NIPPON CONNECTION ’12 REVIEW: Come as You Are

ソーローなんてくだらない (Sôrô nante kudaranai)

Released: 2011

Director: Kôta Yoshida

Starring: 

Tateto Serizawa

Nagisa Umeno

Saya Yasuda

Running time: 102 min.

Reviewed by Marc Saint-Cyr

The setup for Kôta Yoshida’s latest film sounds like it wouldn’t at all be out of place in one of Judd Apatow’s projects: a young slacker named Haruo (Tateto Serizawa) who is stuck in his job as a video store supervisor faces an embarrassing problem that impedes his ability to form proper romantic relationships: premature ejaculation. After Momose, an alluring new employee, arrives at his store, he decides to actively attempt to cure himself. However, this task is not that easy to pull off in his apartment, where his roommate Noriko (Nagisa Umeno), limited living space and thin walls eliminate any privacy he hopes to achieve. When the website he consults instructs him to find a partner to help him, Haruo comes up with a bold proposition: in return for chipping in more money for rent and keeping the place clean, he wants Noriko to assist him in his goal to endure sexual activity for fifteen minutes. After much pleading and sucking up, she agrees to do him this very personal favor.

            

“Come As You Are” certainly contains the sex comedy ingredients one would expect from that description (not to mention the cheeky English title). Multiple scenes show, through careful camera positions and blocking, Haruo desperately testing his endurance with several masturbation sessions and engaging in intimate encounters that end in awkwardness and failure. At one point, the poor guy can’t even keep himself from cursing and yelling at his own malfunctioning member. But rather than simply fishing for laughs to be had at his characters’ expense, Yoshida ensures that the latter – particularly Haruo and Noriko – are properly developed and given personalities that extend far beyond the comic situations. In doing so, both Yoshida and his talented actors are to be commended. Serizawa’s portrayal of Haruo is especially impressive for how he constantly uses body language and facial expressions to reflect his character’s bound-up insecurities and tormented yearning. The sad attempts at feigning indifference, the all-too-brief flashes of confidence, the brutally frank confessions and humiliations – they all give real weight to Haruo’s plight and make him intensely sympathetic. Opposite him, Umeno’s Noriko acts as the more practical and mature one who keeps herself focused on her own priorities, which include a crucial school exam. Her thrice-daily “help” sessions with Haruo are dutifully carried out with an old sock of his (eventually replaced by gloves) and are aurally portrayed by way of some wonderfully detailed sound effects.

            

Perhaps predictably, the unique arrangement between Haruo and Noriko eventually reveals the genuine feelings they have for one another. But don’t be fooled – this is not a simple, meet-cute romantic comedy. Instead, the film remains focused on the problems that plague and, in fact, define Haruo’s personal life. Having worked at the video store and lived in the same apartment for eight years, he prefers to tell people he is pursuing acting jobs on the side when in fact he has clearly abandoned that dream. Directionless and lazy, the only real control he seems able to exercise is over the shift schedule at work, which he mostly uses so he can attempt to woo Momose. Yet through Noriko and others, he steadily realizes just how sad and self-destructive his current lifestyle has become. After a certain point, one wonders if his performance problem is in fact the latest warning sign that he needs to make some serious changes for his own good.

            

Kôta Yoshida is probably best known for his 2010 film “Yuriko’s Aroma,” another refreshingly honest and insightful work about people’s sex lives and the complications within them that can spawn alienation. This is an area he has proven himself to be quite talented in, as he clearly understands that, unlike so many other films that take such matters for granted, human sexuality is a strange and complex thing that everyone experiences differently. Yoshida has openly demonstrated his sympathies for the less confident underdogs of the world, in the process exploring the more sensitive issues that can lie in waiting when affections and simple human urges are involved. His characters not only search for personal acceptance and fulfillment, but also a way they can achieve that ever-elusive thing called happiness without getting trampled upon by the so-called social norms they are so often challenged by. Indeed, Yoshida’s films seem to leave us with an important question: is there such a thing as being “normal?” If Yoshida suggests that the answer is no, then he also makes it clear that that is not such a bad thing.

NIPPON CONNECTION ’12 REVIEW: The Sound of Light

ひかりのおと (Hikari no oto)

Released: 2011

Director: Juichiro Yamasaki

Starring: 

Yoshitomo Fujihisa

Toyoyuki Sato

Yoshiko Nakamoto

Eri Mori

Running time: 89 min.

Reviewed by Marc Saint-Cyr

“The Sound of Light” is a film entirely set in one of the tougher corners of the world; a place where hard work is a minimum requirement for making a living – and not even that can guarantee prosperity or even survival. Yoshitomo Fujihisa plays the main character Yusuke, a young man who, three years prior to the events of the film, moved back to his family’s farm in the mountain town of Maniwa in Okayama Prefecture from Tokyo after his father (Toyoyuki Sato) badly injured his foot. This move put Yusuke’s ambitions of pursuing a musical career on indefinite hold – a necessary sacrifice so he could lend a much-needed hand in the many physically demanding tasks dutifully upheld by his father and grandmother (Junko Sato) over the years. A small dairy farm fighting off debt, the business requires the constant feeding and milking of its cows, among other chores. Here, routine and dedication are the defining factors of daily life, bringing a regular flow of early mornings and toil.

The events of “The Sound of Light” are overshadowed by a past event described in an opening title card: three years ago, a dairy farmer named Natsuo Asano was killed in a car accident that spared his wife Yoko (Eri Mori) and son Ryota. These characters are tied to Yusuke’s family in various ways: Natsuo was best friends with Yoshiyuki (Takeshi Masago), Yusuke’s uncle, and the two men worked hard together to establish their own dairy farm. But in the wake of Natsuo’s death, Yoshiyuki’s life and business collapsed into ruin to the point that he now bears the reputation of a madman. Also, Yusuke is in love with Yoko and hopes to marry her – a plan complicated by Ryota being the only remaining male in the Asano family. If Yusuke and Yoko were to get married, the boy would have to go live with his grandmother on Natsuo’s side so as to continue the Asano family name, thus presenting Yoko with a difficult decision – and indicating another way how family responsibilities shape the characters’ lives.

One of the clear strengths of “The Sound of Light” is the total immersion into small-town farming life it gives. The impressive Chugoku mountains surround the town’s scattered farms, businesses and homes, emphasizing the rural isolation in which the characters eke out a living. Work maintains a strong grip on daily life: whether tending to vegetable patches, preparing meals or, most often, tending to the cows, Yusuke and his family – including his sister Haruko (Yoshiko Nakamoto) and her boyfriend Takashi (Soichiro Tsuji) who visit and lend a hand in the various chores – constantly see to the tall order of responsibilities that need to be met. Writer and director Juichiro Yamasaki, himself a Maniwa farmer, admirably approaches such actions with a still, observant eye that ably captures the quiet dedication of the farmers. The viewer is made quite aware of the tolls such a lifestyle demands – especially through Yoshiyuki, who is publicly regarded as a failure and a cautionary tale. Having driven away his wife, he burns down his barn, gives in to drinking and attempts suicide. His misfortunes show that it takes more than hard work to survive in farming; that loyal friends and family serve as irreplaceable supports for perseverance. But even then, the farmers are at the mercy of forces beyond their control. In one integral dialogue scene, Yoshiyuki explains to Yusuke how he and Natsuo had to contend with a sudden rise in feed costs and, more importantly, people’s indifference to local businesses in favor of convenience. “The harder you work, the less you get,” he says, underlining the dire consequences of the growth of world markets at the cost of the farmers’ hard-won labors. This bitter truth is not dwelled upon for too long, but its weight is certainly not lost on the viewer.

