REVIEW: Tokyo Drifter

トーキョードリフター (Tokyo Dorifuta)Released: 2011

Director:
Tetsuaki Matsue

Starring:
Kenta Maeda

Running time: 72 min.

Reviewed by Nicholas Vroman

“Tokyo Drifter” begins on a black screen with the briefest of announcements. “Latest news on the tsunami situation…” An ad jingle comes up alternating with street noise. A murky shot of a Japanese flag in the darkness gives way to an empty office building with all the lights on. A quick cut to black. A building with a sign – Olympus goes out of focus. Cut to black A long shot of a dark building flashing a couple lights. A train station’s light illuminates many commuters who once they exit find the exterior plunged into darkness. A darkened Toyota sign foregrounds a ribbon of red car taillights snaking away into the night.

The camera zooms in on a traffic island, a handful of folks bustling by, cars zipping by. The auto focus makes the image snap in and out of focus. The camera shakes as singer songwriter, Kenta Maeno, far away unpacks his guitar and begins singing.

The offhand editing is anything but. The shaky and soft images specifically reference the iconic images of the earthquake and tsunami of 3.11 – those awesome and horrifying lo-fi images taken from ketais and digital cameras. These are the aesthetic tools and motifs that make up Tetsue Matsuaki’s off-kilter love letter to Tokyo and the darkness it was thrust into after the great Tohoku earthquake. For months after the earthquake, businesses and public offices turned off neon lights and signs. Streetlights were turned off. Tokyo, famous for its illuminated nightscape was an eerily changed city.

A couple of years ago, Matsuaki and Maeno made the indie sensation, “Live Tape” – a single shot feature that followed Maeno singing and improvising on a long walk through Kichijoji, a hip neighborhood in western Tokyo. He revisits a similar trope in “Tokyo Drifter” with Maeno singing an album’s worth of material over one rainy night, this time in different neighborhoods around Tokyo. The new film, however, finds the director and his singing muse much more focused, even as Maeno drifts around different sites on his motorcycle a couple months after the disaster.

Maeno’s first song, sung on a dimly lit traffic island with passersby consciously ignoring him builds images of people traveling via a night bus – young lovers and old men, rain and snow and lonely stations. The bittersweet ideas of drifting travelers filled with hopes and broken dreams set the stage for Maeno’s own seemingly aimless travels through the darkened quarters of the city he both loves, but has a fair share of criticism for.

Next we see him in Ginza, in a dark alley, a Louis Vuitton store’s sign casting a ghostly glow in the background. He signs a questioning love song…

A woman’s friendship’s an enigma
A woman’s friendship’s what I need

… followed up with another song – a slacker’s remembrance of a sticky past summer. He hits the road singing:

Blue sky and the sun are calling
… these days of youth
Off we go staying young and fearless
Off we go on a journey
through these days of youth
When in tears of in joy
We’ll stay friends as we journey on

We next find him sitting in front of a closed hair salon in Meidaimae, another hip area on the west side of town, singing a sad and beautiful song suggesting that the words love and loneliness are words that he longs to be gone. Maeno is a romantic at heart. He gets up and wanders down a dark shotnegai, again singing a reminiscence of a hot summer. Next we see him in front an anonymous apartment, still in darkness, where he sings another bittersweet love song. Through these songs he speaks of hot unbearable days, cockroaches and generally nasty stuff with a longing and appreciation for what life in Tokyo is really about.

Next we find him in Shibuya where he delivers a wickedly funny song of pure self-revulsion, “Fuck Me.” He wanders toward the famous crossing singing a set of songs loosely built around wistful impressions and celebrations of rainy nights and days, 120-yen coffee and the crass consumption that’s the essential metaphor for life in Tokyo. When he reaches the crossing the huge video monitors, neon lights and signs that usually keep the place in constant daylight are off. The Shibuya crossing is rarely seen like this.

He hits the road as the rain grows stronger singing the AKB 48 hit of last spring, “Heavy Rotation.”

I want you
I need you
I love you
My mind…
Love’s on heavy rotation
Heavy rotation

Next he’s in front of a convenience store, its sign off. He’s silhouetted only by the interior neon. The rain pours down as he sings a couple more songs – one about the impossibility of knowing others’ lives and the other a tortured love song to Tokyo itself.

This worn down magnificent city
Tokyo
Dreams, hope and passion
Pathetic, but it’s
Tokyo
Breaking up with your
First meeting you
I realized that I loved this city
This worn down city of youth
Tokyo
The lights go down
The young move out
Tokyo

The final scene finds Maeno at dawn on a dike by a river, the city in the background. He sings a rather heroic song binding ideas of the past and future, looking to “the new morning sunrise.” He tosses his pick away as the camera goes into a close up of his dirty fingers playing a circle of fifths. A blackout as the music continues and a studio mixed band fills in the final “Tokyo Drifter’ song (not the Hajime Kaburagi version). Shots of Maeno on his motorcycle continuing his journey give way to the credits.

