"Japanese Screen Classics: In Honor of Madame Kawakita": Review Round-up

"Japanese Screen Classics: In Honor of Madame Kawakita," a series of 24 classic works of Japanese cinema, screens at the Walter Reade Theater through August 14. The "Madame Kawakita" in question is the late Kashiko Kawakita, the film programmer, distributor, and all-around champion and promoter of Japanese cinema. The series is organized around the eight directors who have won the Kawakita Award, honoring lifetime achievement in Japanese film, including such towering figures as Akira Kurosawa, Nagisa Oshima, Seijun Suzuki, and Shohei Imamura, as well as relatively lesser-known directors as Kaneto Shindo and the documentarian Sumiko Haneda. Yoji Yamada and Kon Ichikawa are also featured in the series; each director is represented by three films apiece. Below are brief reviews of notable films in the series.

Her Brother (Kon Ichikawa, 1960)


Shot expressively in widescreen and muted but incredibly textured color, Ichikawa’s film about the complex and tortured relationship between two siblings, Gen (Keiko Kishi) and Hekiro (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), is one of his greatest films. Anchored by the beautifully nuanced and volcanic performances by Keiko Kishi as the older sister Gen and Kinuyo Tanaka as the ailing, hyper-religious stepmother, Ichikawa makes full use of his wide frame to depict the warring family members in monumental close-ups, alternating with scenes of kinetic and chaotic movement (e.g. Gen being doggedly stalked by a police officer), and wonderfully comic sight gags (e.g. the gaggle of geese that interrupt the policeman’s attempts to seduce Gen). In the film’s latter scenes, as the brother slowly dies of tuberculosis, the camera framings are less claustrophobic, and convey the unbridgeable separation of the family members from each other. Hekiro’s death elicits a numbed response from Gen, finally separated from her true soulmate. The great cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, that great color artist of postwar Japanese cinema (e.g. Ozu’s Floating Weeds), contributes a burnished look that is perfectly commensurate to the film’s period setting. The nuances of the sibling’s relationship are quite fascinating. Gen’s self-sacrificial actions toward her brother, bailing him out and covering for him, are very much self-serving, since by caring for her brother, she can avoid fully growing up. Hekiro’s pathetic attempts at petty thuggery only very thinly disguise the scared and vulnerable person underneath, which comes fully to the fore as he goes through the stages of dying from TB. In the film’s cruelest irony, the family only exhibits a sense of humanity toward one another when they are gathered around Hekiro’s deathbed. (Aug. 4)



A Last Note (Kaneto Shindo, 1995)


Shindo’s last feature starring his wife, the great Nobuko Otawa, this is a genial, charming film – surprisingly so for a film dealing with aging, suicide, and dementia. The title refers to the suicide of a carpenter who left a terse note – “It’s over” – before hanging himself. He places a large stone next to the note, to be used to pound nails into the coffin that he had made himself before committing suicide. The film features a trio of wonderful veteran actresses, including Haruko Sugimura, who plays Yoko Morimoto, an actress staying at her usual summer retreat. There are several surreally comic set pieces, including a foiled robbery attempt, and the subsequent commendation by the police. The film moves smoothly, maybe a little too smoothly, but is a pleasant enough experience. The story focuses on elderly characters that are very rarely seen on screen. Eighty-three years old at the time he made the film, A Last Note has a freewheeling, digressive air, mixing odd characters and incident, including an erotically charged wedding ritual right out of an Imamura film, frequent allusions to Chekhov, and a celebration of the resilience of older people. Touchingly, the film also serves as a tribute to Otowa, Shindo’s frequent star, who was suffering from terminal cancer during the shoot, and died just days after its completion.

Tora-san’s Sunrise and Sunset (Yoji Yamada, 1976)



Opening with a hilarious parody of Jaws, this installment, the seventeenth, of the beloved series of films about Tora-san, the genial everyman, continually underestimated by his family members and his friends, who turns out to be the wisest and most perceptive of all the other characters, is an enjoyable and touching film, that made me want to go out and see the rest of the series. At the outset, Tora-san takes serious umbrage upon hearing that his nephew was teased at school because Tora-san is his uncle, whereupon he goes out to get drunk. He comes upon a seemingly destitute old man (Jukichi Uno), who attempts to leave the bar without paying for his drinks, angering the proprietress. Tora-san gallantly pays for drinks, and they go out on the town barhopping. They both come home stinking drunk, in the old man’s case quite literally. The man angers Tora-san’s family, ordering everyone around. Eventually Tora-san sits him down, explaining “This isn’t an inn,” which surprises the old man, who thought that was exactly what it was. To make amends, he draws a doodle on a piece of paper, telling Tora-san to sell it at a bookstore. Tora-san is dubious, but does so, and learns that this alleged vagrant is actually the world-famous artist Ikenouchi. Tora-san returns home, displaying the large sum he received from selling the drawing, and his family is ashamed over how quickly they leapt to conclusions about the man based on appearances. Tora-san crosses paths with Ikenouchi again, and they spend time together, where Tora-san gets a taste of a life of riches and luxury. He meets and falls in love with Botan (Kiwako Taichi), a giggling geisha who has a semi-tragic back story, having been swindled out of 2 million yen by an arrogant businessman who refuses to return it. Kiyoshi Atsumi played Tora-san for nearly three decades, until his death in the mid-1990s. The films definitely followed a formula, and these films weren’t especially innovative stylistically, but Yoji Yamada, who directed most of the episodes, found remarkable variations on this scenario, as the series reflected changes in Japanese society over the years, as well as preserving a somewhat idealized and nostalgic sense of the past. Tora-san, the genial and kindhearted, if uneducated and impulsive, itinerant salesman always had a home among his family – his sister Sakura (Cheiko Baisho) and his family’s humble sweets shop. The filmmaking is solid and functional, with little flash, but this works very well in the service of the scenario, and is a very entertaining entry in this popular and long-lasting film series. Keep an eye out for a cameo by Chishu Ryu, the great actor most famous from his numerous roles in Ozu’s films, as a rather eccentric priest. (Aug. 2)

Review Archive: Christopher Nolan's "Memento"

On the occasion of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Night shattering box-office records left and right, and earning across-the-board rapturous critical notices (although there are some dissenters, and it seems the backlash has begun), I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at one of his earlier films, Memento. Below is a review I wrote at the time of the film's release in 2000.


