Tag: Japan

The Queen was out of order after the first movie on Saturday so I have the honour of presenting to you Saturday’s evening movies!

Yukinojo Henge (An Actor’s Revenge, ?????)
Japan 1935-36/1952, Teinosuke Kinugasa, 97?

Yukinojo’s parents were driven to suicide by the local magistrates when he was a child. It’s 1863 when he arrives with his troupe in Edo (now Tokyo) as a successful onnagata (woman actor in Kabuki theatre, they did the Shakespeare thing and did not allow women) finding his mortal enemies in the audience and finally exacting his carefully planned vengeance. After an opulent sword fight with one of his enemy’s henchmen and after burning down the house of another, finally all of them die in the Kabuki theatre in a quite literal dramatic catharsis.

An explanation about the production years is warranted: Originally produced as a 5-hour-long three-parter, the movie was premiered between June ’35 and January ’36. As it was Kinugasa’s most popular historical movie (jidaigeki) Shochiku smelled the money, slaughtered it down to 97 minutes and re released it in 1952. Unfortunately this is the only version in existence, so this is what was shown in Berlin.

I sorely lament the cut version. The movie is suspenseful, Kazuo Hasegawa as Yukinojo is a marvelous actor when he switches effeminate onnagata and vengeful onnagata, the lighting and cinematography overall is splendid. What remains of the plot is highly satisfying but feels highly rushed at all times. So much has been omitted that several times a voice from the off narrates what has been left out while they show a few shots from those cut scenes. However even cut down to 97 minutes it is a wonderful movie. While you lament how much better the original must have been, you still get caught up in the story and the portrayal of Yukinojo is highly captivating.

I knew that blogging the Berlinale would become a chore one day. I was not able to blog a single film while the festival was still running, and I suspected it would take me the entire rest of the month of February at least to blog it. It also means that it’s been over two weeks since I saw the films I am blogging, and my memories and perceptions change. Oh well, it is an eternal blogging dilemma.

Today marks my earliest movie, 9am at the Friedrichstadtpalast. I was only able to secure a moderately good seat because I fell asleep in the subway and exited at Yorckstraße. Big mistake, there was a bus instead of the S-Bahn and I ended up running into the movie theater at 9.02am. Luckily they almost always start about 5 minutes after the scheduled time. I was perfectly fine and saw the entire film. After that stress, I ended up not seeing anything at all anymore, which is unfortunate because Pixelmatsch seems to have had fun.

Chiisai Ouchi (The Little House)
Japan 2014, Yoji Yamada, 136’

At the beginning of the 1930’s, Taki is a young woman from the northern parts of Japan who found employment as a maid. The Hirai family she works for consists of a nice couple with a little boy, who Taki becomes close to. They live in a cute little Western-style house with a bright red roof in the suburbs of Tokyo. While the husband is mostly interested in his business affairs and war politics, both the wife and young Taki fall in love with a co-worker of her husband’s, the young artist Itakura. Even as Mrs. Hirai begins to have an affair with the young man, Taki continues to stay loyal and care for the family. However, as the war drags, Itakura faces the risk of being drafted.
Death count: 3.

To be honest, when I heard that someone in Chiisai Ouchi got the award for best female actress, I honestly thought it would be Takako Matsu. I thought she was quite good in “Confessions” (though the film did not stand out for me, it was just solid all around), and Haru Kuroki is a complete youngster. She was lovely and very cute, but I am not sure how much acting is involved with that role. From what I can see, she essentially played herself. Even so, I really like her! Her somewhat plain face is so awesome, especially when compared to Takako Matsu’s astonishing beauty.

