside her. Bless their souls. Both of them.

4.5/5 Stars