Posts Tagged ‘Sono Sion’
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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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.
Originally published in Hot Splice, January 3, 2011
Tokyo Filmex 2010
The 11th Tokyo Filmex opened with Apitchatpong Weerasethakul’s beguiling Uncle Boonmee, Who Can Recall His Past Lives. The opening film set the tenor of the week to come – experimental, personal, willing to take chances. At the opening ceremony festival director Kanako Hayashi gave a shout out to the man who pretty much put Japanese film on the international map, Donald Richie. All eyes in the audience turned toward the frail, but unbowed, man who graciously acknowledged the accolades. Over the last year the 86-year old Richie has been conspicuously absent from the film scene that he helped create, floored by age and illness. The fact that he appeared almost daily during the festival to watch films made the film-going experience for all a bit more profound. And when Abbas Kiarostami, who showed up for the Japanese premier of Certified Copy, gave his kudos to Mr. Richie, one realized that the reach of this man and his writings were not only deep, but far.
Tokyo Filmex brought out the big guns guest-wise this year. Not only did Kiarostami show up, but the list of big names in international cinema included Weerasethakul (on the competition jury), Jaco Van Dormael, Hirokazu Kore-Eda, Sono Sion, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Amir Naderi, Lee Chang-dong and a host of other young and rising directors whose works were represented in this small but well-curated selection of films. Once again, festival programmer Shozo Ichiyama walked the delicate line between arty festival favorites, hot new Asian genre flicks and new works by new talent. Not everything worked – the new Japanese films only batted at about 300 – but Filmex remains the only festival in Japan that one can say has a true personality.
In addition to the competition and special screenings, there was a small retrospective of friend-of-the-festival Amos Gitai’s work (including his new film, Roses on Credit) and a salute to the amazing 50s-60s director Minoru Shibuya. Eight examples Shibuya’s finely crafted smart and cynical oeuvre was presented in crisp newly subtitled prints. For these Western eyes it was yet another filmic discovery from the very fecund post-war years in Japan– the type of programming that Filmex has excelled in over the years.
Amir Naderi
Perhaps the most interesting and audacious program, new to the festival this year, was the Next Masters Tokyo program. 20 young Asian filmmakers, each with a feature film or two under their belts, spent the week in seminars, meet sessions and lectures with the big name directors invited and other international industry pros to workshop ideas, make connections and press the flesh with some of the best in business. Picking up on Pusan’s and Berlin’s development activities, Filmex has thrown it’s hat in the ring not so much in competition with but to augment other festivals activities in grooming and supporting new talent for the 2010’s The public and industry folks were invited to attend some of the talks. Of note was Amir Naderi’s performance piece/lecture/harangue in which he admonished the new crop of filmmakers to make films “from your heart, not your ass.”
The first few days of the festival began with a set of films, loosely built around similar themes, but with markedly different results. Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee, Who Can Recall His Past Lives opened the week with a very personal essay where time, myth, personal and political evocations built a strangely moving and abstract piece of experimental cinema. Even winning the Palm d’Or this year and becoming a festival favorite, it will be interesting to see how the general public embraces Weerasethakul’s idiosyncratic vision. One of the next day’s highlights was van Dormael’s Mr. Nobody. The visceral CGI laden epic was non-stop display of directorial inventiveness and cleverness. With a rather insane garden of forking paths and multiple destinies, van Dormael pulled off an audacious, fun and somewhat light journey that reveled in nostalgia for lost love. The hero of the story manages to lose, find, lose again and rediscover at least 3 loves, with several possible variations of loss thrown in for good measure. Perhaps more intriguing, though more uneven, was Malaysian director Tan Chui Mui’s A Year Without Summer. The film begins like a tropical L’Aventura, that about midway begins to deconstruct its mythic, psychological and narrative underpinnings in an abstract and beautiful trajectory.