“Chiisai Ouchi” was a rather emotional film for me. With its psychological subtlety, the film hit my feelings perfectly except for the end. Just like other reviews suggested, I too thought the end was a little overly spelled out. I think it would have been nice to let it end with the shot where Taki says “I have lived for too long” and cries, and then cut to Takeshi finding the letter and saying something along the lines of “That little sin of yours, Aunt Taki, has been long forgiven.” That’s it. For me, that would have nailed the effect. Apart from that, Taki’s feelings were beautifully portrayed and of a bittersweet subtlety. But the not-really-love-triangle is not even the main draw of the film, it is those many historical details surrounding the film. Even though the film never really goes outside the little house which gave the film its title, the film shows with many details how much the war affects people’s lives even at the little house. We see children say “banzai” to each other in front of the house, characters running out of supplies and getting food from black markets, and finally the rumor that it is immoral to indulge in such things as love when there is a war effort going on. You can easily sense how the film focuses its sympathies with female characters who want absolutely nothing to do with the war, and in the end, the war effectively destroyed their lives even though they haven’t seen a single battlefield.

Similar with “Akibiyori”, I suppose I was also totally mesmerized with the style of the film. Even Taki always looks super clean and proper, and the little bit you see of her kimono underneath the housekeeper apron looks absolutely stylish. The film is a feast for the eyes, and it made me wish I could live in that little house and wear their clothes. I also was quite fond of the three time layers of story-telling – there is the time line where Taki is dead, the time line where old Taki is writing her memoir and discussing it with Takeshi and finally the time line of the happenings of the memoir. All three of them are actually necessary for the crucial ending, but even if you put that aside I liked it as a story-telling device.

One of my favorite scenes in the film is actually the one with Taki and her mother at the very beginning – it’s one in the film I remember which has humor in it. They speak a Northern dialect and talk about her dialect, and all the while the German subtitles are in Bavarian and the English subtitles say “y’all” and such. Many people laughed out loud. In situations like these, I am glad that movie theaters exist.

In the direct comparison with “Bai Ri Yan Huo”, I actually think that “Chiisai Ouchi” is the better film. It’s clever and has generally grander ambitions which it completely fulfills. If only it wasn’t for those extra 20 minutes with that dragged out ending, the film would have made an even bigger impact on me.

When Shii came to the Berlinale, he was especially interested in the Teinosuke Kinugasa films. Even though I am not particularly fond of samurai films, I thought I wanted to give it a try, and what better occasion is there than a day in which I can catch three films in a row in the same theater? The convenience was overwhelming.

Jujiro (Crossways)
Japan 1928, Teinosuke Kinugasa, 87’

Young Rikiya is into the beautiful prostitute O-Ume and gives her a kimono to woe her. But her followers beat him up and blind him. After Rikiya tries to stab someone, he thinks he murdered and runs back home to his sister. As she tries to help him, her landlord uses the situation to blackmail her into sleeping with him. Cornered, the sister kills the landlord, and both siblings must flee again.
Death count: 2, I assume.

Style-wise, I think that “Jujiro” is an expressionist masterpiece, and it really made me want to watch Kinugasa films again. There is something inherently beautiful in the depiction of despair in this film, and if the series is called “Aesthetics of Shadows”, then “Jujiro” is probably its best example. Kinugasa shows the poor, ragged and evil with mesmerizing beauty. Other than that, I typically have a hard time to love films which are really just despair and, in this case, essentially lacking anything human apart from the sister’s love (the brother himself did not seem to have done anything for his sister from what I can see, and generally seems to fail to understand what love is). To me, the story was nothing but a dragged out piece of pain, and my failure to feel for the characters here is similar to what I felt when I watched “Ninjo kamifusen” because I just couldn’t get behind what they did. I probably should have watched “Yukinojo Henge” instead – at least I can get behind that story for sure.

It is ironic that this eighth day of the Berlinale coincides so well with my blogging fatigue. After this day, I totally did not feel like any more Berlinale days anymore. I had tickets for five more films (one on Saturday, four on Sunday), and I ended up watching those and not a single one more. Incidentally, I was very happy with my choices both for Saturday and Sunday, but overall I also thought enough was enough.

In that respect, Day 8 was probably the worst day of the Berlinale. While every other day had at least one title I was unabashedly fascinated with or at least loved very much, this day had one fine film and a few more films which I enjoyed rather little.