“Tokyo Drifter,” Tetsuaki and Maeno’s paean to the darkness, to Tokyo as physical presence – in all it’s filth and glory – and a state of mind, boldly takes the defining national tragedy of 2011 and turns it on its head, finding a bit of light and hope from it all. As he told me, “The Tokyo now and the Tokyo then is different. In May everyone was on edge. They didn’t know what was happening. I prefer Tokyo then in May, rather than the Tokyo we’re in now.”

Originally published on J-Film Pow-Wow, Monday, January 16, 2012

Nicholas Vroman’s Top Five Favorite Films of 2011

Nicholas Vroman, our man in Tokyo, is in the enviable position of getting a look at theatrical releases and festival premieres that us other Pow-Wow contributors only dream of. Here are his top theatrical picks from Japan from 2011.

1. Saya Zamurai (dir. Hitoshi Matsumoto)If you had any doubt, “Saya Zamurai” puts Hitoshi Matsumoto up there with the great comedic auteurs of all time. We’re talking Keaton, Chaplin, Tati and maybe Jerry Lewis. From his first film, “Dainipponjin” to “Symbol” to this one, he’s deconstructed comedy brilliant, if somewhat intellectually. The laughs were more in the mind than the belly. Here he lays the whole idea of comedy and its commerce bare with his hapless hero’s attempts to save his own life through an increasing spectacle of bad jokes – and brings it all around to a moving denouement. In “Saya Zamurai” Matsumoto digs deep into his finely honed comic mind and finds his heart.

2. I Wish (dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)

Hirokazu Koreeda’s joyful “Kiseki” (I Wish) was the perfect antidote to the downbeat mood that has gripped the nation after the great Touhoku earthquake, tsunami and ongoing nuclear crisis. It’s a family movie, and thus didn’t register so highly on most critics’ radars, but what a family movie it is. Kore-eda’s exploration of dreams and hopes isn’t filled with sugar-coated platitudes. The broken dreams and concessions of adults exist side by side with the impossible (and some possible) dreams of the kids who are the engines that drive the film. Maeda Maeda, the pint-sized manzai team who front the film are a joy to watch as they shake up themselves and those around them to at very least make them (and the viewers) recognize that it’s the doing that’s most important.

3. Household X (dir. Koki Yoshida)

“Household X,” Koki Yoshida’s austere an uncompromising exploration of a disintegrating family seems to tread on old ground, with its images of extreme urban alienation and stripped down drama – if one can call long passages of silence and non-communication “drama.” But looking at the motifs and images that bind the story – and the family – together shows a very assured director working with rigor and not a single unnecessary shot. Yoshida knows how to make the most mundane shot significant. “Tokyo Sonata” covered similar ground, but seems downright melodramatic and clichéd compared to “Household X.”

4. My Back Page (dir. Nobuhiro Yamashita)

Nobuhiro Yamashita brings out the best from stars Kenichi Matsuyama as a psychopathic charismatic radical leader and Satoshi Tsumabuki as a young reporter. The smartly directed duo get the rare opportunity to dig into the crazy times of social and political change with a cinematic chemistry that makes a beautiful emotional sense of the relationship between two complex men. “My Back Page” is a welcome addition to a recent spate of films dealing with the radical turmoil of 30 or so years ago. Coupling a bittersweet nostalgia with an unromantic looks at motivation, actions and consequences, it reveals and revels in an emotional honesty that says more than most history books.

5. Tokyo Drifter (dir. Tetsuaki Matsue)

As in “Live Tape,” Matsue Tetsuaki follows singer Kenta Maeno, this time over one rainy night in Tokyo. Maeno’s love/hate songs to Tokyo work like a concept album. Countered with the ugly, shaky and increasingly degraded look of the visuals (shot by “My Back Page” and “Saya Zamurai” cinematographer, Ryuto Kondo), Tetsuaki perversely explores images, sounds and expectations. As an analog and reference to the handheld ketai images that documented 3.11, the images of “Tokyo Drifter” counterpunch with a celebration of the darkness that engulfed Tokyo for a few months, daring to say, “these are the better times.” Tokyo Drifter’s an audacious and uneven film that brings up a wealth of questions in search of resolutions.

Originally published in J-Film Pow-Wow January 5, 2012.