Kazuhiro Soda
Other highlights included Kazuhiro Soda’s Peace. Soda’s made a couple of successful Wiseman-like documentaries on Japanese social institutions, Campaign and Mental (about a mental health clinic). With Peace, Soda turns the camera on his in-laws – both involved with public service for the physically challenge and the elderly. There’s also a story about cats and the 90 year-old Shiro Hashimoto that brings the big theme, peace, to the human and feline scale. Bing Wang’s The Ditch was a well-made and moving piece of miserablism, that shined a light of moral outrage and witness to a particularly dark side of China’s contemporary past. Certified Copy, a bit of a know quantity, was exceptional for Kiarostami’s first film outside of Iran and for Binoche’s performance. And the closing film, Poetry, confirms Lee Chang-dong as if not the best, at least the most human filmmaker working in South Korea now. His story of an old woman dealing with her grandson’s huge moral transgression in a town where most want to cover it up and make it disappear has gained deserved kudos. Lead actress, Jeon Do-yeaon won the best actress award a Cannes this year for her heartbreaking performance as Mija, the grandmother in question.
Much anticipated was the Japanese premier of Sono Sion’s Cold Fish. 2 years ago at Filmex premiered his 4 and a half hour epic, Love Exposure – a tough act to follow. His most recent provocation, Cold Fish proved to be more problematic. Sion’s anarchic nihilism of past films joyfully sent up most everything society holds sacred. His new film moves toward a more fascist nihilism, daring the audience firstly to like it. Torn from the tabloid headlines, Cold Fish follows the bleak downfall of Shamoto (Kagurazawa Megumi) a meek tropical fish store owner taken under the wing of Murata,, a madly rapacious and much more successful capitalist. The great comic, Denden plays the role of Murata, a free market capitalist gone to the most black and logical of ends. Even as he dismembers former business collaborators and enemies and in one astounding scene, hectors Shamoto to man up and fuck his own (Murata’s) wife, he remains grotesquely likeable. Devolving into a gorefest with ample amounts of misogyny and audience abuse thrown in for good measure, one wonders if Sion is becoming the sort of monster that he so wonderfully sent up in films like Suicide Club.
Hao Ji
Fimex wrapped after 8 days with an emotional awards ceremony. Again, tribute was paid to Richie, with big hopes that all would see him again at next year’s fest. A Special Jury Prize went to Hao Ji, with his highly personal directorial debut A Single Man. Hao Ji gave a simple and moving salute to his father who passed away during the shooting of the film. There were no dry eyes in the house. Kazuhiro Soda won the audience award for Peace, deservedly so. The Grand Prize went to Nobuteru Uchida for his film Love Addiction, a no-budget psychological drama, that by no means perfect, hints at a new talent in the Japanese film scene.
Nobuteru Uchida
Filmex delivered this year with a who’s who of international filmmakers, many open to late night drinking and karaoke sessions and an intriguing selection of new work, not all perfect, but in search of new talent. With the addition of the New Masters program, Filmex itself will be developing some of that very talent.
Originally written for Filmmaker Magazine.
Tsumetai nettaigyo / 冷たい熱帯魚 / Cold Fish
Crypto-anarchist and provocateur, Sono Sion (Suicide Club, Love Exposure), reveals a disturbing trend in his new outrage, Cold Fish. Apart from two hours plus of audience abuse, this gore-fest’s underlying philosophy aligns Sion with a simplistic nihilistic fascism. In his vision of this dog-eat-dog world (or is it more cannibalistic?) powerful and successful capitalist uber-men are the heroes and weak-willed wimps are the true losers. And don’t forget that women are only in it for the sex with the current alpha dog. Cold Fish is a loose adaptation of a true ripped-from-the-headlines crime. In Sion’s adaption, the weak and unsuccessful Shamoto (Mitsuru Kukikochi) falls in with the unscrupulous Murata (Denden), a pathologically perverse fish store owner who kills and dismembers anyone who gets in his way. Even though Murata may be crazy and evil, Sion’s heart lies with him. Everyone else in the film is portrayed worse. Murata’s the only one who’s got some style, humor and manly drive. Sion’s never been an easy director to like, but with Cold Fish he’s become quite despicable.