Wa ga ya wa tanoshii (Home Sweet Home)
Japan 1951, Noboru Nakamura, 91’

The Uemura family is held by a loving bond, with an earnest, hard-working father and a mother who is willing sacrifice her all to help her children achieve their dreams. The older daughter, Tomoko, studies painting and tries to have her works accepted at a gallery; the younger daughter, Nobuko, sings in a choir and is about to go on a school trip; finally there also are two younger children who are happily tumbling around. As the family is struggling with money even though the mother is working on the side, lucky and unlucky things happen to the family as time goes on. But the bond remains strong.
Death count: 0.

In reference to the introduction above, this film is the “fine” one. I really liked “Doshaburi” which resonated with me deeply, but I had doubts about the descriptions of the director’s other two films which are shown at the Berlinale. We thought that “Wa ga ya wa tanoshii” sounded like the better one of the two, promising to be at least a sweet story with the wonderful Chishu Ryu. Well, I’d say the film starts really well, with a loving family and many sweet scenes in which everybody gathers, but then it digs rather deeply into the sappy relationship between the mother and Tomoko and that, coupled with a convenient deus ex machina ending, made me feel a little cheated out of a perfectly cute film.

I really think that what I like the most about Noboru Nakamura’s films is the way he depicts families which love each other (at least in “Doshaburi” and “Wa ga ya wa tanoshii”). The opposite of that is the very reason I dislike Hirokazu Koreeda, where I thought that both “Nobody knows” and “Still Walking” are both based on neglect and hatred. Maybe “Soshite chichi ni naru” is better than that (and honestly I am very curious about the film). Coming back to Nakamura, his depictions may seem a little too idealized and melodramatic, but to me they absolutely feel realistic. As long as it touched me, I believe there is some positive connection between what Nakamura shows and what I feel about family relationships. I have just dismissed the deus ex machina ending in the story but the truth is that I found it emotionally satisfying, completing the little fairy tale Nakamura crafted.

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.

I am glad that Shii was able to start and end his Berlinale with the best and second-best film he saw respectively. It was unfortunate that we couldn’t see “Aimer, boire et chanter”, but in the end, “Akibiyori” was a very good substitute.

Akibiyori (Late Autumn)
Japan 1960, Yasujirou Ozu, 129’

At the funeral of Akiko’s husband, the friends of the deceased decide that they want to help her 24-year old daughter Ayako to get married. However, Ayako refuses to get married because she does not want to leave her single mother alone. So the friends make a ploy to have Akiko marry to one of the friends as well.
Death count: 0.

“Akibiyori” is the fourth color film by Ozu I have seen (besides Floating Weeds, Ohayo and An Autumn Afternoon). He didn’t make very many of them, but incidentally I saw more color films of his than black and whites (namely the older Floating Weeds and Tokyo Monogatari) and so far, I think that I prefer late Ozu by far. Somehow I think that color totally helps Ozu’s esthetics, the colors are rich and beautiful and enhance the splendor of the interior he designs.

The story of “Akibiyori” is Ozu’s favorite topic – a daughter who does not want to marry out of concern for her widowed parent. It was the same in “An Autumn Afternoon”, and I know that “Late Spring” is another one of these. I have to admit that I am obsessed with the concept too. I even liked “35 Rums” for its subtle Ozu homage, but I don’t really know why that is. There is something very artificial about this story, just like how the immensely clean and proper Ozu world is somewhat artificial too. But I just love it so much? Ozu’s late films always make me want to live in his world – the colors are beautiful and the characters have this very posed way of dealing with each other. I don’t even mind his sexist jokes (they are what I call Altherrenwitze (old man jokes) and I kind of enjoy them when they are harmless) in comparison to his younger films in which I perceived Ozu as outright misogynist. But late Ozu has a certain lovable self-indulgence and wisdom, an adoration for subtle feelings and tradition which I can totally get behind. The mizuwaris, the sake, the sushi, the polite speech – late Ozu is the pinnacle of romantic Japaneseness, and I am in love with those visuals.