Memento. 2000. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on the short story "Memento Mori" by Jonathan Nolan. Produced by Suzanne Todd and Jennifer Todd. Cinematography by Wally Pfister. Edited by Dody Dorn. Music by David Julyan. Production design by Patti Podesta. Costume design by Cindy Evans.

Cast: Guy Pearce (Leonard), Carrie-Anne Moss (Natalie), Joe Pantoliano (Teddy), Mark Boone Jr. (Burt), Jorja Fox (Leonard's Wife), Stephen Tobolowsky (Sammy), Callum Keith Rennie (Dodd).

"Now, where was I?" These are the last spoken words (or are they the first?) of Christopher Nolan's Moebius strip of a film, Memento. The speaker of these words, Lennie (Guy Pearce), is obsessed with finding the man who raped and murdered his wife (Jorja Fox). Nolan's film is yet another entry in the well-worn neo-noir genre, much like his first film, Following, in which a man who decides to follow random strangers on the street eventually becomes sucked into the lives of the people he follows. The two films share a more significant similarity: they enliven their rather standard neo-noir scenarios by playing with structure and chronology. Following chops up its narrative by presenting scenes from the beginning, middle, and ending of the story, forcing us to reassemble the plot in our own mind. Memento rearranges its sequences by using a Betrayal-like backward chronology, which is, however, complicated by linear black-and-white inserts between scenes that show us Lennie talking on the phone to an unknown person.

Memento represents a major leap forward from Nolan's first effort in that it continually questions its own method of storytelling, casting serious doubt about whether a "proper" order to this story, or any other, can even exist. "Do you realize what a metaphysical can of worms this opens up?" John Cusack's character asks in Being John Malkovich, another film dealing with the question of what constitutes identity. We could very well ask this question of the central situation depicted in Memento.

So in the spirit of Lennie's character, let us consider the known facts. Fact one: insurance investigator Lennie's wife was raped and murdered. Fact two: during the attack, as he attempted to defend his wife, Lennie suffered a blow to the head, causing the mental condition that provides the plot's impetus -- he has lost his short term memory, allowing him to retain information for only about a few minutes at a time. As he constantly explains, he does not suffer from amnesia; he remembers who he is, and his life up until his wife's murder, but he is unable to create new memories. Fact three: the perpetrator was a man named John G. These are the only things that are known for sure. Armed with this information, all the while struggling to function with his handicap, Lennie sets out to find his wife's killer.

Lennie's condition is handled throughout the film in various ways. Beyond the obvious distress and confusion Lennie suffers, it also occasions many instances of humor that occur throughout the story. Lennie befriends a man who calls himself Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), who often expresses exasperation at how Lennie explains his condition and other events over and over. "But I can keep telling the same jokes," Teddy says. However, his condition also allows people to take advantage of him, for example, perhaps, Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), the bartender he meets during his investigation.

To aid himself and simply to cope with his handicap, Lennie writes notes to himself, and carries a Polaroid to snap photos of the people he meets, jotting down their names and relevant information on the photos. Of Teddy, he writes, "Don't believe his lies." Of Natalie, he writes, "She has lost someone also. She will help you out of pity." As he explains to the caller during the black-and-white insert scenes, it is important to have a logical system in order to function. Since handwritten notes can be lost or hopelessly mixed up, he tattoos directly onto his skin the most important information, such as "John G. raped and murdered your wife."

Memento's structure throws us for a loop in two senses. It replicates Lennie's condition in its backward structure, forcing us to rely on our own memory of earlier (that is, later) scenes in order to make sense of later (that is, earlier) scenes. But, more importantly, it calls into question, and indeed even mocks, the value of the act of detection. In the film's first scene, which begins with a Polaroid of a murdered man fading into white, we see Lennie killing his "friend," Teddy. Why? Once we understand that the story will be told backwards, we are somewhat reassured that all answers will be revealed at the "end" of the film. But by the end, the rug is pulled out from under us and it becomes impossible to know for sure what to think, most significantly since the film's last scenes strongly suggest that Lennie may not in fact be quite the helpless victim we have assumed him to be all along.

Memento excels in posing its philosophical and metaphysical queries through the direct action of the plot, never allowing the pace to flag by taking its own conceit too seriously. Lennie, much as he did in his former life as an insurance investigator, relies on careful records of fact and observation in order to solve his own mystery. He depends on mechanical methods of observation, most notably his trusty Polaroid. He even extols his methods as superior to memory, noting to Teddy that memories can distort, using as his example the perennial unreliability of eyewitness testimony. However, there are significant instances where his system fails him. One example concerns Natalie, whom we have been fooled into thinking of as someone who is there to help Lennie in the film's early scenes. Later, however, she bitterly mocks his condition, calling him a "retard," telling him she can even call his dead wife a whore, and it won't matter since he will soon forget it anyway. She manages to goad Lennie into hitting her in the face. She leaves, while Lennie frantically searches for a pen to write down what has just happened. But he loses the memory, and Natalie is able to explain he bruises by telling him a drug dealer she works for, and wants Lennie to get rid of, beat her.

