I have nothing to say about today. Like, really nothing besides the movie obviously.
Kazoku X (Family X, ??X)
Japan 2010, Yoshida Koki, 90′
A family: mother, father, young adult son, middle class, own house. The man commutes to work, doing nothing of value there. The woman a housewife, with no discernible interest or motivation in anything. The son, working part time, no steady job. Communication does not happen other than greetings and daily questions. Slowly, things spiral downwards.
Tripods and Steadycams seem to be ridiculously expensive in Asia, I have no other rational explanation for the completely uncalled for overusage of shaky hand cameras. Luckily the director had some interesting details like the water container (I am being vague on purpose) to make up for the shaking. Although this was another exercise in slow cuts and seemingly no story, it was very effective in showing the complete dysfunctionality of this family and more “action” might have overdramatised things. Interestingly, the director stated, that this was not about a specifically Japanese theme, even though the family behaved very stereotypically Japanese, but was more of an educational movie that was supposed to show how not to behave in a family and to motivate the viewers to not let their lives degenerate to a point like the one shown. If anything, the educational value was extremely subtle, I did however really catch myself thinking “No way am I going to live like that!”.