Impressively, Yamasaki maintains an even balance between depicting the real-life textures and issues of the farming community and the more narrative-dependent strand of the film dedicated to Yusuke’s personal situation. Visiting a graveyard of amplifiers in the woods and uncovering a hidden guitar and the organ his mother gave to him before leaving the family (alluding to a rift between her and Yusuke’s more farming-oriented father), he still clearly holds onto his love for making music. His father even offers to give him a saved bundle of one million yen to help re-ignite the distant dream of returning to Tokyo. Yet Yusuke remains bound to the important sense of duty that has kept him at the farm. As a son and the heir to the farm, the weight of expectation lies heavily upon his shoulders, even if his family grants him the permission necessary to break away.

            

“The Sound of Light” gives an even and honest portrayal of farming life, neither exaggerating the great endurance it requires nor holding it up as a utopian alternative to the light and bustle of Tokyo, which has never felt so distant in a Japanese film as it does here. But occasionally, Yamasaki allows for moments of hope and beauty: the night scene in which an actual calf is born, Yusuke’s song to his mother quietly performed in a cold barn, the annual climb up a nearby mountain on the morning of New Year’s Day to see the first sunlight of the year. Such scenes make Yusuke’s journey seem worth the challenges it has brought him, confirming that the sacrifices he made were willingly and, at times, perhaps even gladly chosen.

NIPPON CONNECTION ’12 REVIEW: The Woodsman and the Rain

キツツキと雨 (Kitsutsuki to ame)

Released: 2011

Director: Shûichi Okita

Starring: 

Kôji Yakusho

Shun Oguri

Kengo Kora

Asami Usuda

Kanji Furutachi

Running time: 129 min.

Reviewed by Marc Saint-Cyr

We first see the woodsman hard at work felling a tree. In fact, we hear him first, his chainsaw buzzing away in an otherwise peaceful, sun-lit forest. However, he is eventually interrupted by a bespectacled man who emerges from the wilderness and, after nearly getting crushed by a falling tree, timidly asks him to stop working. He explains that a film crew is shooting nearby, and they need quiet for the scene. The woodsman gruffly complies. Little does he know that this will in fact be the first occasion of many in which the film crew will ask for his assistance, the next one involving tracking down the perfect river for a scene.

Played by Kôji Yakusho, the woodsman, Katsu, lives a quiet and simple life in the mountain town of Yamamura. The two-year anniversary of his wife’s death is nearing, and he lives alone with his teenage son (Kengo Kora), whose laziness and difficulties in finding a new job have caused some tension to arise between them. Katsu’s steady routine of neatly preparing meals for himself, interacting with his three work buddies and cutting down and moving timber is gradually overturned by the arrival of the film crew. The location scout for the river, wherein Katsu’s sincere attempts to find the crew a “pretty” spot are initially rejected for being too impractical for the shoot’s requirements, eventually leads to another, totally unexpected request: for Katsu to don a wig and ghoulish makeup and play a menacing zombie for the movie! Afterwards, he is invited to see the dailies with the rest of the crew, which really sparks his curiosity and begins to turn his impatience with the demanding moviemakers into genuine excitement.

As he first begins to help the film crew, Katsu notices – and actually berates – a young man with an untidy mop of hair and a sweatshirt who seems all but paralyzed by shyness, hindering any possibility of being useful to the rest of the team. He turns out to be Koichi Tanabe (Shun Oguri), the terribly inexperienced writer and director of the zombie film, which is entitled “Utopia.” He unsuccessfully attempts to flee from his duties at a train station and is forced to return to the set the next day, where he is daunted by the many questions and demands thrown at him by his actors and technicians. Yet Katsu compulsively returns to the film set and proves to be a source of comfort and reassurance for the flustered director. One of the nicest scenes between the two very different men is a lunchtime conversation in which Katsu points out two pine trees – one twenty-five years old, one sixty, matching Koichi and Katsu’s respective ages – and says that it takes one hundred years for a pine to fully mature, suggesting that they naturally both still have some growing up to do.

“The Woodsman and the Rain” mainly chronicles Koichi’s steady acceptance of his role as director while Katsu all but pounces on new ways of helping out the production. He soon starts getting the whole town involved, recruiting its inhabitants to play pale-skinned zombies and members of an all-female, bamboo spear-wielding army. The infectious joy and enthusiasm the townsfolk give off as they devote themselves to the shoot highlight filmmaking as a truly collaborative event. As in François Truffaut’s classic tribute to the craft, “Day for Night,” filmmaking helps bring people together in a spirit of fun and productivity. Notably, there are two occasions when Katsu demonstrates his talent for predicting the weather: first near the beginning, when a rainstorm halts the logging crew’s efforts, then later on when another torrential downpour halt the filming of a crucial sequence. Such scenes, indicating the woodsman’s instinctive bond with the rain (hence the film’s title), are perhaps meant to show how the duties of a lumberjack aren’t that different from those of a filmmaker: both involve hard work and dedication, and are ultimately at the mercy of such larger forces as nature and circumstance.

Through the warm bond that forms between Katsu and Koichi, “The Woodsman and the Rain” illustrates the universal process of discovering and seizing our true callings in life. This can involve summoning hidden reserves of courage and confidence, as Koichi hesitatingly experiences, or learning how to manage pre-existing commitments to family, as both Katsu and his son discover. But such worries can become so small and insignificant compared to the spiritual nourishment offered by clear sensations of purpose and passion – whether they come from cutting down trees or making the next great Japanese zombie movie.

NIPPON CONNECTION ’12 REVIEW: Die! Directors, Die!

死ね! 死ね! シネマ (Shine! Shine! Shinema)

Released: 2011

Director: Makoto Shinozaki

Starring: 
Kyoko Mori
Akemi Suzuki
Hiromasa Kaneko
Yoshiharu Fujii
Toshiki Kudo

Running time: 72 min.

Reviewed by Marc Saint-Cyr

“Die! Directors, Die!” feels very much like a giant joke being played on its audience. But the question is whether it is a sneakily elaborate one that actually has some meaning behind its attempts at comedy or a winding, clumsily told one that botches its own punch line. The surface elements of the film will likely turn off some viewers right away: shakey, unpolished MiniDV camerawork; jarring, shrill jump scares and bursts of violence and a cheap, in-your-face approach to gore that seems directly inspired by the notorious “Guinea Pig” film series. In many respects, it cleanly fits in with the multitudes of v-cinema schlock that have come before it. But where it throws a curve ball of-sorts is in its numerous comments on filmmaking and the true roles of both directors and movies, which are first introduced through its amusingly provocative title.