The only aspect I really hated about the film, incidentally, is Setsuko Hara. Now I realize it was her who ruined “Tokyo Monogatari” for me, she just has this incredible punch-me face. Her over-the-top Japanese politeness is unbearable to me, whenever she says something it makes me want to throw up and her smile is just terrifying. Luckily, she was not the only character in the film but only one amongst many lovable ones. Sushi girl is the best! Her lovable, fierce character compensates whatever Setsuko Hara is destroying in the film.
With that said, the biggest surprise to me was how many actors from “Doshaburi” showed up in this movie! Like… 4 people at least? I am counting Yuriko, one of the wives, one of the daughters and of course Ayako’s love interest. It shows how versatile a lot of these actors are, and they really were brilliant.

When I realized that Ozu made two more color films, “Equinox Flower” and “The End of Summer” (these seasonal titles in the English translation for Ozu films is horrible… it makes them sound like they are all the same?) I totally want to see them now, even if they have Setsuko Hara in them. :D

The little one is sleeping, and so I am trying to write a few more Berlinale postings. I want to take these reviews seriously, but I have the distinct fear that it will take me another month to finish them all. There are 20 more to go after all.

Day 4 was Shii’s last Berlinale day, and that is unfortunate because he missed out on quite a few masterpieces. However, generally I would say that the first 4 days had a higher ratio of good movies as opposed to disappointments, of which there really were only two: “We come as friends” and “Ninjo kamifusen”.

Ninjo kamifusen (Humanity and Paper Balloon)
Japan 1937, Sadao Yamanaka, 86′

Setting: A ghetto in Tokyo. Mori, an evil samurai, forces the daughter of a pawn shop owner into marriage with a man she does not love. At the same time, he tries to get rid of the barber Shinza who is secretly organizing casino games at his place. In order to humiliate him, Shinza kidnaps the girl with the help of his neighbor, who is living in poverty and who has been trying to get Mori’s help in vain.
Death count: 5.

I wasn’t really interested in the story in the first place. I am not a big fan of stories set in the samurai times, both from an optical standpoint (boy those outfits are ugly) and when it comes to characters and stories (I just don’t care for samurai, or prostitutes, or yakuza). But this film fit into our schedule well, and there wasn’t really anything else to see at this time slot. For some reason, I was also drawn to the title of the film – “Humanity and paper balloon” sounds like a great movie, no?

While the paper balloons featured in the film are beautiful and make for a nice mood shot at the end, I didn’t see much “humanity” in the film. In my book, everybody in the film was acting like an idiot, Shinza, that neighbor, the pawnshop’s daughter… were they all having a death wish? Besides a few nice touches, the camera work is mostly shoddy, the quality of the acting is sub-par and the story took a turn to the worse with that kidnapping. It’s even impossible to feel sorry for the characters because I always feel like they could just have acted differently.

To be honest this film made me a little scared of old Japanese films. Perhaps only the great masters used to make good movies after all.

Originally our plan was to see 4 movies today (yes, that’s right), but we didn’t get into “The Docks of New York” because we were too convinced we’d get a ticket for an old, obscure film at the Zeughauskino. Well, we were wrong. Incidentally this was the only time we didn’t get a ticket for something, and so “Doshaburi” was our last film for the day.

The director’s son was present with his wife, all dressed up in a kimono. He seemed extremely proud of his father’s work and delighted to present it at the Berlinale. It was rather cute how they were standing at the exit bowing at the audience passing by, so I bowed as well.

Doshaburi (When it rains, it pours)
Japan 1957, Noboru Nakamura, 105’

Because her family runs a love hotel, the main character’s boyfriend dumps her. On top of all that, her mother and father are not married but they hide that from the children – the older daughter and (mostly) protagonist of the story, a younger brother who takes his rather miserable social position with a grain of salt, and a younger daughter, who starts out being a very cheerful girl. After the protagonist runs away from home to work in a cabaret and that man finds her there, the family crumbles slowly.
Death count: 2.

