liquors Reviews

Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937)

flawless script and articulate filming

[10/10 · 16 January 2008]

Although the script is based on a Kabuki story 'Shinza the barber,' the archaic atmosphere of the original story is seen nowhere in this movie. As in his earlier 'Kochiyama Soshun,' the director turned both saints and criminals into mundane figures absorbed in the petty concerns. I think this is the beauty of the movie. The characters are more rational and feisty than ordinary viewers expect. They are all looking in the different directions, which reminded me of the 'Cherry Orchard' by Chekhov.

Honestly, the last 15 minutes of this movie disappointed me a little. The last scenes of earlier 'Kochiyama Soshun' is, I think, one of the miracles in cinema history. But 'Humanity and Paper Balloon' lacked such a formidable climax. So I was a little disappointed. But an hour after watching it, I started to feel terrified of the ending. Maybe the humble description of the forlorn wife was the reason for it. That character didn't get my attention so much while I was watching it. But now I keep thinking about that character. I'm haunted.

I like the director's dry realism. He depicted the poverty-stricken alley as such and nothing else. To be sure, it must be depressing to be among the least fortunate in the monetary economy. In addition to dependency on others and proximity to crimes, uncomfortable alienation from the neighbors is as likely to happen among the poor as among the better off. I know that it is commonplace to interpret the pessimistic undertone of the movie as influenced by the then social conditions. But, besides that, the depiction of pessimistic poverty has an aesthetic advantage in itself.

A Boy's Summer in 1945 (2002)

Authentic description of Japanese home front lives in WW2

[10/10 · 4 August 2005]

This is a beautiful film about 'home front' people's lives in August 1945 in Japan. This is a poetic drama with integrity whose beauty can be described only by telling the whole story.

The location is a rural village in the country's most southern part except Okinawa. People talk about air strafing or bombings by American warplanes and about where American army will land.

Yasuo Hidaka, who is 16 and discharged because of lung illness and whose close friend, he thinks more worth surviving than himself, was killed by air raid right in front of his eyes, loses himself. Shigenori Hidaka, his stern grandfather and veteran, helps 'the Imperial Army' by providing with foodstuff the camp held nearby. It is told Yasuo's parents are in Manchu then governed by Japan. This is one story line. Another is about a family of their hired girl, Natsu Miyawaki. The family lost the father in Southeast Asia. The confused mother, Ine, has affairs with an soldier of an undisciplined nature, Toyoshima, while her son is working in rice fields. A few things happen, then these two main story lines develop into rather typical endings which can be expressed by words like 'restarting' or 'liberation'.

All actors and actresses are very good. So are the location, the set, the music. But I like the script most. In some scenes the dialogues are funny, in others modest, intellectual and realistic (by 'realistic' I mean the way they spoke in Imperialism Japan, which is fairly shocking to the Japanese of today.) This film is flawless.

Sharaku (1995)

Transformation of art in Edo-era Japan

[9/10 · 23 November 2004]

This film features a revolutionary artist named Sharaku in Edo-era Japan. Because the artist hasn't been identified by historians and we are not sure who he was, this historical film is based on a imaginary story like several Jack the Ripper films.

According to this film, the artist was born as a child of single parent who earned the living by painting with colored sand on street. He lost his single mother at the age of 6 and joined an acting　troupe through his late mother's lover to grow up. He was talented not only with　acrobatics on the stage but with painting. One day he happened to be employed as a contracted painter by a large capitalist-publisher. The publisher employed such an amateur because he searched for novel in order to recover the popularity of his own Kabuki company and Sharaku had it. Sharaku created amazingly realistic paintings which then Japanese public with dogmatic values can never create or accept.

Probably, the producers of this film wanted to tell Sharaku's realistic art was unexpected enlightenment in Japanese art and indirectly its society of late 18th century. In one scene, Rouju (I don't know how to translate this word, 'senior council member' would be good) Matsudaira tells us that Samurai's governance might be obsolete and might not fit the growing mercantile society. And in another scene, the artist refused to paint persons he never saw, but the people around him never found his refusal reasonable. These 2 scenes reflects the film's historical and social view, especially the latter depicts then Japanese public's fixed artistic values that supported the old Eastern idea that art should imitate art itself, not reality.

This film in the end implies that Sharaku's art was passed on to Hokusai's.

Supai Zoruge (2003)

strong passion for 20th century

[9/10 · 22 August 2004]

CAUTION SPOILER

On the whole, this movie is very interesting to me. It seems to me that this film reflects the director's strong feeling for history of 20th century. In that sense, this movie has aspects similar to 'The Pianist' by Polanski.

As the previous reviewers of IMDb point out, this movie has many flaws. I have to agree that Japanese actors don't show a good work--especially when they speak English--, that using English instead of German or Russian misses a large part of reality in this film, that too much computer graphics is used, et cetera.

But these flaws never exhaust this movie's details. The viewers should appreciate orchestral music, harmonious muted color-tone, some actors' a bit caricatured action. In addition to these details, the director-writer carefully depicts the political scene in 1930s' Japan, which include Emperor Hirohito and Prime Minister Konoe.

But what I find the most impressive is his treatment of communism. He seems to be trying to let the viewers remember that there was a time when many people, even highly intellectual in their own way, believe in communism. And because of this, the VTRs showing the collapse of Berlin Wall and a statue of Lenin are very moving. I think our hero communists' struggles were worth telling in order to know the historical meaning of the events in late 20th century. 9/10