In fact, Lennie's condition makes his quest an exercise in futility and absurdity. As Teddy says late in the film, what good is getting revenge if it will only be forgotten moments later? However, Lennie rejects, or professes to reject, this assessment of his situation. "I must believe there is a world outside myself," he says. "If I close my eyes, the world does not disppear." Justice done will still be justice done, whether or not he remembers it.

Lennie's condition not only allows Memento to pose serious questions about identity, but also allows the film to function as a brilliant parody of the neo-noir genre. There are many instances where Nolan punctures the hallmarks of this type of film. In one scene Lennie finds himself running, and asks himself why he is running. He looks around and sees another man near him also running and thinks, "Oh, I'm chasing this guy." But as the man begins shooting at him, he realizes, "Wait, he's chasing me!" The desk clerk at the hotel where Lennie is staying rents two rooms for Lennie, explaining, "We're a little slow this month." Natalie, skeptical about the truth of Lennie's condition, conducts an experiments. She has a bar patron, herself, and Lennie all spit into a mug of beer, after which she successfully serves it to him.

Christopher Nolan, with both Following and this film, proves himself to be a director well worth close attention. Nolan's crisp, precise script (based on a short story by his brother Jonathan) moves at a swift clip, capturing the loops of double-crosses, lies, betrayals, and "explanations" which prove to be anything but. Memento is also anchored by excellent performances all around by actors who acquit themselves with letter-perfect precision in keeping the audience guessing as to their true motives and affiliations. Especially fine is Joe Pantoliano, who proves once again, as he has in such films as Midnight Run and The Matrix, that he is one of the best character actors currently working. Guy Pearce is also impressive, effectively and poignantly conveying the confusion and uncertainty of Lennie's struggle to cling to a sense of who he is.

Children's Crusade

Flower in the Pocket. 2007. Written, directed and edited by Liew Seng Tat. Produced by Michelle Lo. Cinematography by Albert Hue. Production design by Gan Siong King.

Cast: Wong Zi Jiang (Ma Li Ohm), Lim Ming Wei (Ma Li Ahh), Amira Nashua Binti Shahiran (Atan/Ayu), James Lee (Ah Sui), Azman Bin Md. Hasan (Mamat), Lo Kah Loong (Ah Fatt), Mislina Mustaffa (Atan's Mother), Mak Inom (Atan's Grandma), Farah Binti Abdul Rani (Malay Tudung Teacher).

Think of it as a Malaysian 400 Blows. Liew Seng Tat’s debut feature Flower in the Pocket, which screened this past Sunday at the Asian-American International Film Festival '08, is yet another great example of the fecundity of cinematic talent currently coming out of Malaysia. Some of the most impressive films from this nation have emerged from the Da Huang Pictures production stable, which, besides Liew, also includes fellow directors and collaborators James Lee (director of Before We Fall in Love Again, and who plays the father of the two young boys the film follows), Tan Chui Mui (director of Love Conquers All, and who used her festival prize money to help fund this film), and Amir Muhammad (The Big Durian, The Last Communist, Tokyo Magic Hour). Flower in the Pocket is this production house’s latest offering, and it shares many affinities with their other films: digitally shot, elliptical in its structure, littered with curious and seemingly inexplicable scenes, and suffused with a weird sense of humor that clashes with more somber elements. But Liew injects a wilder, more rambunctious sensibility, embodied by his two young protagonists, Chinese brothers Ma Li Ahh (Lim Ming Wei) and Ma Li Ohm (Wong Zi Jiang). They live with their single father Ah Sui (James Lee), who designs and repairs mannequins. Ah Sui, depressed and bitter over his failed relationship with the boys’ mother, has mostly abdicated his role as father, leaving his sons more or less to their own devices. The absence of the boys’ mother is very subtly referenced in the film’s title. As Liew explained in an interview he gave to the film site Twitch, the title is inspired by a Japanese Mother’s Day tradition, in which people wear flowers that represent one’s mother. A red flower means one’s mother is still living; a white flower means one’s mother is deceased. For the two brothers, Liew says: “That is why it's ‘Flower in the Pocket,’ because … the mother character doesn't appear at all… That's why their flower is pretty much in their pocket. It's unseen, you don’t know what color it is. You don't even know whether there IS a flower.” The brothers live very much in isolation; we don’t see them together with their father until relatively late in the film and they seem to live completely separate lives from their father. Also isolating them is their poor understanding of the Malay language; at school, they must have their Mandarin speech translated for them into Malay, usually by a rather bratty and haughty girl schoolmate. The film opens with Ma Li Ahh, the younger and more mischievous brother, being berated by his teacher for not doing his homework. This scene also makes use of a verbal pun concerning his name and its mispronounced similarity to “Maria.” “That’s a girl’s name!” his teacher (Farah Binti Abdul Rani) says. “What kind of name is that for a boy?”

The boys are befriended by Atan, aka Ayu (Amira Nasuha Binti Shahiran), a tomboyish girl who, when she first meets them, renames them for her own convenience. Her home life is in sharp contrast to boys’; even though Atan’s father isn’t in the picture, she is doted on by both her mother (Mislina Mustaffa) and grandmother (Mak Inom), even though Atan often regards their close attention as a nuisance. Much like Abbas Kiarostami’s films which focus on children such as Where is the Friend’s House?, Flower in the Pocket derives much of its considerable charm and warmth from its close, humorous observation of these kids’ activities, such as an early scene with the brothers savoring KFC ketchup packets, which pays off in a later scene when they use these packets to cook up a unique culinary concoction of ketchup, boiled rice, raw eggs, and hot water.