            

“Die! Directors, Die!” opens with a student’s graduating film being shown in a screening room at the newly relocated Film School of Tokyo. The project is essentially a loud and clunky mash-up of horror movie imagery that the young director intended to be “the ultimate horror film.” His teacher, Shimazaki, harshly criticizes the film and labels it as a disgrace to filmmaking, but shortly after he in turn is denounced by another student who hurls such scathing remarks as, “Pure directorial visions suck!” This causes Shimazaki to suffer a mental breakdown, and he bursts back into the screening room armed with a spear attached to a camera that brings to mind a similar weapon from Michael Powell’s famous “Peeping Tom.” With it, he claims forty-two victims in an extended, over-the-top massacre sequence before attempting to kill himself, then vanishing. Four years later, a group of film students led by Natsuki, their controlling director, seek out the site of the incident to shoot their own film. However, odd paranormal occurrences and strange behavior from some of the crewmembers soon give way to a chaotic and unpredictable onslaught of events.

            

Perhaps to look too closely at – or react too negatively to – the rough, amateurish quality of “Die! Directors, Die!” is to miss or ignore the opinions declared by the young filmmaker at the beginning, who proudly claims he doesn’t care at all about film theory and believes he makes films for audiences, not himself. Or maybe it is the highly negative portrayal of directors, from the naïve student to Shimazaki to the crazed Natsuki, that is most important here. Several other characters also trash-talk cinematic authors, including a member of Natsuki’s crew who exclaims, “Directors are all a bunch of lunatics.” It could be that all of this is meant to address and attack the tendency of filmgoers – particularly cinephiles – to focus on the director and his or her voice as the main creative factors in a film. And in turn, perhaps cinema itself – or, at least, the kinds of cinema that commonly attract attention and praise – is being rejected outright, and “Die! Directors, Die!” is meant to be seen as a piece of anti-cinema that gleefully embraces its unattractive techniques as an extended middle finger to established habits and expectations.

            

But for every intriguing, potentially thought-provoking ingredient, including the anti-director remarks, a number of references to well-known films and filmmakers and a trip to snowy Yubari – of course, home to the legendary Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival – there are at least two that throw wrenches into the works, blurring any meaningful attempts at coherent commentary with goofiness, immaturity and befuddlement. The horror plotline, complete with classic pale-skinned, long-haired, contorting ghosts and a violence-inducing video recording, seems to suggest an attempt at a full-fledged genre product rather than a clever deconstruction. The purposely icky, gratuitous instances of violence come across as plain silly and designed solely to court shocks and laughs – especially when it reaches such ludicrous points as a newly-born, clearly fake baby being swung around a room by its umbilical cord. The characters are never fully developed enough to warrant a proper connection with the viewers, and their wandering trajectories are often cumbersome and tiring to watch unfold. Altogether, despite all the suggestions that there is something liberating and valuable to take away from the shamelessly crude nature of “Die! Directors, Die!” I simply felt that it was too muddled and unrefined to be taken seriously all the way. But then again, maybe I’m just blind to the inherent suckiness of pure directorial visions.

NIPPON CONNECTION ’12 REVIEW: About the Pink Sky

ももいろそらを (Momoiro sora o)

Released: 2011

Director: Keiichi Kobayashi

Starring: 
Ai Ikeda
Ena Koshino
Reiko Fujiwara

Running time: 113 min.

Reviewed by Marc Saint-Cyr

Keiichi Kobayashi’s debut feature “About the Pink Sky,” which won the Japanese Eyes section at the 2011 Tokyo International Film Festival, opens with one of those story devices that works so well for getting the main character moving along on a course towards different people, places and events. High school student Izumi (Ai Ikeda) finds a dropped wallet that contains ¥300,000 in cash and the owner’s I.D. After doing a little research, she discovers that the wallet’s young owner is the son of the head of the Horse Racing Association of Chiba – in other words, someone who enjoys a fairly privileged lifestyle. After freely loaning ¥200,000 of the loot to a middle-aged acquaintance facing trouble finding work, Izumi unwisely reveals her find to her two friends Hasumi (Ena Koshino) and Kaoru (Reiko Fujiwara). They all go to the wallet’s owner, Kouki Sato (Tsubasa Takayama), who notices the missing money’s absence, confronts Izumi about it and soon enlists her and her friends for an unusual project as a means of compensation.

            

This bare-bones description of the film’s premise doesn’t even begin to do justice to the actual viewing experience it offers. Kobayashi, who wrote, directed, edited and shot the film himself, chose a very specific style consisting of gorgeous, silvery monochrome and a soundtrack layered with background noise, yet devoid of music. But while in certain points such features might recall Robert Bresson or Michael Haneke, those severe masters of concentrated, sensory cinema, the unpredictable narrative trajectory and frequent flashes of casual, light-hearted humor create a different impression, constantly compelling the viewer to adjust expectations and eventually submit to its curious nature. Shot in various quiet urban locales with many long takes, “About the Pink Sky” provides a crisp yet slightly distorted snapshot of contemporary Japan. After a certain point, the near-total absence of adults becomes quite apparent, colliding with Kobayashi’s other stylistic choices to make the experience resemble a neat assortment of carefully edited memories of youth that still manage to reflect its aimlessness, comedy, drama, absurdity and vividness. Just as viewers go from scene to scene, Izumi goes from moment to moment in this compact segment of her young life, having no idea what the outcome of her impulsive decisions and dilemmas will be.

   

Which brings me to possibly the film’s finest quality: the extremely solid performances given by the cast of young, inexperienced actors. Ai Ikeda in particular is delightful as she gives a fantastically naturalistic characterization laced with great little mannerisms and subtleties. Whether viewers will actually like her Izumi will depend on whether they see her stubbornness, immaturity and whip-smart sass as obnoxious yet endearing or simply obnoxious. In any case, Ikeda puts great effort into her portrayal of the snarky teenager – at times, it seems, the ultimate snarky teenager – carefully making the most of her screen time. Whether whispering to herself in a sort of vocalized interior monologue, twisting her face into cheeky facial expressions or even, in one scene, discreetly pushing an unpaid bill towards an unsuspecting Sato without breaking their conversation, she always seems to be packing another little glimmer of personality into the film.

