Today shall be forever remembered as the day where demand ridiculously outnumbered supply, as the whole Capital Of The Jobless (Berlin) flocked into the few screenings available. From tomorrow on there will be more screenings and hopefully people will spread out a little, I did not get any tickets for two of my three time slots today!
Kanikousen (???)
Japan 2009, Sabu, 109?
Japan in the 1920s: In the Sea of Okhotsk Japan competes with Russia for fishing grounds, guarding their crab fishing trawlers with the help of the Imperial Navy. One of those trawlers, manned with ridiculously poor Japanese men is cruelly controlled by Tony Leung the handsome, sadistic foreman and his Yakuza underling. He works the men beyond their limits only having his own profit in mind, while trying to motivate them by stating that their fishing is like fighting in a war for the glory of Imperial Japan. Life is so hard the workers almost hang themselves one day, while fantasising about their next life. Then, two of the men accidentally get lost while and encounter a Soviet ship. Saved by the Soviets, they return to the trawler and start a revolution…
Before you ask: No, that man in the picture is not Tony Leung.
Kanikousen was apparently based on an 80-year-old novel by a communist writer which lately became quite popular with young Japanese. The movie is heavily stylised with slightly surrealist scenes, including short comic interjections and is generally extremely straightforward with simple characters and a message with the subtility of a sledgehammer. If you don’t have a knack for Sabu or dislike stylised movies without a really notable plot or message, this is definitely not for you.
I like stylised movies and I don’t really care about the message as much (Une femme est une femme anyone? XD), but the plot itself sounds pretty awful, ugh. Well, that’s the risk you run into when going to a film festival I guess!