Suzuki Seijun Revival

As Seijun Suzuki nears his 89^th year and news of a new film by him is in the works, a revival of his Taisho Roman Trilogy is hitting the big screen again. After being unceremoniously dumped by Nikkatsu in the late 60s, Suzuki made only one film in the 70s. But in 1980, Zigeunerwiesen, the first of his famous trilogy, appeared.  Producer Genjiro Arato screened the film in a tent he set up near the Tokyo Dome. The film became an indie hit that year, winning several Japanese Academy Awards and topping most critics’ best lists. Thirty-one years later, it still stands up as one of Suzuki’s many masterpieces. Unfettered by the studios’ demands, Suzuki let his imagination and his incredible visual style fly. Zigeunerwiesen creates a dreamscape of a story involving Aochi (Toshiya Fujita), a professor, his errant colleague Nakasago (the late, great Yoshio Harada), Aochi’s wife Shuko (Michiyo Okusa), a geisha, Koini and Nakasago’s wife Sono (both played by Naoko Otani) in a love pentangle. Zigeunerwiesen takes a strain of Bunuelian surrealism to new extremes, juxtaposing dream imagery, creating impossible and hermetic logical constructions and mostly, exploring the possibilities of mad love – all with a subversive sense of humor, leavened with perverseness and bawdiness. The end result is still eye-popping and thrilling after all these years. Suzuki followed up quickly with Kageroza the next year. Here many of the themes that Suzuki would expand with his later masterpieces, Pistol Opera and Princess Raccoon, seem to get a dress rehearsal. Again, a deliciously perverse story obliquely unfolds. It may all be a dream in the mind of its central character, playwright Shungo Matsuzaki (Yusaku Matsuda). The story is built around a certain object of his desire, who gives him her soul in the form of what’s translated to bladder cherry (actually a ground cherry).  With thematic and visual motifs referencing Zigeunerweisen – two male characters involved with various permutations and doppelgangers of wives and lovers, a juxtaposition of the changing fashions and mores as Japan adopted Western ideas and a fervid interior logic – Kageroza expands on and abstracts it all. Suzuki throughout his career tended toward theatricality, but in Kageroza, the façade of filmic realism is overtly deconstructed. The final scene of the film finds our hero watching a kabuki play performed by kids. It’s as if Suzuki is going into the id-theatre of his mind and putting it on screen. The final part of the trilogy, Yumeji, almost seems conventional against the other films. The story is (very) loosely based on the life of decadent illustrator, Takahisa Yumeji. Played by Kenji Sawada, he’s portrayed in all his pretense and moral failings. The plot twists around a mad killer, a dead (or not) husband, the artist and the women/objects in their lives juxtaposing humor and gravity. A new look at these masterpieces confirms Suzuki’s place in the pantheon.

Originally published in EL Magazine, January 2012

Bakumatsu taiyoden / The Sun Legend of the End of the Tokugawa Era / 幕末太陽傳

Director Yuzo Kawashima was the subject of a small retrospective at the 2011 Tokyo Filmex. His acknowledged masterwork – often on ten best ever Japanese film lists and a favorite of Kurosawa – is Bakumatsu taiyoden. For the 100 year anniversary of Nikkatsu brand new print of this overlooked masterpiece has been struck. The Shohei Imamura penned film chronicles the times (the 1860s) and the adventures of Saheji (Frankie Sakai), a good-time hustler who runs up his bill at a brothel and is forced to work there to pay it off. His run-ins with crooks, johns, prostitutes and panoply of characters, shown through an almost Altman-esque tapestry, highlight a certain Tokyoite archetype that goes against the usual Japanese stereotype. Sakai, who’s always brilliant, celebrates the brash, conniving and generous spirit that Imamura made central to his oeuvre throughout his career as a director. Kawashima’s spot on direction keeps the action comic, lively and moving. The sometimes impenetrable slang and accents add to the mayhem, though they may be a bit difficult for non-natives (and natives too!).

Originally published in EL Magazine, January 2012

10 Best Japanese Films 2011

2011 in Japan was marked by the disaster of 3.11. The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown decisively changed the conversation of the future of Japan. By the end of the year, a number of documentary filmmakers presented an array of either heartfelt, pandering, exploitive and/or amateurish films attempting to grapple with the issues. The commercial cinema by and large ignored the the most important, game changing event of the last half century beyond announcing a few films, the worst of which, The Woodsman and the Rain, as escapist placebos to the genuine national tragedy of 3.11.