            

Throughout “About the Pink Sky,” Izumi maintains a hobby of reading newspaper stories and, with the bold slashes of a marker, coolly grading them based on her skeptical worldview. This is very much in keeping with her character as she frequently gives in to bouts of smugness, entitlement and indifference in response to the situations she comes across. One could see this behavior as her personal defense mechanism against a deceptive and imbalanced world – and indeed, over the course of the film there are many instances of seemingly simple or obscure appearances giving way to more complex and, occasionally, unfortunate truths. Gradually, we learn more about her friend Kaoru’s job in which she chats online with older men (she assures Izumi that the conversations haven’t yet veered into sexual territory) in order to lessen her family’s financial burdens, which are largely brought about by her mother’s taste for expensive designer brands. Izumi’s other friend, Hasumi, reveals herself to be quite vain, bossy and tragically susceptible to dreams of romance. But it is through Sato that Izumi matures the most; his job for the girls, which involves creating a homemade newspaper that only delivers good news, is all for a sick, hospitalized friend of his named Kazumi. In the face of such greater forces as illness, chance and genuine innocence, Izumi’s egotistical façade is all but bound to buckle, bringing about humorous, ironic and poignant results alike.

            

Surely, “About the Pink Sky” is an unusual coming-of-age film that will likely throw off some viewers with its lack of conventional dramatic structure or emphatic plot points. Yet the drifting approach to story, aesthetic beauty and admirable performances all add compelling degrees of realism and poetry to this wonderfully idiosyncratic effort. According to an interview with The Hollywood Reporter for his film’s appearance at Sundance, Kobayashi hopes to next make a project about an otaku couple, which should be a most interesting subject when presented from this director’s unique perspective.

REVIEW: Post Card

一枚のハガキ (Ichimai no hagaki)

Released: 2010

Director:
Kaneto Shindo

Starring:
Shinobu Otake
Etsushi Toyokawa
Ren Osugi




Running time: 114 min.


Reviewed by Eric Evans

Kaneto Shindo's "Post Card" practically vibrates with robust theatricality and unexpected humor. Though it takes place in what appears to be a completely realistic setting, the performances—particularly Shinobu Otake's tormented Tomoko—are by turn sincere and studied, then passionate and over the top. The variance in tone and purposeful artificiality give the film a weird off-kilter quality not unlike more accessible work by David Lynch, but without the idiosyncratic weirdness (imagine Sidney Lumet filming "Mulholland Drive"). It's unlike anything else I've seen, and while it's not an especially pleasant or traditionally satisfying film, it's well worth seeking out.

Please note that the following contains spoilers.

Set in the latter half of World War Two, "Post Card" follows the tribulations of a woman and the family she married into. Tomoko and her husband Jouzukuri (a gentle Naomasa Musaka) are in love. They're borderline destitute, farming a small parcel of land they do not own and sharing a two-room house with his elderly parents. They sleep in the barn for privacy, in a two tatami mat area walled off from the straw and tools. When he is drafted into the military, it is treated as an honor by the town proper but is a horror to her and an immediate hardship to the household.

Now part of a unit and awaiting their deployment, Jouzu and friend Keita (Etsushi Toyokawa) sit down for a serious talk. Jouzu's assignment is almost certainly a death sentence, and he wants Keita to take a postcard Tomoko has written to him and, after the war, tell her that he received it and that it was meaningful to him. He can't respond to her himself, he explains, because anything he writes would at best be heavily censored by the military. Keita reluctantly agrees.

After Jouzu's death, his parents ask Tomoko to stay on in the home and care for them, and could she also marry their younger son so it's not improper? Though heartbroken she agrees, making the best of it. Subsequently the brother is drafted and killed leaving her a war widow twice over, an emotionally drained husk.

When Keita finally travels to Tomoko's village years later to deliver the message, they've both been through almost surreal hardships. These two broken people sit and share their stories, shown in flashback, and it's here that Otake's Tomoko has a passionate series of scenes. She wails, eyes bulging from her head, raging against the situation she's in—a situation dictated by traditional societal roles, giving her no options, and sitting across from a man who by sheer luck avoided the fate shared by both her husbands. Toyokawa doesn't try to match her passion but rather plays a quietly bitter variant of his usual stoic. Ren Osugi, no stranger to broad performances, plays a local man who wants Tomoko for his mistress and recognizes that Keita is a threat to that plan. Among many other important sequences, their eventual conflict is played mostly for laughs and relieves some of the tension built up through Tomoko's monologues.

It's difficult to say how "Post Card" became Japan's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film category at this year's Academy Awards. Certainly the film has none of the warmth or broad appeal of 2009 winner "Departures", but it is an artful if idiosyncratic work about serious subjects. Credit the cast for buying into Shindo's vision and committing highly stylized performances to film. Otake is raw and primal; her demeanor switches from the flat, resolute filial duty of one defeated by fate to a manic fury over the hand she's been dealt. It's an operatic performance unfettered by restraint. But perhaps her voice had to be big, meant not to be that of a single widow expressing grief and frustration but rather the cry of a nation against a culture of senseless sacrifice. So, then, the other characters become representational: Toyokawa is the aimless everyman unsure of where he belongs in a post-WW2 society, Osugi the hardliner who can't let go of the rigid structure of the past, and so on.

The cast is too old; at 50, Toyokawa is the youngest primary player. Though men well into their 40s were being called into service, particularly toward the end of a war that began far easier than it ended, the parts in "Post Card" seem to be written for people with much more life in front of them. A flashback scene in which Tomoko and Jouzu discuss their plans to have children after the war should be touching but elicits disbelief. Shinobu Otake is feisty and girlish and the cast is game, but credulity is stretched a bit too far.

"Post Card" will not be your favorite Japanese film of 2011. In fact you may not enjoy it at all, but I'd recommend it; I would argue that it's an interesting and necessary film unfettered by commercial or critical influences. The basic story of these characters would inspire a very commercial love story. While those elements are present, they aren't exploited or even acknowledged in the traditional sense. There is scarcely more passion to Tomoko and Toyukawa's budding relationship than in her second marriage to her younger brother-in-law, and it's difficult to imagine the ending as either romantic or happy though it satisfies the basic tenets of each. Perhaps this ending is Shindo's cry of rage, bemoaning the path not taken by Japan. Opting out of society by living in a barn and toiling in your small patch of farmland is one response to the horror and sacrifice of war, but it's not exactly a solution to the impasse facing Japanese society in 1945. It's not even a suitable solution to Tomoko's specific problems. It might be Shindo's acknowledgement that such problems aren't solvable, a strangely hollow "ganbatte" making that point. Whether it's uplifting or utterly defeatist is up to the viewer.

Additional note: the subtitles are blatantly and (presumably) purposefully wrong in one significant way: though now her husband by marriage, Jouzu's younger brother Sanpei continues to address Tomoko as "Onaesan" (older sister) even as he makes love to her. This awkward formality adds a touch of humor to their relationship and further indicts the Japanese culture of the time. However, the English subtitle with every "Onaesan" was "darling"—neither literally nor figuratively correct. This choice robs these scenes of a degree of absurdity that Shindo, also the screenwriter, specifically intended. It's an unfortunate decision on the part of the studio.

"Post Card" was presented as part of the 35th Portland International Film Festival, one of over 100 films representing dozens of countries from around the world. For more information about the NW Film Center and PIFF, visit http://www.nwfilm.org/.

