Review: Notes from Tokyo FILMeX 2010: part two
Hirokazu Kore-eda's "The Days After"
The Radish and the Carrot
Dir. Minoru Shibuya (1965)
This film was made to commemorate the achievements of the great director Yasujiro Ozu who died in 1963 and is based on a story he devised. But while watching the film, one cannot help but notice how un-Ozu-like the film is. Shibuya never committed to a stylistic consistency in the way Ozu did and this is especially evident in The Radish and the Carrot, a film about a straight-laced company man who one day disappears from his family and work. Shibuya was also prepared to delve into the less respectable sides of Japan as in a detour to a love hotel and the prostitutes who inhabit it (though we should note that Ozu could be partial to the odd fart joke).
Modern People
Dir. Minoru Shibuya (1952)
A film about a corrupt but well-meaning government bureaucrat and the trouble he gets into when his daughter is introduced to his younger colleague, Modern People is ultimately an interesting indictment of the moralistic justice system that pins societal dysfunctions on individuals. As we watch a scene of a character being sentenced for murder and corruption, it has become obvious that evil is rooted not in individuals (the “après-guerres“) but in something broader, more sinister, insinuating itself into Japanese society in the post-war years.
The Depths
Dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi
A film that tracks the intense relationship between a professional photographer and a male prostitute. The script deals with some weighty themes like art, obsession and sexuality. Disappointingly, the filmmakers used the Q&A that followed the screening as an opportunity to distance themselves as much as possible from the film’s homosexual content. This lack of conviction might explain how, despite the fine acting and accomplished technical aspects, the film is so workmanlike and devoid of any individuality. (I found the now standard plaintive innocuous piano score particularly irritating.) It’s curious that a film about artistic obsession should itself be so passionless.
Single Man
Dir. Jie Hao
Despite being noticeably inconsistent in its formal construction, one finds that a director’s level of mastery over film language is not as important as the cultivation of a particular attitude towards their subject matter. This is certainly the case with Jie Hao who introduces us to the sexual mores of a remote mountain village in China with brutal honesty and a warm sense of humour. As the film treads into darker territory with the sale of a young woman from Sichuan to a much older man, Hao thankfully chooses the path of ironic distance over sombre condemnation. The film’s humour is structured by the juxtaposition of the romanticism of the characters’ rural life and the bawdiness of their sexual behaviour highlighted by some exquisitely terrible pop music. A funny look at the fringes of a rapidly modernising country, happily inspired by Shohei Imamura whom the filmmakers acknowledged in the Q&A following the screening.
The Nose
Dir. Sang-il Lee
This film screened as part of a special program in collaboration with NHK who commissioned renowned Japanese directors to adapt horror stories written by figures of Japan’s literary canon. A short film about a monk cursed with a monstrously long nose who is persecuted by all who see it, Lee’s contribution to this series is a strong, if familiar, take on the Frankenstein story wherein the story’s nominal monster unveils the truly monstrous behaviour of civilised society.
The Days After
Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
Another entry in NHK’s series of “kaidan” horror stories, Kore-eda excellently portrays a couple confronted with the spectre of their son who died as an infant. What elevates this film above being a merely polite evocation of loss is Kore-eda’s trademark attention to the microprocesses of living – cooking, working, talking, playing – and their surprising connection to the grand themes he tackles. Never melodramatic, Kore-eda evinces an almost journalistic detailing of human behaviour even as he operates outside the bounds of realism (as in 1998’s After Life).
Love Addiction
Dir. Nobuteru Uchida
It is possible for a film to be both silly and powerful. Just look at many of the works of the early French New Wave. Uchida’s film achieves just that in its melodramatic rendering of the romantic relationships between four co-workers in Japan. The film is absolutely compelling in its detailing of contemporary Japanese life – subways, tiny apartments, love hotels – and tackles the madness of love, the abyss of the other, obsessions and disavowals with refreshing directness. Uchida brings the film to a comically dramatic climax before improbably transporting the film’s actions from urban Japan to a wooded landscape, a bold gesture that puzzled some members of the audience at FILMeX.
When Love Comes
Dir. Tso-chi Chang
A potentially interesting family melodrama about a teenage girl who falls pregnant that disappointingly falls prey to that tendency to assign each character a contrived defining dysfunction. There are no complex characters but instead the Intellectually Disabled Man, the Alcoholic or the Infertile Woman. The film ends as it begins – with a birth – positioning its characters’ tribulations as the universal phenomena of the circle of life. Its characters only role is to beautifully, pathetically endure the same hardships as the generations that preceded them.
Carmen’s Innocent Love
Dir. Keisuke Kinoshita (1953)
A sequel to Carmen Comes Home but a radical departure in terms of style. Gone are the serene wide shots of Japan’s pastoral landscape, replaced with urban interiors shot in unsettlingly manic canted angles. Set in a bustling Tokyo, the film comically depicts the stripper Carmen’s naive quest to find love in a world where sex, money and power rule all. Kinoshita also experiments with an electronic score in this harsh depiction of modern society and the rapid deterioration of social bonds.
Cold Fish
Dir. Sion Sono
An obscenely violent and darkly funny crime film about a man whose family gets caught up with a psychotic businessman. The film is perhaps juvenile in its complete nihilism and often too insistent on positioning itself as a colorfully entertaining provocation. Still, there remains a mad, hysterical energy to the film that leads to some stunningly surreal imagery as in one scene where a woman embraces the corpse of her lover, half of which she has butchered into small pieces.
Esther
Dir. Amos Gitai (1985)
The last of the important retrospectives held by FILMeX was on Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai. This film, the first of his Exile Trilogy, retells in Brechtian fashion the story of Purim in which the Persian Queen Esther stopped a genocide of the Jewish people and responded with bloody vengeance on the enemies of the Jews and their families. With the violent intrusion of anachronistic details into the narrative (for example the sounds of an airplane flying overhead) Esther’s story is transformed into a commentary on the contemporary conflict between Israel and Palestine. One could not help but see an affinity between this film and Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who can Recall His Past Lives in the way both filmmakers found the basis for their radical narratives in traditional story forms.
Berlin-Jerusalem
Dir. Amos Gitai (1989)
Tells the parallel stories of two Jewish women’s struggle for freedom – one an Expressionist poet during Nazi Germany, the other a revolutionary leader in Palestine – to address the troubling and complex role of Jerusalem in the Jewish imagination. Gitai continues the stylistic path of Esther with each scene typically presented in a single shot. An excellent final shot – a tracking shot of Else Lasker-Schuler walking through contemporary Jerusalem – creates a remarkable tension between foreground and background that reminded me of the work of Alfonso Cuaron.
Roses On Credit
Dir. Amos Gitai
This is Amos Gitai’s latest film, an interesting film that poses a question about the intersection of war and lifestyle. However, its portrait of the consumerist society of post-war France, intended as a reflection of today’s political apathy, seems an inadequate account of the real crisis of politics today. The film’s young female protagonist in her quest to emulate the shopping catalogues she constantly reads represents a desire to be free of politics, to live without care. What this film doesn’t speak to is a world in which “politics” is everpresent but increasingly absorbed into consumer culture.
Poetry
Dir. Chang-dong Lee
FILMeX closed with with a quietly provocative film from Korea about an elderly woman whose search for transcendence through art is contrasted with the harsh reality of her existence. The film poses some interesting questions about the meaning of art as a practice. Does the tragedy of the film lie in how the violence of society prevents the protagonist from seeing the beauty that will grant her artistic transcendence? Or is the protagonist’s search for beauty itself problematic in that writing poetry often operates as a way for her to divorce herself from reality? A perfect film to frame what was an excellent festival.