The film’s first half is freewheeling and nearly plot-free, following its characters in a laconic fashion. In contrast to the generally cheerful boys, their father Ah Sui walks around in a distracted daze, engrossed in working on his mannequins, seemingly more comfortable around these lifeless, disembodied figures than actual human beings. He has some odd exchanges with the Indian man he sells the mannequins to; at one point he admonishes Ah Sui for making the breasts on the female mannequins too realistic. This connects to a strange medical condition he suffers from: he complains to his doctor that his heart literally hurts, and water mysteriously leaks from his nipple. This mixture of minimalist aesthetics and broad, almost slapstick humor (much of which, I suspect, would resonate more with a local audience) is what makes Flower in the Pocket a singular, and faintly unsettling, work. More somber elements are introduced in the film’s latter half, as the father’s benign neglect of his sons very nearly leads to tragedy. However, things end on a more optimistic note, revolving around a unique approach to learning to swim, which provides a way for Ah Sui to bond at long last with his sons.

Flower in the Pocket won the Tiger Award at this year’s Rotterdam International Film Festival and the New Currents Award at last year’s Pusan International Film Festival. Despite its often naughty sense of humor, its minimal digital aesthetics and its unusual approach to storytelling may make this film a bit too rarified for general audiences (which was borne out by the sparse attendance at Sunday night’s screening). Still, if it happens to show up at your local film festival, it is more than worth your time.

Flower in the Pocket is available on DVD from Da Huang Pictures’ online shop.

Review Archive: Takashi Miike's "Dead or Alive"

Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django will receive its New York premiere tomorrow at Japan Society as a co-presentation of the New York Asian Film Festival and the Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film. You can read my review of that film here. Miike has a vast and varied filmography, and one of the highlights of his incredibly eclectic oeuvre is his 1999 film Dead or Alive, the first installment of one of the most bizarre trilogies ever created. Below is a review I wrote at the time of the film's U.S. theatrical release.

Dead or Alive (Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha). 1999. Directed by Takashi Miike. Written by Ichiro Ryu. Produced by Katsumi Ono, Makoto Okada, and Toshiki Kimura. Cinematography by Hideo Yamamoto. Edited by Taiji Shimamura. Music by Kouji Endou. Art direction by Akira Ishige.

Cast: Riki Takeuchi (Ryuichi), Sho Aikawa (Detective Jojima), Renji Ishibashi (Aoki), Hitoshi Ozawa (Satake), Shingo Tsurumi (Chen), Kaoru Sugita (Mrs. Jojima), Ren Osugi (Yan), Susumu Terajima (Inoue).

This yakuza thriller by Japanese cult director Takashi Miike, above all else, is a letter-perfect illustration of the saying, "Nothing succeeds like excess," which could also serve as Miike's credo. We are thrown immediately into the whirring blender of the film's action in the opening scene, which is cut like a self-contained trailer for the film itself. We become privy to such sights as: in the very first minute, a naked body falling from the top of a building; a black leather-clad stripper writhing on a stage; a man doing what looks like a mile-long line of coke; a blond-haired man vigorously fucking another man against a urinal; the aforementioned coke enthusiast shot to death through the roof of his limousine; and a yakuza gang on a rampage through the club, shooting everyone in sight, and eventually killing the two men having sex in the bathroom.

Things eventually slow down enough for us to discern the plot and main characters. What reveals itself here is a trope that will be immediately familiar to crime film aficionados: the parallel cop and gangster story motif which is a hallmark of such films as John Woo's The Killer and Michael Mann's Heat, which Dead or Alive, at least superficially, most resembles. Much like Al Pacino's character in Heat, Detective Jojima (Sho Aikawa) has allowed his obsession with crushing the yakuzas' operations to wreck his home life. He no longer sleeps with his wife, preferring the couch. His wife (Kaoru Sugita) constantly reminds him of the importance of saving money for their daughter's operation, offering to get a job herself. He dismissively waves her away, promising to take care of it.

The yakuza Ryuichi (Riki Takeuchi), who could be an analogue to Robert De Niro in Heat, while as ruthless and violent as can be imagined (illustrated by a scene where he coolly disposes of one of his men caught trying to run off with money from a heist), is not without his admirable qualities. Ryuichi uses the money from his criminal exploits to fund his younger brother's studies in the U.S. Ryuichi is no mere mindless killer, but wishes in his own way to do right, at least by his own family. In one scene, he ruefully hints that his dissatisfaction over his lack of opportunities in Japanese society has led him down the criminal road. It is Ryuichi who reminds the detective during an interrogation that he also has obligations toward his family.

So far, nothing here veers too far from the well-established tropes of the yakuza genre. But the difference lies in Miike's approach to his material, which gains its considerable verve and style from his gleeful disregard for convention and general good taste. Miike uses such stylistic tics as extreme slo-mo and endless shootouts to beautifully parodic effect. Miike's patented eye for the absurd comes through in such scenes as: Jojima's pornographer informer, introduced filming a bestiality scene using his pet dog; a birthday party shootout featuring a man in a chicken suit riddled with bullets; and most outrageous of all, the final showdown between the gangster and the detective.