I only included one film on my ten best, questionable as a documentary (it’s something beyond that rubric), dealing with 3.11. Sitting on my desk, unseen as of yet, is a DVD of Yoju Matsubayashi’s Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape, one film that everyone I know recommends highly. Toshi Fujiwara’s No Man’s Zone, which premiered at Tokyo Filmex this year, is an intriguing and flawed film, that didn’t quite make it to my top 10 list. Nonetheless, as we rapidly approach the first anniversary of the disaster, I’m interested in how the commercial industry and the indie world will tackle the defining national issue of the early 21st century.

In my capacity as a writer for a local magazine, I’ve  have the distinct pleasure of viewing a mess of really bad films – many from filmmakers who can and should do better. This year’s releases by Sono Sion (Guilty of Romance), Ryuichi Hiroyuki (River) and Shinji Aoyama (Tokyo Park) come to mind.

Between the banality of commercial Japanese product, a disparate and unfocused indie community and the monumental effects of 3.11 – culturally, monetarily and emotionally – it seemed a particularly weak year for Japanese film. But amongst the dross, there was some genuine gold.

Herewith are my favorite Japanese films of the year.

Saya Zamurai / Scabbard Samurai

Funnyman Hitoshi Matsumoto, in his third big screen outing, brought massive heart to his natural inclination toward heady intellectual comedy. The story of Nomi, a sadsack samurai who has 30 days to make the disconsolate son of the local shogun laugh or face death, sets up the situation for an exploration of the art and commerce of comedy. Small stupid jokes turn into spectacle as Nomi-san goes to his inevitable end. The laughter and the tears are well earned. Matsumoto is one of the best comedy directors to come down the pike in quite a while. Saya Zamurai puts him in the leagues with all-time greats. We’re talkin’ Chaplin, Keaton and Tati here.

Website (Japanese)

Trailer

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Kiseki / I Wish

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s I Wish, was met with some reduced expectations and bit of downputting. Coming on the heels of his outre fable, Air Doll, some critics wanted something a little more sexy than the story of a couple of brothers, waiting for a new train line to be completed. They were totally wrong. I Wish delivered a moving tale about dreams and wishes – fulfilled and unfulfilled – with deep honesty, bittersweet humor and some purely magical moments of cinema. The ensemble of actors, fronted by the child manzai team, brothers Koki and Oshiro Maeda were impeccable. I Wish was the perfect antidote to the gloom that hit the nation after 3.11. It stands among Kore-eda’s best films, which is saying a lot.

Website (Japanese)

Trailer

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Kazoku X / Household X

Household X, the second film by Koki Yoshida, was one of the most thrilling discoveries of the year. Simple and unsentimental, a story unfolds of a family falling apart. Following in a tradition of tales of urban alienation, Yoshida uses a shaky Dogma-esqe style to show the details, faces and places that’s part Chantal Akerman, part John Cassavetes. There’s not a thrown away shot in the film. Each image holds on it’s own while developing leitmotifs and associations that ultimately build to seeming soft, but emotionally purging climax. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata covered similar territory a couple of years ago, but seems sentimental and cliched compared to Yoshida’s timely masterpiece.

Website (Japanese)

Trailer

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My Back Page

Nobuhiro Yamashita, best known for Linda Linda Linda, took two of Japan’s most popular actors, Kenichi Matsuyama and Satoshi Tsumabaki, giving them roles they could finally sink their teeth into. For someone born in 1976, Yamashita gets the 60s and 70s much better than most people who lived through those heady years. My Back Page’s exploration of the idealism curdled by madness and ideology – and how it was enabled – manages both to celebrate and criticize the time and characters. Contemporary filmmakers have been looking back at those years. Last year’s  Norwegian Wood comes to mind. But all pale in emotional depth and capturing the zeitgeist of the times as well as My Back Page.

Website (Japanese)

Trailer

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NIGHTLESS

Film and installation artist Yuichiro Tamura’s ever changing experimental short (he re-edits it whenever screens it) NIGHTLESS is made solely of still images from Google Earth animated. Going down roads, past houses in the USA and Japan, NIGHTLESS show a world of mystery, timelessness and foreboding. The soundtrack bounces from an entirely absurd yarn (by Tamura) about growing up in Omaha to random police radio recordings. Tamura’s brilliant collage of seemingly arbitrary stuff shows him to be a master at pulling hidden and profound meanings out of the things of this world.

Yuichiro Tamura’s Blog (Japanese and English)

Trailer

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Soreiyu no kodomotachi / Children of Soleil

Children of Soleil is a documentary following the life of Yasuo Takashima (AKA Ojichan), a bit of human flotsam, who has found himself living living on a boat on a canal in southern Tokyo with his dogs and a growing collection of junk boats and garbage. He’s a nutty character, who somewhere between his own obsessions, temperament, mental illness and alcoholism brings a profundity  to his yarns about his life and living on the canal. Director Yoichiro Okutani spent 2 years embedding with and befriending Ojichan to bring his story to the screen. Okutani’s eye, compassion and smart directoral decisions make Children of Soleil the best documentary of year.