Originally published in EL Magazine, February 2011
10 Best Japanese Films 2009
Over the last 3 years, Japan’s become my beat. Of course, I try to keep up with international cinema as best as I can, but at about 1,800 yen (20 bucks) a pop for a night at the cinema, I’ve been quite judicious in my filmic consumption. However, I’ve become quite a regular at the industry screening rooms hidden in the bowels of generic buildings (exception – Eiga Bigakku in the Tokyo Film School does have quite a bit of character) clustered around the old film industry center in and around Ginza. Many of the films on my top ten list probably won’t cross the pond. It’s a shame, because they’re good films. But keep an eye open for festival screenings, online streamings or any opportunity to catch a glimpse of Japanese film production for 2009.
The list below is not definitive. I missed a few that had good buzz. Bandage – a fictional paean to the 90s band boom in Tokyo – and Live Tape – a single shot film following an improvising street busker wandering through the streets of Kichijoji, a hipster area on the west side of Tokyo – are both on my must see list. I saw a few too many that had good buzz that turned out to be total time wasters.
Symbol
I have to place Matsumoto Hitoshi’s Symbol at the top of the list. From his roots in the groundbreaking manzai team (two person standup – imagine Abbott and Costello in Japanese) called Downtown, Matsumoto hit the big screen a few years ago with the strange and hilarious Dianipponjin (Big Man Japan). His followup goes over the top with a deconstruction of comedy that’s part Kubrick, part Tashlin, completely original.
Trailer (Japanese)
Kuki Ningyo / Air Doll
Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Air Doll tended toward a bit of critical dismissal – too light, too commercial. With the stunning performance of Du-na Bae as a blow-up doll come to life, this reworking of Pinocchio (or is it Blade Runner?) is amazingly frank and touching with what may be Kore-eda’s persistent theme – what makes us human.
Trailer (English Subtitles)
Ai no Mukidashi / Love Exposure
At 4 hours, Love Exposure seemed a bit short. When the lights came up I wanted still more. Sono Sion’s over the top skewering of contemporary culture had a little something to offend nearly everyone – Catholicism, terrorism, up-skirt photography, high school mores and so much more came under the knife. Love Exposure is a delightfully excessive and tasteless film by the man who made Suicide Club.
Trailer (Japanese)
Wakaranai / Where Are You?
This year I saw Kobayashi’s Masahiro’s 2005 film Bashing. Wakaranai mines the same territory as the previous film, the lives of the marginalized and forgotten of Japan. Though not quite as perfect as Bashing, Wakaranai expands on similar themes. Along the lines of the Dardenne brothers, Kobayashi’s creating an oeuvre of beautiful and terrifying films of lost hopes, fuckups and ultimately, dreams.
Website (Japanese)
Miyoko Asagaya Kibun / Miyoko
Adaptations of manga are a mainstay of contemporary Japanese cinema. Most manga/film crossovers are built solely with marketing in mind. Miyoko Asagaya Kibun is from a definitely different sensibility. Adapting Shiniro Abe’s seminal 1970s mangas that documented the craziness of the times along with his own faltering grasp on mental stability, Miyoko Asagaya Kibun mixes manga, fiction, history and biography brilliantly. This directing debut by Yoshifumi Tsubota is the most auspicious of the year.
Website (Japanese)
Dotei Horoki
Director Komuna Yuichi is making his mark as the low budget storyteller of the special fringes of Japanese culture that are becoming the mainstream. He hit the scene a few years ago with Maid in Akiba, about the otaku/maid cafe culture centered around Akihabara in Tokyo. In Dotei Horoki (more or less meaning “virgin perv”), Komuna tackles the Japanese 30 year-old virgin problem with incisive humor and smart dialogue.
Trailer (Japanese)
Dear Doctor
While not quite as wicked as her debut film, Wild Berries, Nishikawa Miwa’s Dear Doctor beautifully realizes a small community where lies big and small sustain its functioning. Following in the footsteps of Kore-Eda, Nishikawa, along with Kawase Naomi are creating a cinema style that exhibits profound ideas and sensibilities with a light touch.