It is in this final scene that Miike's penchant for excess is most extravagantly, and hilariously, revealed. The scene begins with a wickedly funny bit of meta-commentary by Ryuichi, who mutters, "Here comes the final scene," when he sees Jojima coming toward him. For those who haven't seen the film, it would be criminal of me to reveal more, but suffice it to say that Miike then proceeds to shatter any lingering sense of plausibility or, indeed, reality in this scenario.

Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive Trilogy can be purchased from Amazon.com.

2008 Japan Cuts Festival Review: Naomi Kawase's "The Mourning Forest"

The Mourning Forest (Mogari no mori). 2007. Produced, written and directed by Naomi Kawase. Cinematography by Hideyo Nakano. Edited by Yuji Oshige and Tina Baz. Music by Masamichi Shigeno. Art direction by Toshihiro Isomi. Sound by Shigetake Ao and David Vranken.

Cast: Machiko Ono (Machiko), Shigeki Uda (Shigeki), Makiko Watanabe (Wakako), Kanako Masuda (Mako), Yoichiro Saito (Machiko's husband).

Naomi Kawase’s latest film, The Mourning Forest, winner of the Grand Prix at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, is such an ineffable, all-encompassing experience that mere words seem inadequate to describe it. But I’ll give it a try anyway. The film expresses a very animist sensibility, in that the natural world, and the sounds and space associated with this environment, are given great priority. Many of the visual compositions in Kawase’s film consist of extreme long shots that depict human characters as tiny figures in vast fields and forests. Connected with this is the notion of the very porous boundary between life and death, which is given concrete form in a couple of scenes. The film’s concluding titles explain the concept of mogari, which Kawase describes as “the period devoted to mourning, thinking back on the dearly beloved. It is also the place of mourning.” This may be her attempt to provide a bit of an anchor to viewers baffled by what has come before. Much more than non-narrative, Kawase has a distinctive style that is actively anti-narrative. Like other Japanese filmmakers such as Hirokazu Kore-eda and Nobuhiro Suwa, Kawase comes to her fiction features from documentaries, and her films retain a very strong documentary quality, with scenes that feel as if they were caught as they appear before the camera rather than being planned beforehand. In a key scene early in the film, a Buddhist priest gives a lecture to an audience at the retirement home where much of the film is set, illustrating what it means to be alive. The rest of the film is a quest to explore that question, through very tactile and sensual means tied to the natural surroundings of the film’s setting.

The plot, or to be more accurate, the situation of the film is a deceptively simple and spare one. Machiko (Machiko Ono), a young woman grieving over her lost son, works at a retirement home in rural Nara, which is also Kawase’s childhood home, and the setting of all her films. One of the people living at the home is Shigeki (Shigeki Uda), a man seemingly suffering from Alzheimer’s and still grieving for Mako, his deceased wife, who passed on 33 years before. This is a significant anniversary; as the Buddhist priest explains, in the 33rd year, a deceased person makes their final transformation into a Buddha. Shigeki is drawn to Machiko, mostly because of the similarity, in his mind, with his wife’s name; during a calligraphy class, Shigeki blots out the middle character of Machiko’s name to spell out his deceased wife’s name, “Mako.” Shigeki still sees Mako, who appears to him in two scenes in the film. The beginning of the relationship between Machiko and Shigeki is rather rocky. He violently throws her out of his room when, while cleaning, she attempts to throw away a rucksack that contains objects valuable to him. Afterward, however, things improve between them, and they are soon playing together like children, chasing each other through fields and climbing trees. One day, they set out together on a road trip. Machiko’s car breaks down, and while she leaves him alone to search for help, Shigeki wanders off into the thick forest nearby. After a frantic search, she soon finds him, and they venture deep into the forest, where it turns out that Shigeki is searching for the place his wife is buried. Machiko’s job is to be Shigeki’s caretaker, but at some point these roles become reversed, and this journey into the forest becomes a way for both of them to heal the pains of their respective losses.

The Mourning Forest, in its close attention to the beauty, mysticism, and subtle menace of its forest setting, brings to mind the films of Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady). But while Weerasethakul’s avant-garde training employs his films’ settings as a site for formalist experimentation, Kawase is much more organic and mysterious in her methods. Her gifts for vividly rendering natural landscapes have invited comparisons to the films of Terrence Malick, and her minimalist aesthetics also connect her films stylistically to recent works by such directors as Carlos Reygadas (Japon, Battle in Heaven, Silent Light), Paz Encina (Paraguayan Hammock), and Vimukthi Jayasundra (The Forsaken Land). But Kawase has an inimitable style and sensibility that is all her own. “There are no formal rules,” Machiko’s co-worker Wakako (Makiko Watanabe) is fond of saying, a statement that could also serve as Kawase’s credo. Her cinema represents, as much as anything else, a method of meditation, and the result is suffused with sadness, beauty, pain, and joy, all of which are inextricably intertwined in this film’s flawlessly poetic vision.

The Mourning Forest screens on July 2 and July 7 at Japan Society as part of the Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film. Kawase will be present for a Q&A following the July 2 screening and will also attend the July 3 screenings of “The Origin of Naomi Kawase,” two programs of Kawase’s short films, intimate and confessional documentaries exploring her family history. These shorts screen again on July 12. You can read my interview with Naomi Kawase here.

Defective Detective

Mad Detective (San tam). 2007. Produced and directed by Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai. Written by Wai Ka-fai and Au Kin-yee. Cinematography by Cheng Siu-keung. Edited by Tina Baz. Art direction by Raymond Chan. Music by Xavier Jamaux. Sound design by Martin Chappell.