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Tokyo Drifter

Matsue Tetsuaki returns to the screen with his singing songwriting buddy Kenta Maeno for an album’s worth of songs shot over one rainy night in May on the darkened streets of Tokyo. That’s all there is. Maeno singing and the rather dull backdrop of convenience stores, shuttered storefronts, rain – Tokyo in all its ugliness. After 3.11, the otherwise neon-lit metropolis became darkened shadow of it’s usual neon-lit glory. Tetsuaki and Maeno amazingly turn the bad times of early 2011 into a celebration of the place, of the darkness itself and of the potential of this changed city. Tokyo Drifter has the audacity to suggest that the post-3.11 world is the better times. The darkness turns to a sort of bassackwards optimism and I, for one, believe it.

Website (Japanese)

Trailer

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Monsters Club

After Toshiaki Toyoda’s abysmal stoner slog of a couple of years ago, The Blood of Rebirth, expectations were a little low for Monsters Club, but damn, what return to form it turned out to be. Starring big eared heartthrob Eita, Monsters Club is a parable about a Ted Kaczynski-like hermit, living in a snowy Hallmark beautiful woods, sending letter bombs to the powerful. It’s a film that’s not perfect, but walks the high wire, bringing a mix of elements – the poetry of Kenji Miyazawa, performance artist Pyuupiru and a whole lot more – and pulling it off terrifying and beautiful brilliance.

Website (Japanese)

Trailer

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CUT

I’ve been following Amir Naderi’s CUT over the last couple of years through production to its premiere. It’s a singular work, by one of the guys who invented contemporary Iranian cinema. CUT follows the travails of a young cineaste/filmmaker who becomes a human punching bag for a bunch of yakuza thugs in order to pay off his late brother’s debts. It’s a grueling watch as he is endlessly beaten. He survives by evoking… movies! The great ones that sustain the world. CUT is a cinephile’s movie. It’s big, passionate, referential and ultimately rewarding.

Website (Japanese)

Facebook Page

Trailer

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Henji wa iranai / No Reply

At the age of 24, Satoru Hirohara seems to be embarked on “documenting” his generation with his second film, No Reply. It’s a slacker dramadey, following a couple on the verge of a breakup – a bit of a staple for young filmmakers. What makes No Reply work, is the layers of allusions, the details and ultimately a sort of reconciliation of the characters and a squaring up of their seemingly random trajectories into a fulfillment of their creative desires. No Reply works not just as a fascinating cultural window, but a celebration of being twenty-something.

Trailer

Originally published in Hot Splice, January 3, 2011

REVIEW: No Man’s Zone

無人地帯 (Mujinchitai)Released: 2011

Director:
Toshifumi Fujiwara

Narrator:
Arsinée Khanjian

Running time: 102 min.

Reviewed by Nicholas Vroman

Toshifumi Fujiwara’s “No Man’s Zone” begins with the image of a tree standing alone amidst the rubble and detritus left by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. It’s still graceful in its battered and wind-beaten shape. It could be an exemplary example of bonsai. The camera slowly pans a full 360 degrees across the wasted landscape. Trash, detritus, the remains of buildings and boats move by as a woman’s voice (Arsinée Khanjian) speaks of the disaster, how the images of disaster are difficult to digest, yet how we as viewers’ become addicted to images of destruction. As the camera comes full circle to settle back on the tree she asks if we noticed the smokestacks of the Fukushima Nuclear Plan, as they passed by in the background. Like most every one in the audience at its Tokyo Filmex premier, I didn’t.

Thus begins Fujiwara’s Marker-esque exploration of the fact and the legacy of 3.11. His journey takes him within the 50 kilometer no man’s zone surrounding the crippled and leaking Fukushima Nuclear plant. The journey is not merely the usual disaster sightseeing trip, but a serious questioning of how it was and is being mediated, along with a healthy dose of asides and commentary, interviews with a handful of holdouts living with the zone and scenes of destruction countered with things like blooming cherry trees and flowers. For a film about one of the major disasters that ever hit Japan, it’s surprisingly beautiful.

Fujiwara takes on the role of the Stalker, leading us into the Zone. Tarkovsky was prescient! Whether this place will become the place where our desires will be fulfilled – only time will tell. Our darkest most troubled ones maybe. This may be where his insistence on his idea of our addiction to images of destruction lies. He offers up plenty. But he counters them with even more of images of spring reviving and taking back the landscape. And perhaps most importantly Fujiwara attempts to film the unfilmable.

