Cinema Talk

This is a much more gentle and deliberately paced film than one may expect from something featuring Raizo Ichikawa. Nakayama Shichiri, despite its fair share of sensationalist moments, belongs with more mature work like Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji. Unfortunately, director Kazuo Ikehiro faded into nothing, building his career around many inconsequential Zaitochi films. This early effort showcases his personal vision which seems to never build up to its highest possibility.

Lumber worker Masakichi meets and falls in love with Oshima, and they quickly make plans to marry. The plans fall through, though when Oshima is raped and later commits suicide. Masakichi avenges her rape and then flees town and becomes a prominent figure in the gambling scene. He befriends a man named Toku. Toku is very unlucky when it comes to gambling but he must continue to do so in order to meet the family’s standards. Masakichi is introduced to Toku’s wife, Onaka, who looks exactly like Oshima. Masakichi, still heartbroken from the loss of a lover, feels obligated to protect Onaka and Toku as they flee from law. Gradually, Onaka falls for Masakichi, which causes a drift in the three’s runaway plan.

Built upon a plethora of melodramatic turns, Ikehiro’s films never feels the slightest bit unnatural. The wonderful performance certainly help downplay a lot of overly-dramatic sequences, but I think it’s Ikehiro’s economic cinematography (done by Senkichiro Takeda) that plays the biggest role in delivering a very natural, almost Narusian vibe. Certainly, there are limitations that any ninkyo eiga film will contain, but all things considered, there’s very little to improve on.

As mentioned before, signs of a more reserved style are prominent for the film’s first half. At times, it recalls anything and everything The Sun’s Burial to Yamanaka’s Tange Sazen. Little has been written about Ikehiro, but I’d jump to the conclusion that he had a fair knowledge of Japanese cinema during that time period. Towards the end, our characters take a detour through Mizoguchi style poetics. Visually, one is reminded of Sansho the Bailiff while narratively, there is somewhat of a connection with Chikamatsu Monogatari. It seems lazy on my part to simply compare every tangible aspect of the film to the work of other directors, but the influence seems overwhelmingly apparent to me. This is not a criticism of Ikehiro in the least. He has taken what he’s learned from the best and streamlined it into his own personal aesthetic. The result is one of the very best films of it’s kind.

Here’s another entry from the heavily Wong Kar-Wai influenced category. Unfortunately, unlike Pang Ho-Cheung films, this feels like a water down version of Wong’s style. Never does it reach a point where it feels like the director’s, Zhou Sun, own film. That isn’t to say it’s unwatchable, on the contrary. The enriched visuals and a nice performance from the always captivating Gong Li make this a very easy film to enjoy. I’d be lying if I said it was breaking any new cinematic ground, though.

Zhou Yu is a ceramic artist who travels, via train, to visit her boyfriend poet twice a week. She feels she will never love anyone like she loves him. One day on a train, she meets  Zhang Qiang, a veterinarian who she gradually forms a bond with, thus leading her to another complicated would-be romance.

As I said before, this is sort of a “wannabe WKW film” which is fine. If you’re going to ahem “copy” one person’s style then he’s certainly a good choice. Oddly enough, this was made before 2046 so I have to give it some credit for possibly providing some influence on Wong. There’s a few visuals echoes of Hou Hsiao-Hsien too, what with all the shots of trains coming out of tunnels. The city landscape shots also bring to mind Still Life and Fu sheng but it might be more of a location thing than anything photography can do. In any case, the film looks great, and reminds me a lot of directors I like. So much so that the character psychology seems a bit shallow, despite the best acting efforts of Gong Li.

On the surface, the film couldn’t be much better but I suppose it does lacks any sort of emotional depth. Still, things could be a lot worse, as perfectly shown in the similarly minded Sex and Lucia, also an elliptical love story about a woman juggling relationships. The overwhelming amount of ellipses take awhile to get use. At the beginning, it almost feels like it’s going to end up being a 90 minute montage. Eventually, smooth things out and unlike Medem’s film, no “David Lynch-y mystery” aspect is tossed in. Even if it does seem a bit contrived, if only because of the Wong-inspired motifs, at least it tries it’s best to simply focus on the characters in an unhurried manner.  

Kenji Mizoguchi began his final and most successful decade with this sporadically reserved picture that has, oddly enough, remained neglected. It’s a film, though undeniably melodramatic, still occasionally showcases a certain type of perceptiveness. There’s small doses of truth sprinkled all over this picture, through all of the plot pieces and manipulative music, it does have something insightful about it. It’s far from Mizoguchi’s best, but it’s another more than admirable effort from him.

Hamako has just started working for her personal hero, Madame Yuki. Her romanticized view of the Madame is broken immediately, though, as she is introduced with a ever-growing list of the Madame’s personal problems. Her husband is neglectful and violent. Although she begs for divorce, he always refuses. In retaliation, she converts their home into inn. He responds by visiting the inn and brining his mistress, who plans to take ownership of the place. Despite all this, she still loves him as if forced by some evil inside of her, as she describes it. The film takes another (melodramatic) turn when it’s revealed that she is pregnant, after a suicide attempt none the less!

Silly in some parts, poignant in others, Madame Yuki might just be Mizoguchi’s most frustrating film if only for the fact that potential greatness is marred by stilted dialogue and soap opera-esque plot developments. As mentioned before, the film sometimes stumbles upon something much more truthful. It may not have been Mizoguchi’s intention but there’s something that seems to be happening underneath all the suicide attempts and tearful breakdowns. There’s nothing specific to point out, but it’s very likely that this “truth” is supported by Mizoguchi’s excellent cast, which includes Ken Uehara, Yoshiko Kuga, and Michiyo Kogure.