Cast: Lau Ching-wan (Inspector Chan Kwai-bun), Andy On (Inspector Ho Ka-on), Lam Ka-tung (Ko Chi-wai), Kelly Lin (May Cheung), Lee Kwok-lun (Wong Kwok-chu), Karen Lee (Gigi), Flora Chan (Business Woman), Lam Suet (Fatso).

Leave it to Johnnie To and his great collaborator Wai Ka-fai to breathe new life into that most shopworn and exhausted of genres: the police detective story. Mad Detective, their latest film, is a cast and crew reunion of sorts. This is To and Wai’s first co-directed feature since 2003’s Running on Karma, and this new film indulges in a similar cockeyed mysticism to that earlier one. Also, erstwhile To stalwart Lau Ching-wan returns to the Milkyway Image (To’s production company) family after several years’ absence, in the complex central role as the titular crazy cop. Bun (Lau) is a detective whose working methods are, shall we say, more than a bit unusual. In a pre-credits sequence, he solves a murder and mutilation case by having another cop stuff him in a suitcase and throw him down several flights of stairs to simulate how the victim met their demise. He emerges and correctly fingers the murderer. As strange as this is, Bun’s true madness is revealed in a jaw-dropping scene that occurs shortly afterward. At a superior’s retirement celebration, Bun proudly cuts off his own ear and offers it as a going away present. And this film’s patented weirdness continues from there.

Bun’s self-mutilation is disturbing enough to his superiors that he is forced to quit the force. Five years later, his erstwhile partner Ho Ka-on (Andy On), enlists his help in an internal investigation involving Ko Chi-wai (Lam Ka-tung), whose partner disappeared in the woods on a case, and who is suspected of his partner’s murder. The film’s central conceit, rendered in both narrative and visual terms, is that Bun supposedly sees beyond the surface of people to their “inner personalities,” which are shown on screen as alternate personages seen through Bun’s eyes. Bun believes Ko has seven multiple personalities, all of which appear in clusters where everyone else, including the increasingly skeptical Ho, only sees one. This device, used repeatedly throughout the film, serves to throw us off-balance, and we are never able to fully trust what we see. It takes a while for us to realize, for example, that Bun’s wife May (To regular Kelly Lin), whom we first see strenuously objecting to his resumption of police work, is in fact a figment of his imagination. We eventually become as disoriented as the film’s protagonist as we witness his ever more bizarre and puzzling actions. Throughout, the overarching question remains: is Bun crazy like a fox, or just plain crazy?

As usual with Johnnie To, there is style to burn all through the film, especially in the climactic hall-of-mirrors shootout sequence. And although there are some serious lapses in internal logic, and exactly how Bun is able to come to his amazingly intuitive deductions is left disappointingly unclear, To and Wai deliver a satisfyingly challenging metaphysical gumshoe thriller.

Mad Detective screened this past Sunday at the New York Asian Film Festival, and opens on July 17 at the IFC Center. It is the first of a Johnnie To two-fer at the festival; the other is the breezy, gorgeous Sparrow, screening June 26 and July 2 at the IFC Center. You can read my review of that film here.

Truth in Advertising: Yoshihiro Nishimura's "Tokyo Gore Police"

Tokyo Gore Police (Tokyo zankoku keisatsu). 2008. Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura. Written by Yoshihiro Nishimura, Kengo Kaji, and Sayako Nakoshi. Cinematography by Shu G. Montrose. Makeup and special effects by Yoshihiro Nishimura.

Cast: Eihi Shiina, Itsuji Itao, Yukihide Benny, Jiji Bu, Keisuke Horibe, Tak Sakaguchi, Ikuko Sawada, Marie Machida, Maiko Asano.

Patton Oswalt, one of my favorite comedians, and one of the best currently working, has a great routine about movie titles. According to Oswalt, the greatest movie title ever created is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because it is perfectly descriptive of the film it is attached to. You can practically see the film in your head as you hear the title. The same goes for Yoshihiro Nishimura’s Tokyo Gore Police, a delirious and (mostly) entertaining blast of J-horror excess. There’s no ambiguity, or any chance that you will be fooled when you sit in the theater. As the title promises, and which it delivers and then some, there is lots and lots of gore in this film, and there is no chance that you will instead be confronted with, say, a sensitive Merchant Ivory-type romance. The film stars Eihi Shiina, a model-turned-actress who is best known to Western moviegoers as the bride from hell in Takashi Miike’s Audition. In Tokyo Gore Police, she is one of the titular keepers of the peace, on the trail of mass murderers who specialize in mutilating their victims in gruesomely creative ways. In the near-future Tokyo of the film’s setting, the police force has been completely privatized, freeing the police to go after criminals with impunity, and outside the realms of judicial scrutiny. Ruka (Shiina), a cop specializing in catching “engineers,” criminal masterminds who compel others to kill, and use their own wounds as weapons. Ruka’s father (Keisuke Horibe) was killed when she was a young girl, as he was protesting the privatization of the police force.