First off there’s the officially unfilmable – going into the off-limits area to capture the wreckage, the empty streets, the cows and dogs and cats left behind, the last human holdouts of the towns of Ukedo and Iitate. This may be the easiest part. Scores of people have made the trip into the zone to rescue abandoned animals, take photos and film or just to gawk at the place.

Then there’s filming the invisible radiation. Truly unfilmable, the invisible particles that have traveled through the air and contaminated the soil and water have already left their long lasting mark. Fujiwara shows fields and forest, on the surface quite lovely, but now holding an invisible malignancy that requires an urgent but basically impossible effort to remove. His interviewees acknowledge this truth as they prepare for their forced evacuations from family homes.
And the last unfilmable thing is what will become of the Zone itself. As it becomes more an more apparent that the damage from the nuclear plant is uncontainable, the zone will certainly become a No Man’s Zone, left to lie fallow for generations. Fujiwara has made the effort to document this place in all its beauty and ruination because it may be one of the last times we will ever be able to see it, before it’s completely off-limits. The images of the film become the zone’s final legacy.

Fujiwara spends most of the duration of the film traveling from the small town of Ukedo to Iitate. Ukedo seems harder hit by the tsunami. As we travel down haunted and abandoned streets, a few sightings of cars with relief workers and police, images and stories of tragedies – a grandmother being swept out to sea – develop into a critique of how the tragedy was handled – how long it took to respond – and ultimately, a critique of how the whole thing was mediated. Fujiwara hopes to correct those impressions, not only by proffering a new set of images, but by questioning the meaning or unmeaning of the saturation of images proffered by the media.

His specific critique of how NHK mediated the event rings a little false in that NHK, with its vast resources, has actually done a better job than most indie filmmakers on documenting the destruction and reconstruction of Tohoku. One can and must question the ideology of a government news organization where (in Japan in particular) the coziness of the players public and private is appalling. But, there are a number of independent producers working for NHK who have been active in trying to fairly view and assess the legacy of 3.11.

Secondly, he manages to not illustrate his own movie with examples of the images that have offended him so. The viewer is left questioning, “What are these images that are so bad?”

And thirdly there are some iconic and auteur-less images from keitais and surveillance cameras that have been seared onto the world’s retina. The wall of the tsunami crossing the highway. The shot from a hill where we see the sluggish and forceful water swirling and sweeping up house after house. These two come to mind.

The recurring voice over of our addiction to images of destruction may also be more of a personal reflection on the part of Fujiwara. Endless loops of falling towers or tracking shots through kilometer after kilometer of leveled towns may be less about the viewers’’ addiction and more about the media’s role as a pusher. Are we addicted? Or are we ultimately beaten by images into being overwhelmed and ultimately inured to the meaning of these images?

“No Man’s Zone,” at least, represents a beginning. There are a number of lesser documentaries coming out now on 3.11 that even in their well-meaning shovel up endless clichés and hours of numbing footage of the disaster. Fujiwara questions it all. His answers, at times, may seem a bit too pat, but he’s going in the right direction. What are most powerful of No Man’s Land remain the images of nature’s healing and rebirth, even tainted by the invisible poison left by man. The final, somewhat mundane image of a tree takes on a new meaning in Fujiwara’s hands – something akin to hope, leavened with frightful knowledge and the weight of recent history.

Originally published in J-Film Pow-Wow, December 19, 2011

Mitsuko Delivers / Hare ga kore nande / ハラがコレなんで

Director Yuya Ishii (Sawako Decides, Azemichi no dandy) continues with his gentle comedic skewerings of Japanese society with Mitsuko Delivers. The story follows Mitsuko (Riisa Naka), 9 months pregnant and yenless, but nonetheless strong and forward looking – especially compared to the gamut of types and characters she interacts with. She mysteriously appears in Tokyo, crossing paths with her clueless and distant parents, hinting that the child may be the progeny of G.I met in California. Finding a place to stay in a rundown shitamachi street where she grew up, she finds a colorful cast of simple town folk in the big city – the old landlady, the young man who still holds a boyhood crush on her. With little ado, she takes command of their lives, all the while near delivery of her own child. Naka gives completely appealing and sensitive shape to the no-nonsense Mitsuko. As appealing as Mitsuko Delivers is, by the denouement a series of over determined and in-your-face set pieces nearly derail an otherwise delightful comedy by and otherwise very smart director.