The film is climaxed by a sequence that’s purpose is purely visual, a testament to Mizoguchi’s unparalleled eye for visual composition. As Madame Yuki mechanically makes her way to the lake, the mist of the morning collides with the grass’ tall blades. A visual sequence, though theatrical in it’s description, is layered with poetic touches. It’s sequences like these that make Madame Yuki worth seeing. The film’s final, tragic turn is unseen but it predicts a similar event visualized later on in Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff. The sequence in question is just as gloomy, but handled by Mizoguchi with such tenderness, that a visual subtext (is this considered a pun?) is created and it’s very beautiful.

As eyebrow-raising as it’s announcement was, Wong Kar-Wai’s latest quickly faded into obscurity and it’s easy to understand why. No question, it’s a complete lapse of logic on his part. His technical graces still intact, everything else feels stilted and bordering on self-parody. Maybe he wants some extra money, or wants a larger fanbase, but still why these people? Why make a film so simplistic and built around the superficial? This isn’t really Wong selling his soul because he retains a lot of what makes him great, but maybe it’s just the work of someone pondering such a transaction – let’s hope he’s gotten it out of his system.

The film begins with a Norah Jones song that proclaims that the story has been told before, and it’s fitting since nearly every narrative plot point is derivative of Wong’s previous features. The most obvious case is Chungking Express: the Norah Jones / Jude Law relationship being a take on the Tony Leung / Faye Wong one. Jones’ character, Elizabeth, starts this relationship (in a rather forced way, I should add) with Jeremy and then leaves for some reason. She then begins working at a bar in Memphis and becomes friends with a drunkard named Arine, whose in the middle of a rough relationship with Sue Lynne. Elizabeth then leaves them behind and stumbles upon Leslie, who leads her into Las Vegas. Then, Elizabeth returns to Jeremy.

IMDB lists the film with a running time of 111 minutes, while the new HK disc has a running time of 90 minutes. Hopefully, this explains why the film feels so simple and undeveloped. Characters get tossed aside and thrown in with little regard. Everyone has bizarre, exaggerated personalities which compliments their exaggerated physical appearance. Calling the film inconsequential would a compliment. “Nonsensical” is a more accurate term and it specifically applies to Wong’s own cinematic mind.

I’ll basically stop talking about the characters; simply stated, they are of no interest. What is of interest (at least to me) is the aesthetic progressions from 2046 to this. Putting it up against Pang Ho-Cheung’s Exodus may have affected my view but it seems quite clear, that after making his most meticulous feature, Wong has retreated back to more energetic camera movement / editing. At times, Blueberry Nights feels like a Wong film that has been filtered through David Fincher’s editing sensibility. Harsh, no doubt, but one should eventually get use to to it and then, have no problem focusing on the very shallow character depictions.

There’s no denying that this a step back for Wong Kar-Wai, but on the bright side, maybe he got some overly-sentimental Hollywood crap out of his system. It’s hard for any director to continue making great films, so maybe Wong’s “golden years” are over but at least he’ll continue to progress his visual style. No matter how hallow it is inside, you got to attempt that it does look pretty fantastic on the outside. He certainly doesn’t have any problem establishing that “Doyle” look even working without Christopher Doyle. At this point, the voice-overs, speed-manipulation, repetition of music, saturated colors, and so on might just be getting a little bit old. Hopefully, he’ll prove this theory wrong.

Masaki Kobayashi’s debut marks the start of two careers. Obviously, his own, but perhaps more importantly, is the sight of Tatsuya Nakadai’s first big-time role. He’s complimented by plenty of familiar faces – Isuzu Yamada, Ineiko Arima, and Fumio Watanabe but nobody comes off too well in this case. This is not to say these are bad actors, they have proved otherwise many times before, but it’s a manifestation of my problem with Kobayashi: his characterization never really gets beyond a “good guy / bad guy” complex.

We’re introduced to a small, post-war makeshift Japanese town (think of an urbanized version of ghost towns in old westerns) that is the home of an American Air Force base. The owners of the town live in the suburbs and are oblivious to how the city is run. Then, Kobayashi shifts his attention towards a cast of characters all of whom are housed in the same apartment complex. Isuzu Yamada’s character is the lessor and she is interviewing a possible new lessee, Nishida, a quiet and lonely student. As he makes his way to his new place, we become aquianted with Jo. He’s the gangster who essentially owns the town but he can’t help but be helplessly infatuated with Shizuko, but she’s got her eyes on the “new guy” – Nishida who ends getting mixed up in a complicated situations.

Yeah, it’s dreadful as it sounds. It’s not even that this film is particularly bad to watch, but it’s just one those completely empty time-filling escapist films. Sort of entertaining during the actually experience, but quite silly when you begin to think logically about it. Stylistically, this is quite Ozu-esque and paves the way for the ultra-meticulously-framed cinematography in Kobayashi’s own Harakiri. I can also give this credit for anticipating a lot of the same thematic ground found in Nagisa Oshima’s The Sun’s Burial and other early Japanese New Wave films.

The only real reason to see this, though, is if you’re a really big of the cast and I am. Like I mentioned, they’ve all seen better days, in fact Ineko Arima made Tokyo Twilight with Ozu in the same year. Tatsuya Nakadai would appear in another “jazzy” film three years later in Naruse’s When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. I guess this is also a good way to make time pass, it’s just sort of mindless entertainment that occasionally stumbles upon it’s own clever writing. If you don’t like film-noir and you don’t know your Japanese actors from the late 50s then you’ll probably want to pass on this.