REVIEW: The Naoyuki Tsuji Animation Collection

The Naoyuki Tsuji Animation Collection

Released: 1992-2005

Director:
Naoyuki Tsuji






Running time: 60 min.



Reviewed by Marc Saint-Cyr

The unique films assembled on the Facets Video DVD "The Naoyuki Tsuji Animation Collection" make an incredibly strong case for simplicity over heightened photo-realistic detail in animation. Most of them employ the most fundamental animator’s tools: a blank canvas and drawn charcoal lines and shapes that, when movement is evoked through the erasure and re-drawing of the subjects on the same surface, leave visible, shadow-like traces behind them as they shift across the frame. The designs for humans, animals and other creatures are almost comical in their child-like appearance, and their facial expressions are often restricted to the lines of a mouth and the black dots of tiny eyes. Yet with these simple components, Tsuji proves himself to be some kind of twisted genius, managing to create a look and feel that is entirely his own. As you begin a fresh film of his, you come to realize, with joy, that anything can happen in the white frames where his bizarre thoughts and fantasies come to life.

The first three short films on the DVD comprise a small series entitled "Trilogy About Clouds" ("Mittsu no kumo," 2005). "Breathing Cloud" focuses on a cloud that steadily expands in the sky, its texture becoming more enhanced. Soon, recognizable shapes emerge from its puffy surface: intertwined hands, smiling faces, the naked bodies of two cloud beings locked in acts of passion with one another. "Looking at a Cloud" is more comically whimsical in its portrayal of a student distracted by yet another growing cloud during class. The cloud sprouts out of his opened notebook, then enters his nostrils and transforms him, from there moving from one student to the next like a hungry virus. "From the Cloud" envisions a group of idle little cloud children who fall to the ground as raindrops, then evaporate and gather in the sky once more, preparing to repeat the cycle. Possibly the most enigmatic and epic film in the collection, "A Feather Stare at the Dark" ("Yami wo mitsumeru hane," 2003) tells the tale of a boy with one arm and a strange, antenna-like stalk of sentient hair(?) protruding from his head. As he pursues an alluring female companion, mythical imagery abounds: a cloaked skeleton figure, amorous angels, an erect penis that spews out tiny children, a giant whose head is a circular landscape of trees and mountains, and so much more. "The Rule of Dreams" ("Yoru no okite," 1995) fittingly follows, providing a shorter but no less imaginative collage of violent and potentially symbolic images. The final two films on the disc, "For Almost Forgotten Stories" ("Kiekaketa monogat aritachi no tame ni," 1994)) and "Wake Up" ("Samero," 1992) exchange the fuzzy drawn animation for stop motion in the style of Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay, using detailed environments and models of fantastical, patched-together characters: stone giants, a plasticine elephant being, a creature that looks like a cross between a scorpion and a baby carriage.

While trying to logically break and lock down the specific meanings contained within these fantastic works would constitute a terrible folly, it can be safely said that they explore universal subjects like sex, death, children, creation, innocence, maturation and time. The world that Tsuji plays in is frequently dark, even nightmarish, with characters falling victim to violent acts or undergoing surreal transformations. It is fairly clear that sex and birth exist with these darker forces side by side, illustrated by the refreshingly frank scenes of lust and reoccurring motif of procreation and children. The doodle-like nature of the drawn animation and almost obsessive fixation with private parts and acts may give the impression that a gleeful school kid is wielding the pencil. However, the stark quality of both the smoky illustrations and the music, provided by Reiko Tsuji, Jun Yamaguchi and especially Makiko Takahashi in the form of minimalist notes played on flute, piano and guitar, create a haunting, otherworldly tone.

Indeed, it sometimes seems as if these shorts came not from Tsuji, but rather an ancient, mysterious transmission from outer space or the bowels of the Earth. The vague humanoid forms, clockwork creatures and god-like beings all star and act in original creation myths, cautionary fables and fanciful yarns that, by way of dream logic and whimsy, create whole other worlds that only faintly resembles our own. As far as artists’ personal renditions of their preoccupations, fears and daydreams go, I highly doubt you can get any more original or pure than Naoyuki Tsuji’s.

REVIEW: Memories

Memorîzu

Released: 1995

Directors:
Koji Morimoto
Tensai Okamura
Katsuhiro Otomo

Starring (voice talent):
Tsutomu Isobe
Koichi Yamadera
Hideyuki Hori

Running time: 113 min.



Reviewed by Marc Saint-Cyr

The 1995 omnibus film "Memories" should easily be an appealing treat for both anime and science fiction fans alike. Produced by legendary "Akira" creator Katsuhiro Otomo, it adapts three stories of his that he originally wrote in manga form. While some viewers regard omnibus films warily due to the sometimes uneven, hit-or-miss nature of their viewing experiences, here there should be little cause for concern as each of the three gathered tales offers an original and compelling vision. Both their fantastical contents and beautifully compact story arcs evoke short science fiction writing at its best while the unique animation styles provide a feast for the eyes in the bargain.

The first segment, "Magnetic Rose," was directed by Kôji Morimoto and features a screenplay based on Otomo’s story by another renowned anime master: the late Satoshi Kon. It drops in on a salvage crew who travel in their ship, the Corona, in search of abandoned equipment and junk to scavenge. A distress signal that mysteriously contains a portion of the Giacomo Puccini opera "Madame Butterfly" leads them to an enormous, rusting vessel. They send two men, Heintz and Miguel, aboard to investigate. What they find is utterly confounding: confining metallic corridors eventually give way to vast rooms decorated with towering stone pillars, tall staircases and ornate furniture. The derelict ship appears to have belonged to Eva Friedel, a once-famous opera singer who sought to preserve her past glories. As the Corona’s crew members discover more about her past, they become further entangled in her still-vital power.

Tensai Okamura’s "Stink Bomb" dramatically shifts gears from atmospheric mystery to dark, absurdist comedy. Beginning in modern-day Yamanashi, it follows Tanaka, an unlucky scientist who mistakenly takes an experimental drug in an attempt to alleviate his cold. After waking up from a nap, he is shocked to find every living being in his research facility from the personnel to the lab rats has died. The scared and confused Tanaka escapes and, while traveling by foot, notices several odd occurrences: flowers are in full bloom all around him despite it being winter, and every animal that approaches him suddenly dies. It soon becomes clear that Tanaka is giving off toxic fumes that grow more lethal as he grows more emotionally distraught. Japanese and American military chiefs desperately concentrate their strategies and firepower towards stopping the clueless Tanaka as he makes his way towards Tokyo.

Otomo himself directed the film’s final story, "Cannon Fodder," which imagines a great city locked in battle with a distant, unseen enemy. Giant cannons protrude from nearly every building, and the citizens’ lives are totally devoted to the maintenance and firing of the weapons day after day. One family lies at the centre of the narrative. While the mother toils in an ammunitions factory and the father works as a lowly cannon loader, their young son dreams of one day rising to the rank of cannon commander and claiming glory for himself in the never-ending war.