Originally published in EL Magazine, December, 2011

Tokyo Filmex 2012 Report

Tokyo Filmex seems like a family affair. That is your family includes a who’s who of contemporary filmmakers and film artists, a legion of Tokyo film buffs and an international cast of film writers, bookers, translators, movers and shakers. It just feels cozy and inclusive. There’s a particular indulgence of viewing a smartly curated selection of films by Shozo Ichiyama. Even if you don’t like them all, they tend to all fit into a clever puzzle of themes, associations and leitmotifs, making the festival itself seem a seamless whole.Another of the pleasures of the festival is that it brings comrades and collaborators from far and wide. I had the distinct pleasure of having Chris MaGee spend a few nights on my apartment floor and days tag-teaming it to catch films.

I saw a mess of international films – a few terrible ones, a few ma ma, several good ones and at least one brilliant one (Nick Ray’s 1972 “We Can’t Go Home Again”). But as this is the J-Film Pow-Wow, here’s a quick report on films Japanese.

The Catch

I know that Chris has already weighed in most eloquently on Shinji Shomai’s “The Catch,” but a few comments seem to be in order. From the opening scene that introduces Shomai’s wild camera pan/zoom/truck/crane technics, like most in the darkened house, my mouth was agape with an oh-my-god sort of awe. Several other set pieces throughout the film with the god-like camera floating over water, twisting and turning over the prows of boats, across quays and back again made me wonder if the film was more about impossible camera setups or the somewhat old-fashioned proletarian “Islands In the Stream” story of taciturn and shochu- fueled men men men against the sea. Perhaps I prefer my crazy camera work a little less tainted by plot. Give me Michael Snow most days (even though Snow does play with tainted plots). But there were times in “The Catch” where the figuring out of how the hell he did that shot overwhelmed the drunken drama that was being played out. The film’s ostensible documentary veracity, played against the increasingly melodramatic plotline, made for one of the more novel cinematic experiences of my life. I’m still in awe of and questioning the arcane and retrograde method of catching tuna – long lines drawn in by hand and when the behemoth is finally pulled to the edge of the boat, it being bludgeoned to death. Haven’t they every heard of winches? Or fishing poles? No wonder these guys are so messed up. The images and actions in “The Catch” seem to come from some sort of strange otherworld. Even John Huston’s stylized translation of “Moby Dick,” with Gregory Peck’s overwrought Ahab seems to have more connection with the things of this world than the seemingly more realistic world of “The Catch” which comes off like science fiction.

CUT

Of course, Emir Naderi’s “CUT” was the big ticket of the festival. Naderi, with his outsized and generous personality was the head of the festival jury and seemed to be everywhere at the festival, glad-handing and joking – a kind of crazy fun Iranian bachelor uncle you wish you had type. His film was getting the big hype for low-budget art house fodder (Note: I have been a small part of the hype machine with an article I wrote more than a year ago about a visit to the set of “CUT”). The brutal intensity of the film more than lived up to expectations. The lack of dramatic curvature, though, made the parable about the suffering of the artist-cinephile a bit of a slog. And in the penultimate scene where a countdown of 100 great films punctuate the seemingly endless beating one is left with more of an intellectual release rather than an emotional one. What twisted my mind and left me squirming more after the houselights went up was Naderi’s simultaneous critique and exploitation of the idea of violence as entertainment. The direct pleasure of men beating up another man versus the higher aesthetics of cinema art was laid on display for the audience to “enjoy” voyeuristically in a high art film that was laden with violence. It makes the mind boggle.

Monsters Club

A couple of buddies were put off by Monster’s Club opening scenes where our hero, a younger, richer and more fashionable Ted Kaczynski (as played by Eita) goes through his hermetic routines – which mainly include sending mail bombs to owners of media conglomerates – in his Hallmark perfect winter cabin. His voice over mouths anarcho-primitivist screeds. They felt that filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda was in agreement with the sentiments voiced. He may well be, but between Eita’s incongruous (and great) haircut and his character’s acknowledged privileged I felt that he was more of a 3rd Generation type and his motives completely up to question. As his madness ensues he does become a monster, delivering his last payload to the crowded streets of Tokyo – bringing a metaphorical and literal winter with him. Monster’s Club was disturbing, visionary and uneven. The literalizing of his demons was a bit overdone, but the nod toward JLG had a particular resonance. The bigger reference to Kenji Miyazawa, children’s book author and poet may have been a bit too Japanese culture specific to translate beyond borders, but even without the cultural reference the final voice over poem throws the whole thing into a more enigmatic and resonant place. Toyoda’s mixing it up with performance artist Pyuupiru, musician KenKen and a host of others show a generosity of spirit that’s visible in the final result. It’s good to see Toyoda, after his abysmal stoner slog, “The Blood of Rebirth,” finding a bit of footing on a new rocky trail – exploring, taking chances and creating interesting new work.