Trailer (Japanese)
Raise the Castle
There’s a somewhat annoying tendency in Japanese pop horror and comedy movies of having long dead samurai come back to life, in most cases ghoulishly zombified, to avenge some past wrong. It’s a hoary plot device. In Raise the Castle it works. Kohatsu Yo’s low budget debut manages to balance sweet comedy, a bit of a social/historical message and a love story. This film may be the be-all and end-all of this genre.
Website (Japanese)
Mental
Soda Kazuhiro is the Frederick Wiseman of Japanese documentary. His first film, Campaign, was a fascinating study of the political scene in Japan. In Mental, Soda visits a small town mental clinic, exposing the stigmas around talking about mental illness and health in Japan through touching, funny and downright harrowing stories from the patients themselves.
Website (English)
The Code
Hiyashi Kaizo will be known to Seattle audiences for his wonderful homage to silent cinema, Sleep So As to Dream, presented a few years ago at NWFF with live accompaniment by Aono Jikken Ensemble. Hiyashi’s been working for years sending up the conventions of detective/spy movies. The Code is his latest and it never lets up with its nutty story, hilarious characters and situations. Plus, giving Suzuki stalwart Shishido Joe (Branded to Kill) a role makes The Code extra special.
Website (Japanese)
Originally published in Hot Splice
Ai no Mukidashi / 愛のむきだし / Love Exposure
Introducing his 4 hour opus at its world premier at Tokyo Filmex last November, director Sono Sion assured the audience it would “be over in flash.” He was right. His new provocation, Love Exposure (Ai no Mukidashi) assuredly touched as many flashpoint bases as he could throw in and left the audience wanting more. Sion, whose roots and avant-garde poetry and experimental film blasted into the mainstream with his 2002 Suicide Club (Jisatsu Sakuru) and has kept fans on edge eagerly awaiting every new film – and Love Exposure is sure to please in its over-the-top shaggy doggedness, touching on a profusion of cultural markers.
The motivating plot device – a youth forced to confess sins to his troubled father/ priest becomes a master ninja upskirt photographer to fulfill his filial obligation and find his own Mary – is a Bunuelian transgression good enough to make a devout catholic squirm. His journey leads him through a landscape of teenage lust and delinquency, cross-dressing confusion and unrequited love, conspiracies and cult religion, the porn industry and more, to a Columbine-like denouement. A somewhat unsatisfying coda brings together all the loose ends of an otherwise amazing series of images and ideas of this darkly funny and disturbing film. But I’m not complaining. The ride is well worth it.
The great cast is headed by Nishijima Takahiro, vocalist for the pop group AAA, who convincingly plays twisted naivete through the main character, Yu, in his quest for “sin” and ultimately the woman of his desire. As Yoko, the young woman who plays a little more than hard-to-get, Hikari Mitsushima, shines in her high school disdain of Yu’s affection.
Nearly stealing the show, though, is Ando Sakura as Koike, the villainess who manipulates the guileless Yoko into falling for her – yep, there’s even a bit of soft lesbo action – in her plot to rupture Yu’s family and bring them into her evil religious cult. She pulls a warped and complex edge out of what is on the surface a cartoonishly evil character – and never lets up. Rounding out the cast are the adults, Atsuro Watabe as Yu’s mixed up father and the delightful Makiko Watanabe as Kaori, the woman who disrupts Yu’s family when she forces herself on his father (and adds still a few more plot twists). She’s simultaneously completely overbearing and understandably desirable.
Sion’s rarely falters with his barrage of images, sounds and ideas. He works big, even scoring sequences to Ravel’s Bolero – and pulling it off! A favorite device of his is a chapter driven narrative. Early sections of the film flesh out each character’s backstory, lending different viewpoints to the whole of this picaresque adventure. By the time it all comes together, the twists and turns have plenty of background and depth. He takes big cultural signifiers and couples them with a sharp sensibility to the nuances of teenage relationships. Anarchic sensibilities and a hilarious and incisive rigor come together magnificently in Sion’s new film.
Originally published in Japanzine, December 2008
a page of madness 