As previously mentioned, each of "Memories"’ stories has something different to offer. Out of all of them, it seems only "Magnetic Rose" focuses on the titular theme of memory, doing so not only through Eva Friedel’s efforts to dwell in the shadows of her heyday, but also through Heintz, who is immersed in a memory of his wife and young daughter. While this segment begins as a realism-inflected sci-fi piece in the style of Ridley Scott’s "Alien" – complete with working-class space travelers and their bulky ship – it soon becomes a sort of haunted house yarn as the Gothic imagery and hallucinatory spirits of Eva’s sad life gradually intensify. "Stink Bomb" pulls off the tricky feat of balancing a totally ridiculous premise with elements of satire-laced, reality-based horror. The latter come through in the military officials’ tense discussions about how to neutralize poor Tanaka and the massive amount of tanks, fighter jets, helicopters and battleships they deploy, all, comically, to no effect. The sequences showing the devastation of Tanaka’s stink and the panicked exodus of people trying to get out of Tokyo all at once further add to the scariness that stories about deadly epidemics seem to pull off so well – "Stink Bomb" being no exception. Yet Otomo truly saved the best for last with his own segment, in it taking a wonderfully creative approach to his premise. Rather than tending to the progression of a plot, he instead busies himself with presenting and developing his fictional, cannon-obsessed society through descriptive details. This is brilliantly executed not only through the day-in-the-life structure that follows the father, mother and son through their daily routines, but also the carefully maintained illusion of the whole segment unfolding in one continuous shot, with creative transitions smoothing over the necessary jumps in time and location. Through these methods, Otomo is able to fully devote his energies to giving his viewers an ever-moving tour of the city. Several vivid images appear: the crowded commuter train packed with grim-faced workers on their way to their respective cannons, the numerous propaganda posters calling for hard work and death to the enemy, the city’s many buildings and the assortment of weapons sprouting from them. The storybook-like quality of the animation combined with the explored messages about mass indoctrination and the industrial dimensions of aggression all strongly evoke such similarly-themes political fables as J.M. Coetzee’s "Waiting for the Barbarians" and George Orwell’s "1984."

All three segments within "Memories" offer a wide variety of tonal flavors to enjoy. While preferences regarding most and least favorite episodes are sure to vary – I myself enjoyed "Cannon Fodder" the most, followed by "Stink Bomb," then "Magnetic Rose" – there are many positive things to take away from all of them in terms of both craft and content. Indeed, so intriguing, visionary and well-made is the film as a whole that many will no doubt find themselves wanting to revisit and savor it soon after their initial viewing.

REVIEW: Golden Bat

黄金バット(Ogon Batto)

Released: 1966

Director:
Hajime Sato

Starring:
Sonny Chiba
Wataru Yamagawa
Emily Takami
Andrew Hughes


Running time: 72 min.



Reviewed by Nicholas Vroman

Ogon Batto, the Golden Bat, is among the first of Japan’s super heroes. Appearing in kamishibai (street theater storytelling using illustrations) and pulp novels in the early 30’s, he would morph into becoming an early manga favorite and hero to generations of Japanese. The fact that he shared the same name with the brand of cigarettes with the most street cred in Japan probably helped his popularity. Hajime Sato’s “Ogon Batto” opened the doors for a popular TV anime version in the 1970s.

“Ogon Batto” opens with young otaku Akira (Wataru Yamagawa) doing some midnight telescope viewing and discovering a planet - Melancholia? No, Icarus - falling toward earth. Kidnapped and whisked off to secret United Nations mountain hideout, he meets Dr. Yamatone (Sonny Chiba) svelte acolyte to Dr Pearl - the Daedalus of the drama? They know of the impending collision and have the weapon, a mighty gun, but not the jewel that will focus the rays that will blast the planet out of the sky. It's off to Atlantis, recently resurfaced after centuries beneath the waves where they got the news that that's where they would find the diamond. The original search party has met with some mysterious fate, so a secondary search party that includes the UN team and young Akira, but also Dr. Pearl's young daughter, Emily, who not only will provides the deus ex machina for the plot, but in an oblique way, becomes the object around which all the characters will revolve. As the giant corkscrew lair of alien villain Nezo drills up through the sea, the team flees into a cave to find Ogon Batto, holding the precious diamond in his mummified clutches. Young Emily anoints the slumbering superhero with water flowing from a fountain (of youth?) and presto-chango he comes to life with booming mwa ha ha. Ogon Batto is a caped skeleton with a super baton that comes in handy in most situations involving bad guys. He also tends to strike heroic poses when fighting (introduced in the strikingly shot opening credits). Ogon Batto comes to the rescue of the entire team, but gives Emily a bat brooch that will come to life and summon Ogon Batto whenever Emily finds herself in distress. Of course Emily will find herself in distress several times during the film. Our heroes escape with the jewel, but the Earth's not quite safe yet.

Super baddie, Nezo, who looks like a giant sock puppet potato with four eyes, one hand sporting a smart looking mechanical pincer, the other - shades of Mickey Mouse! - a three fingered black rubber glove. Nezo epitomizes a Republican logic of wanting to control the world while simultaneously wanting to destroy it. He sends out a trio of differently-abled troops from his minions to retrieve the diamond. His crack team includes Jackal, a proto-Wolverine, Keloid, brother of Scarface, and Piranha, a shape-shifting femme fatale. She has the ability to inhabit others bodies, as does Wolverine, which wreaks havoc on poor little Emily when they take over both mother-figure Naomi (Chako van Leeuwen) and father-figure, Dr. Pearl. They all wear black Klingon attire (a few years before the invention of Klingons). They all apparently can walk through walls, while our good guys, sporting white turtlenecks, are bound to entrances and exits through doors and driving cars. Fights and chases culminate on the panicky streets of Tokyo, Icarus closing in, the drill drilling up through the urban landscape and edge of your seat suspense building to the denouement - saving the Earth and giving Nezu his comeuppance. By 2011, Lars Von Trier's remake would have a more melancholy ending.
Ogon Batto, himself, makes surprisingly few appearances, mainly appearing at the last moment to get rid of bad guys and to punctuate the soundtrack with his ominous laughter.
Of primary importance though is Emily. In the original comic strip she reanimates Ogon Batto with her own tears. It's a bit of copout on B-director, Hajime Sato's part to have her just spill some water on him, though in some Freudian symbolism it can mean just about everything you could want it to. On the other hand, just adding water seems appropriate for the universal culture of capitalist consumption that had conquered the world by 1966. Nonetheless, a particular unbreakable bond is made between the pre-pubescent "mother" and the "dead" man-baby who comes to life not with a cry, but with laughter. His mouth frozen in a perpetually coming death grin is particularly disturbing. This baptism, or rebirth, exalts her in the position of virgin mother. He on the other hand is reduced to infantile ojisan-ism, only able to cackle and strike ridiculous fighting poses. These poses, though, in the choreography of death, are still effective against the living.