But this film’s raison d’être is bloody excess, and lots of it. Chainsaws cutting through flesh and bone, viscera spilling out of stomachs, geysers of blood spraying from wounds, a turret of severed hands used as missiles, a woman whose legs are replaced by alligator-like serrated teeth, and the piece de resistance, a huge penis gun: all that and much more can be found here. The film’s main attraction, of course, is the exquisitely gorgeous Shiina herself. On the evidence of this film, however, to describe her as an “actress” may be a tad generous. To call her performance minimal would be wildly overstating it. The very few times that emotion is called for from her character, it doesn’t quite come off. But considering the outrageous nature of most of what happens in the film, this may be the best performance strategy. So much blood and guts, though, can be somewhat enervating after awhile. And this may be me becoming an old fogey, but I feel like I’ve reached a point where I’ve outgrown this type of thing, and seeing people sawed in half, and drawn and quartered, doesn’t thrill me as much as it used to. And I’ve especially become more and more sensitized to the depiction of violent acts directed towards women, and it has become ever more distasteful to me. In one scene, a very unlucky call girl is gored between the eyes, dismembered and stuffed in a box. At the screening I attended, there were a few enthusiastic whoops and hollers in the audience at this, which bothered me greatly. That this kind of thing is considered cool or fun disturbs me quite a bit. But to Nishimura’s credit, he counteracts this with his tough-as-nails female protagonist, and he proves himself to be an equal opportunity goremeister. In one of the film’s best scenes, Ruka gets her revenge against a molesting subway pervert by pulling him off the train, taking him outside, and cutting off his hands with a samurai sword. Ruka then walks away from him in slow motion, making full use of her fashion runway training, using an umbrella to shield herself from the geysers of blood emanating from the subway groper’s hands. This image is a brilliant perversion of clichéd Japanese iconography.

So with Tokyo Gore Police, you know going in what you’ll be getting. And if you’re into that sort of thing, you most certainly won’t be disappointed.

Tokyo Gore Police screens at IFC Center on June 27 and July 3 as part of the New York Asian Film Festival. To purchase tickets, go to Subway Cinema’s website.

King of Pain

The Butcher (Dosalja). 2007. Written, directed, photographed and edited by Kim Jin-won.

Cast: Yu Dong-hun, Kim Sung-il, Lee Mu-nyeong, Seo Myung-hun, Ha Yu-il, Kim Taek-su.

A Michael Haneke film on acid, Kim Jin-won’s The Butcher is a relentless 75-minute assault on the senses. The premise is as simple as it is brutal: a group of budding filmmakers have kidnapped a group of people, chaining them together in a dank human abattoir in order to make them the unwilling stars of their torture porn epic. The film is shot on digital video entirely from POV cameras that alternate from the perspectives of the perpetrators and their victims. It is an incendiary bomb lobbed at the heart of a Korean film industry that more than ever seems to be made up of little more than minor variations on genres and formulas that have made money in the past, slick and technically impeccable creations without an ounce of soul or wit. The grimy, lo-fi aesthetic of The Butcher literally rubs your face in the blood, vomit, and viscera to be found within.

In its implication of the consumers of violent entertainment into its thick (a)moral web, The Butcher seems to take its cue not only from Haneke’s Funny Games, but from such American latter-day gore fests as the Saw and Hostel films. The filmmakers/torturers in the film acknowledge as much: these snuff film auteurs discuss selling their wares to the American market, aware of how much the overseas public eats this stuff up. Also, the fact that the film is shot with camera rigs attached to the heads of the victims recalls two other recent films: George Romero’s Diary of the Dead and Brian De Palma’s Redacted, both of which critique the media-saturated, You Tube world we currently live in. The Butcher one-ups them both, however, in its strategy of erasing all the music cues and other distancing devices that would give the audience some measure of comfort. The raw nature of the film’s style, especially the use of off-screen sounds of screaming and chainsaws, is used in the service of maximum audience discomfort. And in this age of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Al-Qaeda beheadings staged for the internet, this film proves to be all too congruent with the global zeitgeist.

Kim Jin-won paints a grim, circular world of brutality, engaged in by both victims and perpetrators, to the extent that, as the latter scenes of the film show, there is ultimately little difference between the two. The ugliness of human nature is the obvious theme of this film. There is also a critique here of both the movie industry and our seemingly limitless appetite for violent movies, although what that critique is seems diffuse and not fully formed. And I must stress that the cliché is definitely true: this is most certainly not for the faint of heart. It is a blessing that the film is as brief as it is; any longer and Kim could be said to be as guilty of sadistic torture as the characters in the film. And I must mention that this film has one of the scariest characters of any film I’ve seen, horror or otherwise: an unnamed, large man who wears a pig mask that never comes off. This character is the twisted progeny of Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and is responsible for some of this film’s most disturbing scenes.

Viewers, consider yourselves warned.

The Butcher screens on June 21 (at midnight; and this is indeed a midnight movie if there ever was one) and June 28 at the IFC Center as part of the New York Asian Film Festival. To purchase tickets, if you dare, go to Subway Cinema’s website.

So They Wanna Be Rock 'n' Roll Stars

The Happy Life (Jeulgeowoon insaeng). 2007. Directed by Lee Joon-ik. Written by Choi Suk-hwan and Lee Joon-ik. Produced by Jeong Seung-hye and Jo Cheol-hyeon. Cinematography by Kim Yong-cheol. Edited by Kim Sang-beom and Kim Jae-beom. Music by Lee Byeong-hun and Bang Jun-seok. Costume design by Kim Jeong-wong.

Cast: Jung Jin-young (Ki-young), Kim Yoon-suk (Sung-wook), Kim Sang-ho (Hyuk-soo), Jang Geun-suk (Hyun-joon), Kim Ho-jeong (Seon-mi), Kim Ah-sung (Ju-hee).