KOTOKO

Most problematic was “KOTOKO.” (above) Like “CUT,” not only was the title all in caps, but gushers of blood stained the screen through most of the running time. In KOTOKO’s case the boundary between fiction and fact were completely upended. “KOTOKO” follows the story of a woman, played by Okinawan singer Cocco, going mad. The manifestations of her madness include hallucinating doppelgangers and non-existent personages along with self-mutilation (cutting in this case) and anorexia – something that the real life actress is known for. She appeared on stage before the screening with director Shinya Tsukamoto, a scary image of walking death, spaced out (on meds?) and nearly incoherent. It was a sad sight. Tsukamoto appears to be genuinely in love with her – not only visible from his appearance in the movie as her potential savior, but even in the Q and A afterwards, it was pretty obvious. KOTOKO’s story was developed from Cocco’s ideas and whether the film exists as some sort of insane therapy session masquerading as a movie or an uber-Polanski exploration into troubled behavior is up to question. It seems that both director and subject are in an extreme enabling stage. Despite the visceral and unrelenting affect of the film (Tsukemoto certainly knows how to put together a film) one wonders if it may be better for Cocco to get some professional help soon.

No Man’s Zone

“No Man’s Zone” is Toshi Fujiwara’s documentary meditation on the disaster in Tohoku. If Cocco wears the marks of her self-mutilation on her forearms, Fujiwara wears his Markerisms on his sleeve. Even the voice over by Arsinée Khanjian sounded uncannily like Sandra Stewart, the voice on the English language version of “Sans Soleil.” There was coy set of questions and statements about what you were looking at. A Where’s Waldo “whoops you missed what you should have been looking at” turned with increasing gravity to “the thing you should be looking at – radiation – you can’t see.” For a film that’s about trifecta of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, it’s surprisingly beautiful. The landscapes and still lives of the massive destruction of 3.11 give way to the revival of spring and nature reclaiming the devastated land. But the radiation has made the place a “No Man’s Zone.” Tarkovsky was prescient on this one! Fujiwara’s haunting images of empty and emptying towns serve as a document, a remembrance to our own follies. Where Marker builds his critique of images and documentary truth with trove of historical, and cinematic references and a lifetime of knowledge, Fujiwara tends to shorthand his seemingly pithy third person commentary, leaving the experience of No Man’s Land a bit of a didactic exercise. But as one of the first films that attempts to make some sense of the endless images of destruction and rapidly developing mediated myth of stoic and hardworking Japanese coming to terms with yet another disaster, at least “No Man’s Zone” is trying to look at things with fresh eyes with a certain anger and sadness that says, “Look at this and remember.”

Originally published in J-Film Pow-Wow, December 5, 2011

Autumn Adagio / 不惑のアダージョ

Tsuki Inoue hit the film scene in 2007 with The Woman Who Is Beating the Earth - one of the most singularly original debuts of any filmmaker in Japan. The 22-minute opus was a rich riot grrl punk pop cinemagical slice of life that marked Inoue as a talent to watch. Although still dealing with women’s issues, Autumn Adagio is more of a reflective and considered essay on a 40-something Catholic nun, Sister Maria (Rei Shibakusa) who goes through an emotional and sexual awakening through her meetings with three different men. The striking change of tone from her first short to the current feature shows Inoue as an inquisitive filmmaker willing to take risks. It also shows that by taking risks one courts failure. Autumn Adagio begs a comparison to the cinema of Bresson – channeling his flat acting style, but without his deep Catholic quandaries and questions, nor his stunning use of cinematic space. A certain didacticism scuttlebutts what should be a more emotionally connected and connecting story.  Let’s give her an A for effort.

Originally Published in EL Magazine, December, 2011

Mitsuko Kankaku / ミツコ感覚

Mitsuko Kankaku is an uneven, but interesting dramedy from first time director Kenji Yamauchi. Yamauchi cut his teeth in acting and writing plays for Tokyo’s Seinendan theatre company. This is the same place where Koji Futada, whose intriguing hospitalite was a critical hit last year, came from. Not only drawing from the same pool of great acting talent, Yamauchi seems to draw from a similar styles and themes as Futada. Case in point is Mitsuko Kankaku. The story follows two sisters, sharing a flat in the suburbs of Tokyo. One, Emi, is an office worker, involved with her boss. The other, Mitsuko, is a young photographer who takes up a part-time job working in a sunaku. Their uneventful and unfulfilled lives are shook up by a strange fellow and his sister (?). Their mere presence sets the ball rolling for a series of tragedies and resolutions that make the plot fly. hospitalite also relied on a trickster character. The cast is impeccable, if a bit theatrical at times – the Beethoven sonata in one scene, atrocious.

Originally published in EL Magazine, December 2011.