Back at the Zeughauskino, we chose this film because Stephen Horne would accompany it. In the end, there weren’t actually that many interesting Japanese films in the Retrospective section, but I didn’t know that at the time and I jump at every occasion to see one of my favorites silent film pianists. Stephen Horne is definitely one of them, and it made it worthwhile to see these somewhat cumbersome movies. He also has this really cute way acknowledging the film when people start clapping after the performance, by making a presenting move at the end (like what the conductor does with the orchestra when people clap for him).
Right when “Arrete ou je continue” was over, we had to march towards the Zeughauskino and got there like 2 minutes before the film started.
Nasake no hikari (Light of Compassion)
Japan 1926, Henry Kotani, 62’
Junichi is a poor boy who has to work in the morning and afternoon to help buying medicine for his sick mother. When he helps a girl in his class, some boys start to bully him. When the girl observes the bullying and his family’s dire financial situation, she tells her father who decides to help the family.
Death count: 0.
Not many people came to see the film. It’s a somewhat strange choice, being one of those almost propagandistic films commissioned by the government. In this case, at least the film promotes moral courage and compassion for the poor, so at least I can get behind the message of the film. (And I do so very strongly.)
Apart from that, the film was really clumsy. The script was extremely one-dimensional, the characters were all tropes (the poor boy, the sick mother, the nice rich girl, the loving rich father etc.) and there was nothing special about the direction or cinematography either. I’d rather say they were pretty bad. In the first part the film spends a lot of time depicting how poor the main character is, and what a good boy he is. In the second part he helps out a girl and subsequently gets bullied. In the last part, some time passes, the boy has grown older and when his mother sees she does not have the means to send him to secondary school, the girl’s father decides to help them out financially. The entire story has no real conflict – the poverty is just there and everything else that happens leads to the final act of compassion by the girl’s father in a straight-forward manner without a single retardation, no-one who actively tries to sabotage the attempt to help, or anything like that. As a result, the movies spends an hour showing no more than “A needs help, B notices A due to his kindness, B decides to help A”.
There are tiny details I actually liked about the film. The girl’s kimono and hair-do were so cute for example! Honestly, I want to imitate that doll-like look. Other than that, the film was not really worth seeing by itself, even though I thought it was of the “bland but cute” fare.