The title of Lee Joon-ik’s latest film, The Happy Life, at first seems like a bitterly ironic jape, since the lives we see on display seem to be anything but. Ki-young (Jung Jin-young), recently unemployed, lives off his teacher wife Seon-mi (Kim Ho-jeong). Both his wife and his daughter Ju-hee (Kim Ah-sung, the daughter from The Host) have little respect for him. His other two friends live in similarly humbled circumstances: Hyuk-soo (Kim Sang-ho) sells used cars and Sung-wook (Kim Yoon-suk) makes deliveries by day and is a hired driver at night. They are high school friends who have fallen out of touch over the years. They are brought back together when Sang-woo, a mutual friend, dies suddenly, having suffered an accidental fall down the stairs during a bout of drinking. When Sang-woo’s embittered son Hyun-joon (Jang Geun-suk) tries to burn his father’s guitar, Ki-young stops him and takes it home with him. It turns out that all four friends were in a high school band called Active Volcano, who had a short-lived career due to losing in the preliminary rounds of a school competition that occasioned the birth of this band. Ki-young seizes on the idea of reforming the band and reliving their glory days. His friends at first mock him, but when they experience their own series of setbacks, they agree to reform the band. They rent out a recording studio to practice, and they begin to feel the old magic coming back. After a disastrous audition for a nightclub manager, their rock career is rescued by Hyun-joon, who takes over the lead singing duties originally performed by his father. They return to the club owner and pass their audition with flying colors. They are an instant hit at the club, garnering enthusiastic responses, and even a cadre of young female groupies. However, their new status as local rock heroes causes strife with each of the men’s spouses. Another fresh set of personal tragedies threaten to break up the band once again.

The Happy Life follows the formula of Lee’s previous film Radio Star almost to the letter. Both films deal with aging rockers attempting to recapture their youth in the face of the harsh realities of their present circumstances. Formula though this may be, it’s a winning one. The story, in terms of the film’s focus, takes a back seat to showing the way these old friends interact with each other and exhibit the easy camaraderie which results from knowing each other for many years. There are a couple of passages that bring tears to the eyes, where the men use their music to soldier their way through their pain. This music is a defiant cry of “No!” to the myriad forces conspiring to knock them down and thwart their dreams. Lee, as he does in both The King and the Clown and Radio Star, excels in dramatizing the vicissitudes of male friendship, and how these relationships can often eclipse those of wives, children, and other family, and sometimes be more intense and long-lasting. Lee’s film has a charming, genial flow that moves with a seeming effortlessness that is a beauty to behold.

Two from North Korea: "Bellflower" and "My Look in the Distant Future"

Bellflower (Jo Kyong-sun)



This film, in contrast to the less overtly propagandistic Hong Kil Dong, exhibits the full-on expression of the Juche (self-reliance) ideology that all North Korean films are meant to illustrate. However, the thwarted love story at its center is the melodramatic sugar that makes the ideological medicine go down. The film begins with a man, Won Bong, who takes his son, Se Ryong, to the village he used to live. He is now an exile due to his failed love affair with Song Rim (O Mi-ran), or “Bellflower,” nicknamed as such after her favorite flower. She is the idealized, hard-working comrade, whose every thought and action is devoted to modernizing her village and her farm collective. Wu Bong wishes to marry her, but her sister Song Hwa is violently opposed, as they have been orphaned because of the Korean War, and she is afraid of being left alone. Wu Bong is offered a job in the city, and wants Song Rim to accompany him. He wants to make his fortune there, and thinks it will take their village a century to catch up technologically to the city. She refuses to go with him, and throws herself into improving the village. Wu Bong, having failed in the city, and now living in painful regret of his lack of faith in the power of the village people, sends his son to ask for forgiveness on his behalf. He ends the film crying, clutching the dirt, asking forgiveness from the village he abandoned, and the now deceased Song Rim, who sacrificed her life for the village.


Bellflower resembles both Chinese Maoist propaganda films, with the frequent paeans in song given to the virtuousness of their work, and South Korean tear-jerker melodramas. As the latter, it seems to be quite effective, as evidenced by the tears streaming down the face of the woman who sat next to me at the screening. O Mi-ran, dubbed “the People’s Actress,” more than fulfills this role, as the pure, virtuous comrade, so selfless and devoted to her people. The characterizations are tissue paper-thin, but this is in service to its true aim, as all the characters are types to illustrate the message of the folly of putting personal gain over the collective good.


My Look in the Distant Future (Jang In-hak)



Released in the midst of the catastrophic famine that struck North Korea in the mid 90’s, My Look in the Distant Future, as indicated by its title, exhorts its viewers to look past the then current troubles to the bright, shining future that is possible if all citizens put their nose to the grindstone and work, work, work selflessly for the good of the nation. Once again, as in Bellflower, a melodramatic love story, the bulk of which is told in flashback, forms the spine of this story. But here, the ideological content is in overdrive, with frequent songs attesting to the goodness of the paternal Great Leader, and the glory of the country and its people. Lessons for proper citizen behavior are illustrated by the story of dissolute, spoiled slacker Jun (Kim Myong-mun), whose father was a great hero, and who is content to live in the reflected glory of his parents’ accomplishments, causing his parents no end of embarrassment and grief, especially his father, who holds his son responsible for half the gray hairs on his head. One rainy night, Jun gives a ride to Su Yang (Kim Hye-gyong), a young woman with whom he becomes instantly smitten. He later learns she is the group leader of a construction brigade, and tries to use his influence to get her into school to train for a more prestigious position. Su Yang turns this down to work on a farm, and Jun follows her to work on the farm during his vacation time. He wishes to take her back to Pyongyang to marry her, but his plans are thwarted when she rejects him for not having a pure heart, and not being a son worthy of his parents, especially his grandfather, a war hero during the resistance to Japanese rule. Thereafter begins a painful maturing process, where Jun learns the error of his ways, and achieves the great accomplishment of finding an alternative to oil for the farm’s tractor. The message is clear: the individual is nothing, worse than nothing, actually pernicious, and the collective is all.