On the one hand, the film is a somewhat cheap melodrama. The storyline is rather over the top, and at times you feel like watching a soap opera. I also have a personal disliking for the ending, because it suggests that the parents are carrying some sort of guilt, when (from today’s standards) they absolutely did nothing wrong. They were in love but an unfortunate situation made him marry somebody else. That doesn’t make the family “bad”. Apart from this personal reservation, the strangest thing about the film was how un-Japanese everybody was acting. For some reason, everybody always spoke their mind! Especially that youngest daughter did, which shocked me the most. In what society can children tell their parents “Mom, dad, please break up”? I couldn’t say such a thing in my fairly open family from 2014, let alone in the 50s in Japan. Of course this kind of openness is necessary for the melodrama to take place, and one could of course also argue that the family in the story is far from normal, hence their relative openness to each other. Even so, a little suspense of disbelief is necessary here.

If you can ignore how incredibly in-your-face this movie is, then it’s a masterpiece. The story is told in a very gripping manner, all the actors are pros and well-cast, but most importantly the story made me care for its characters. I am fascinated by the family’s struggle with its problematic social situation and subsequent downward spiral. It’s a film about how everybody in this family loves each other, but society’s judgement on them weighs so heavily that they cannot be happy despite that. I thought that was beautiful.

The Berlinale begins! Okay, technically the Berlinale is over, but for this blog, it is the beginning. This time, I will be covering it myself, just like the 2009 version, while Pixelmatsch will blog only the films that I didn’t see. Overall, the beginning of the Berlinale was very tedious; we couldn’t get tickets for some of the films we really wanted to see (namely “Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Snowpiercer”), but as soon as it began, we saw the promise of an exceptionally good Berlinale, which it was until today.

As always, the first days started slowly and there was a huge run on the tickets, so we only saw one older film on the first day. It seems to be a pattern: Every Berlinale (out of two) I have been to started with a fantastic Japanese film, incidentally my favorite of the entire festival.

Tsuruhachi Tsurujiro
Japan 1938, Mikio Naruse, 88’

Jiro and Toyo are a popular artist couple who who grew together, Jiro studied shinnai singing with Toyo’s mother and Toyo is an expert shamisen player. Not only are they made for each other on stage, of course they are also in love. However, true to any romantic comedy, they have a hard time showing this love and misunderstandings pile up. He feels insecure about her love for him and lashes out on her, while she refuses to put up with his jealousy. Even though everybody is trying to help them get together, the two cannot stop getting into humorous arguments.
Death count: 0.

The film made me go onto Hulu as soon as I got home to see what Naruse movies they have to offer. Luckily, there is a whole 15 of them, but Tsuruhachi Tsurujiro is not amongst them. In fact, I am surprised how underrated this movie is. There are virtually no screenings of the film in the world, no way to get to it on home video (unless I am mistaken) and almost no reviews of the film out there. It appears nobody knows about the film.

I think this film is a masterpiece of repetitive humor. After the third time Jiro said “I think you played badly today”, a big part of the audience was laughing. Furthermore, the characters develop over the years shown, and the bittersweet ending was heart-wrenching, because we see Jiro finally maturing and making a thoroughly selfless decision. It’s so beautiful. This is an unpretentious little film, a perfect romantic comedy with sad undertones and an ultimately tragic ending. Words cannot describe how much this film was able to hit all the right buttons with me, but it certainly helped was the Jiro and Toyo were equals. They were of similar age, they had the same profession and finally, they fought on equal footing, with Toyo saying “no” and insisting on her own style whenever she wanted. For a Japanese film from the 1930s, that is quite something! The secret feminist in me is very happy with this film.

On a side note, you can see “Tsuruhachi Tsurujiro” on Youtube, albeit in absolutely terrible quality. Sadly it does not do justice to Naruse’s soft touch at all, so I am hoping for better copies to show up.