After the trauma of giving rebirth to Ogon Batto, Emily will also have to fight against her evil-possessed mother and father. In her topsy-turvy world, even those she can rely on for comfort and safety are duplicitous. The traumas of her path into womanhood is given pathos in the end, when her man-baby flies away from her leaving only his laughter behind.
Her world is also blown apart by the continued appearance of the phallus of Babylon. The first appearance of Nezo's upward thrusting lair is when our heroes go to Atlantis. It rises from the womanly pool of vast waters, the life source of Gaia. It appears as a conical drill bit - topped with a squid fluke and a pair of glowing eyes no less! A similar phallus will appear years later in Shinya Tsukamoto's Ogon Batto remake, Tetsuo. Its very presence shakes the earth - tremors becoming trauma - much to everyone, and Emily's dismay. Worse, the destructo beams from its eyes will wreak havoc on the last of the crumbling Greco-Egypto-Mayan remains of the lost Atlantean civilization. The only way to escape a destroying phallus? Into a vaginal cave, of course. And it's here where the sarcophagus embryo, wearing death's head will be given birth again. Like Shiva, both creator and destroyer. Or merely like Gamera, a friend of children?
The phallus will return at the end of the film, this time drilling through the firmament of Tokyo itself. Having destroyed the last of the ancient civilization, it's intent on destroying the modern world. But of course this being a parable of reconciling the destructive tendencies of man vs. the nurturing and life giving qualities of women, the phallus must fall and the man-child must leave.
Emily plaintively wails, "Goodbye, Golden Bat!"

“Ogon Batto” is an inconsequential B movie that throws in so many tropes of sci-fi and monster movies that it could be considered a paragon of post-modern textuality, but in truth it’s pleasure lies in is a low budget brilliance and creativity. It’s beautifully shot in wide-screen black and white by Yoshikazu Yamasawa. For Sonny Chiba fans, the star is still defining himself. He’s serviceable in “Ogon Batto” but has yet to define himself as the icon he would become. All in all, it’s nutty guilty pleasure that’s relatively incoherent, but jammed with enough action, interesting characters and invention that makes its 73 minute running time fly by.

REVIEW: Kusama's Self-Obliteration

Kusama's Self-Obliteration

Released: 1967

Director:
Jud Yalkut & Yayoi Kusama

Starring:
Yayoi Kusama
Don Snyder
Joe Jones



Running time: 24 min.

Reviewed by Chris MaGee

Polka Dots. What do you think of when someone says polka dots? Probably something fun, something celebratory like a polka dot dress or party hat, maybe a clown, and if a clown than possibly even a circus. You might even think of that famous 1960 bubblegum song "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" sung by Brian Hyland. Now if you were to combine all this with Pop Art, where would that take your mind? Suddenly the cheeriness of polka dots is showered over the fanciful and disposable imagery of the likes of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. The end result is something utterly celebratory and entirely empty at the same time. You would most definitely not think about such weighty topics as negation, infinity or even death. Still these are the themes that come sneaking in under the guise of cheery polka dots in the artwork of veteran Japanese pop artist Yayoi Kusama, including her 1967 experimental film "Kusama's Self-Obliteration", created in cooperation with Fluxus artist Joe Jones and artist/ photographer Don Snyder and directed (under the supervision of Kusama) by Jud Yalkut .

The now 82-year-old Yayoi Kusama is probably best known to audiences of contemporary Japanese film as the subject of Takako Matsumoto's 2008 documentary "Near Equal Yayoi Kusama: I Adore Myself". Kusama, born in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture in 1929 started out studying traditional Japanese painting, but it was the rise of the global avant-garde that would capture her imagination. She transplanted herself from her life in Japan to life in the New York art world in 1957 and as the years progressed she found herself in the vibrant social experiment that became the 1960's hippie counterculture. Her artwork, which dealt with repetitive patterns of polka dots covering canvases, fake fruit and vegetables, sometimes entire rooms and often her own body, became the perfect counterpoint to young people who were exploring their own minds using hallucinogenic drugs. In the late 60's many of these young people would participate in Kusama's work by having the artist paint their naked bodies with her trademark polka dots.

All of Kusama's themes and visual motifs are brought together for "Self-Obliteration", which would go on to win the top prize at 1967's International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium. Kusama, so often front and center in her performance pieces and exhibitions, is present in nearly every frame of the film, paintbrush in hand dabbing polka dots on every surface put in front of her. These include tree trunks, horses, lily pads, human bodies, her own gowns, her trademark fruits and vegetables and even the surface of water and the genitals of her models. This latter decoration takes place when the film shifts to the kind of 60's happening that Kusama was famous for participating in. If it wasn't for the psychedelic super-imposed footage in the film we'd easily be able to see the artists and her cohorts engaging in a good, old-fashioned orgy for the camera.

What then is so profound about a small Japanese woman covering objects with polka dots and then writhing naked with a group of fellow artists and dancers? If this is pop art then it falls right into the niche of so much superficial and pretentious work that spring from the 1960's. It's Kusama herself who gives proper context to this seemingly nonsensical celebration of dots. Kusama has long suffered from bouts of depression and mental illness, and in fact has been living in a mental institution in Japan since the early 1970's on an out-patient basis. Her artwork, which now also includes writing and video pieces, often express Kusama's fascination with suicide and her own mortality. Seen through this lens more sinister threads can be gleaned from "Kusama's Self-Obliteration". The spots seem frivolous, but dots pile on top of dots until they literally threaten to obliterate the object they're painted on; and with the soundtrack featuring an ominous, barely audible intoned monologue the film doesn't create a happy polka dot atmosphere. Kusama leads a horse covered in polka dots through a field, but where is the artist leading it to? Kusama then wades into a pond, hip deep in water, but what are her intentions? Kusama is even seen covering cats and even a naked man in leaves, ostensibly burying them in the decaying undergrowth of a forest. Death and self negation are everywhere if you look. Eventually, though, this hinted at morbidity gives way to the polka dots representing some kind of atomic structure, a microscopic life that drives the climactic orgy seen at the end of the film with bodies writhing, covered in Kusama's paint.

Watching "Kusama's Self-Obliteration" may seem like a trial to many movie audiences, unaccustomed to the obsessive and obscure nature of experimental film. Still "Self-Obliteration" ends up being a fascinating time capsule from a time when society was bursting with creativity and revolution, and one woman from Japan came to define its ethos and aesthetics.

REVIEW: On The Road: A Document

ドキュメント 路上 (Dokyumento rojou)

Released: 1964

Director:
Noriaki Tsuchimoto





Running time: 54 min




Reviewed by Chris MaGee

Tokyo, 1964. It's a momentous year, not only for the Japanese capital but for the whole country. It's been only 12 years since the MacArthur's American Occupation has ended and most Japanese still remember the horrible destruction of WW2. 1964 is a year to put all that behind them though. This year the world will be watching Japan as the Olympic Games come to Tokyo. Prior to this most prestigious of moments Japan's government, spurred on by an economy fed by the U.S. war in Korea, has reconstructed and redesigned it's largest city. They've also readied a new form of transportation, the Shinkansen, or Bullet Train, that will revolutionize how Japan functions. 1964 is the tipping point between the impoverished post-war years and the great Economic Miracle that will see Japan rise to the position of second largest world economy.

