“Blindness”: The Japanese connections

There’s a buzz in Japan today about Fernando Meirelles’ film adaptation of José Saramago’s 1999 novel “Blindness” and how it will open this year’s Cannes Film Festival. There had been hope that Japan would have a strong showing this year, but it ended up that Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Tokyo Sonata” will be the only Japanese film in the line-up.

I guess spurred on by this disappointment the Japanese media and cinephiles are digging for Japanese connections with the festival opener. Tokyograph noted that Yoshino Kimura and Yusuke Iseya (pictured above), who last co-starred in Takashi Miike’s “Sukiyaki Western Django”, will be playing the supporting roles of the first couple to lose their sight during a mysterious epidemic of blindness that ends up crippling an entire city.

Meanwhile Jason Gray has reported on his blog that the financing trail for “Blindness” can in part be traced back to Japan with producer Sakai Sonoko and production company Cinema Investment Corp going in with Canada and Brazil to make the film happen. Cinema Investment Corp has helped finance films like “Sakuran” and “A Gentle Breeze in the Village” in the past.

It’s these tenuous links that have folks declaring that this will be the first time since Akira Kurosawa’s “Dreams” in 1990 that there will be Japanese representation at the opening of the prestigious festival; but as much as I’m a huge crusader for Japanese cinema I think that it’s a bit of an overblown statement to call “Blindness” a Japanese film. I mean actor/ director/ writer Don McKellar penned the screenplay for “Blindness”, so… Isn’t it great to have a Canadian film open Cannes this year? See what I mean?

Here’s hoping that Japan gets its deserved representation at next year’s Cannes.

Read the Tokyograph report here: http://www.tokyograph.com/news/id-3098
And Jason Gray’s report here: http://jasongray.blogspot.com/2008/05/japan-in-cannes-blind-spot-colin-g.html