Berlinale 2013, day 4 (the value of working days)

So this day was great for getting tickets as people finally went back to work.

Narco Cultura
USA 2012, Shaul Schwarz, 103′

The documentary follows the lives of two people, one living as a crime investigator in Ciudad Juarez, one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico right along the border next to El Paso and the leader of a band profiting among others of the rising wave of Movimiento Alterado, a glorification of the cartels that has spawned in recent years.

TL;DR drugs (or rather cartels) are really really really bad, m’kay?

I am thoroughly disgusted by the matter documented. I mean that in the best possible way. The documentary is shot in a very modern photographic style (the director is a professional photographer after all) with tilt-shift and the like and in an attempt to stay balanced switches between the two main themes. One is the crime scene investigator living in Ciudad Juarez. It shows how the whole town and especially what is left of law enforcement is either paid off by the cartel or has to live in fear for their lives, a feeling that has completely crippled all recreational and business activity in Juarez which in turn fuels the ranks of the cartel with young jobless men. The other is the very successful young leader of BuKnas de Culiacan, a group writing and performing Narco Corridos which are basically cartel-glorifying folk songs. After watching this, it is nauseating to look at their very real myspace page, you kind of want to believe that all this surreal “culture” around the cartels does not exist in reality. I also wonder how many fans of their facebook page are dead due to cartel violence, that would the juiciest irony. It is so surreal to watch the part about BuKnas because you have this guy in his mid-twenties with a wife and two small kids sing about cartel life and killing while he is sitting in L.A. and being safe. Then you see their concerts all over the U.S. and Mexico where loads of people just adore them and sing the lyrics as if it is “Barbie Girl”. The level of hypocrisy in those people was indescribably revolting. Of course after those scenes the director cuts back to Juarez to show the practically dead city which is kind of cheap as a technique but you wonder if it is even possible to further embellish the tragedy and idiocy going on. Definitely watch this if you get a hold of it, it shook me up quite a bit as you can see.

Sakura namiki no mankai no shita ni (Cold Bloom, ?????????)
Japan 2012, Atsushi Funahashi, 119′

Kenji and Shiori are a young married couple working together in a small factory near the Touhoku coast, not very far from the place where the tsunami and nuclear accident happened in 2011. Due to the situation the small supplier of automotive parts struggles together with the bigger companies. One day after the quite skilled Kenji has helped land a big deal with another company he is accidentally killed by Takumi, a coworker and the deals falls through. Almost everybody including Shiori hates Takumi from this point on and blames him for the decline of the factory. The more cruel and lazy workers actually start bullying him but slowly Shiori falls for the man who killed her husband.

TL;DR love in the strangest places

Regular Asian art cinema at its best. The director has become really good at creating moods and choosing great shots, other than that there is really not much to say about the technical aspects. It feels very refreshing that the story does not have cheap cop-outs, I would call it both the saddest and most drama-free love story ever, the dreary mood is sometimes suffocating, but the hopeful and beautiful moments are done wonderfully and have a nice contrast to the rest. Definitely recommend it both as a story and as a document to sentiments of small-town Touhoku post-3/11.

Christoph Terhechte, the section chief of the Berlinale Forum must be a weeaboo. Not only is he able to pronounce all the Japanese names correctly, he has also made sure that Atsushi Funahashi premieres all his movies at the Berlinale. Last year we had Nuclear Nation, the cancelled love story mentioned there is actually this movie and earlier I watched Yanaka Boshoku. Funahashi said that he loves coming here and it somehow feels homey with the audience and their strong interest in his small movies, as he calls them. As was already said, in 2011 he had to cancel the movie because the location was literally gone and funding for all filming in Japan was stopped. Only after he made Nuclear Nation he was able to scrape together funding again and do the movie he planned. He says that the basic plot, which is about the inexplicable 180-degree-turns we sometimes make with our feelings towards people, stayed unchanged however most of the dreary and dark atmosphere in the movie only appeared during this attempt of making the film while trying to convey the situation people in northeast Japan have to face after the catastrophes.

Kujira no machi (The Town of Whales, ??????)
Japan 2012, Keiko Tsuruoka, 70′

Machi, Tomohiko and Hotaru are childhood friends, attending high school together somewhere in the rural outskirts of Tokyo. One day while they try to decide what to do through summer break, Machi receives peaches from a friend of her missing brother. They decide to go to Tokyo to find her brother. That Hotaru loves Tomohiko who loves Machi does not really help though.

TL;DR Kids. Not the ones from Brooklyn doing drugs and fucking around, though.

Stylistically unremarkable but for a first feature (it was the director’s graduation work) very solid cute little coming-of-age movie. Though it may not be too refined the atmosphere and characters are nicely fleshed out and though they are typical kids in puberty and sometimes a little annoying and childish you can easily feel sympathetic with them and enjoy their little adventure in Tokyo.