These big, over-reaching ideas are god for the history books, and they were good PR for Japan in the mid-60's, but what did life feel like, look like and sound like in the year leading up to Tokyo taking the world stage with the Olympics? The task of capturing the feeling on the streets fell to Noriaki Tsuchimoto, a filmmaker commissioned by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police to make a film about traffic safety and infrastructure. The thing is that Tsuchimoto, a man who would go on to epitomize Japanese documentary filmmaking with his series on the environmental mercury poisoning disaster in the town of Minamata, saw this as a chance to show his city in a state of severe flux. The end result is his 1964 film "On The Road: A Document".

Tokyo circa 1963, just prior to the fanfare of the '64 Olympics is seen through an everyman cab driver who's not so much concerned about the sweeping changes in Japanese history he is living through. Instead he's concerned about having his license taken away due to one to many speeding tickets and about how this will effect his young wife and baby. His fellow cabbies work themselves to exhaustion, and in one case a cabbie delights in sharing the x-rays of his stomach cancer with the other guys. Life doesn't speed forward for these men, but progresses a few inches, speeds for a bit, stalls and often stops. Tsuchimoto's camera does much the same thing. Shot mostly in handheld 16mm "On The Road" focuses on the minutiae of this cabbie's life: hub caps, running meters, traffic signs, and whatever can be glimpsed through the rearview mirror. Meanwhile the surrounding Tokyo landscape bristling with cranes, steel girders and power lines and of course unbelievable traffic jams. Tsuchimoto nor his cabbie protagonist know that everything around them is being fused and beaten together into a modern, shining Tokyo. To them, in front of and behind the camera life is of the moment, now, and often a little less than what they'd like it to be.

Of course Tsuchimoto has more than a few tricks up his cinematic sleeve to give his film this cinéma vérité immediacy, many of which involve tweaking reality to increase its realism. Many shots and even entire scenes in "On The Road" have their audio and some dialogue rerecorded and laid in over the action. The scene where the cabbies look through their friend's stomach x-ray had to have been partially staged. Still it's this polishing of reality that gives us the even more intense feeling of life lived on the fly.

"On The Road: A Document" would make a very interesting double bill with another film which famously captured, or infamously failed to capture, Tokyo's moment of triumph in 1964. That film would be Kon Ichikawa's "Tokyo Olympiad". Both films share a lot in common beyond the moment time in which they were shot. Both films were commissioned by the authorities to highlight the power, influence and ingenuity of modern day Japan. Both Tsuchimoto and Ichikawa took that dictum and bent it just enough so that they could tell human stories; not just the stories of happy Tokyo road workers making the city a better place to live, or skilled Japanese athletes competing against the world's best. Had Tsuchimoto or Ichikawa played it straight and safe with their projects we wouldn't still be discussing them today. In the end "On The Road: a Document" is a time capsule look at on of the most important moments in 20th century Japan as seen from the bottom up.

REVIEW: Thirst for Love

愛の渇き (Ai no kawaki)

Released: 1966

Director:
Koreyoshi Kurahara

Starring:
Ruriko Asaoka
Nobuo Nakamura
Tetsuo Ishidate
Akira Yamanouchi
Chitose Kurenai

Running time: 105 min.



Reviewed by Bob Turnbull

You're not even a minute into "Thirst For Love" when your senses have been jarred. As a woman pauses while shaving an elderly man, we suddenly catch flashes of a chicken thrashing in (one can only guess) its last dying gasps while its sharp piercing squawks fill the soundtrack. Those images and sounds quickly convey some important information: the woman with the blade in her hands is not in a good headspace and she likely has some issues with that old man. It also signifies that director Koreyoshi Kurahara is going to tell his story with more than just conventional narrative techniques. It turns out they were quite unconventional since Nikkatsu delayed the film's release because they felt it was too "arty". In the same year that Seijun Suzuki got fired from Nikkatsu for delivering "Branded To Kill", Kurahara decided to quit the studio over their decision.

Call it arty if you want, but I call it effective. Rapid cuts, long takes, a restless camera, freeze frames, still photos and daydreams all combine with the layered sound field (and occasionally no sound at all) to tell us the story of Etsuko - the woman in question above. She is the daughter-in-law of wealthy Sugimoto (the old man) and lives in his rather crowded household. He counts ten people in the house: himself, Etsuko, his son Kensuke and his wife, his divorced daughter Asako and her two children as well as the two servants. If you're paying attention you'll notice the sum only comes to nine - Etsuko's husband (Sugimoto's youngest son) has passed away, but it appears that his father still counts him in the family and that there remains a seat for him at the family dinner table. This despite the fact that Etsuko has become his mistress. Apart from the servant Saburo, the old man has little use for the rest of the household and considers them all to be lazy and leeching off his good will.

While the rest of the family don't seem to want to let go (Kensuke admits freely that he and his wife love their carefree loafing existence), Etsuko appears to feel somewhat trapped. Her marriage was initially wonderful, but then she learned the truth about the man she married - the first flashback shows still photos of a fun-loving, mischievous and very happy couple, but the second flashback (telling its story through the same technique of multiple still photos) shows a cheating, self-satisfied scoundrel who couldn't care less about her feelings. The remaining male members of the family - her father-in-law (though she has become his mistress, she still insists on calling him "father") and Kensuke - are both quite smitten with her, but offer nothing more than their desire. None of the men in this family seem to have the ability to truly love her. Etsuko's attentions, however, are firmly on the young and strong Saburo.

The film is filled with close-ups of Etsuko - staring at Saburo's sweaty neck or his glistening back or just lost in a daydream of the two of them skipping along the road to Osaka in a heavenly white glow - and she appears to be a tightly coiled spring ready to unravel. She's constantly noticing physical ways of leaving - that road to Osaka, a helicopter, the train, etc. - but they simply aren't available to her. So she focuses on Saburo and her own desires increase to the breaking point. Her torment isn't reserved just for herself, though, and as the dynamics change within the family, she ensures she doesn't remain alone in that state. Ruriko Asaoko (star of his earlier "I Hate But Love") uses her big eyes to wonderful effect throughout the film - though her physical actions don't always show what she is thinking, her eyes give away every lustful thought and every internal struggle. Based on Yukio Mishima's novel, the film keeps the viewer unsettled with its sudden bursts of sound and has a willingness to do whatever it takes to pull you into how Etsuko feels. Meanwhile it doesn't skimp on pulling in side issues like class distinctions and the impotence of the rich while also providing some gorgeous imagery and precise framing of its characters. The Eclipse boxed set "The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara" has been quite the revelation and you couldn't have picked a better way to close it off.