mononoke1 Reviews

Tokyo Fist (1995)

Anger, violence, pain and revenge drive the action

[8/10 · 18 November 2004]

Tsukamoto in this film strips away excess to reveal a animal emotions which are then stretched to excess. In this film anger, violence, pain and revenge drive the action.

Tsuda and Kojima witness the murder of a girl they like and while both vow to find and punish the killers only Kojima holds on to the twisted dream to become a second rate boxer. Tsuda becomes a salaryman in a sexless relationship in which they spend the evenings watching old films (I spotted Metropolis and another which I can't place). A chance meeting between the two after many years awakens the anger that Kojima feels towards Tsuda, and the former begins making a play for Hizuru, Tsuda's girlfriend. This in turn leads Tsuda to become angry and he turns to boxing to get revenge on his former friend. Meanwhile Hikuru becomes a masochist, autonomous of both the males.

The fairly graphic violence is mostly make up and is so over the top it is clearly to make the point mentioned in one of the other comments: violence is often the first recourse in a situation. However, as opposed to a film like Rocky where the violence leads to personal redemption, or an emotional force like Raging Bull, the violence is non-cathartic and meaningless. It is almost as if the characters are driven to behave in a certain way as a reflex reaction.

Fast editing, powerful sound effects and blue colours mark the film out as Tsukamoto's style, and the transformation theme is another element that he returns to. Lots of fun for me, but the person I was with didn't have a clue what was going on. Make your own decision, but there is no relationship to Fight Club whatsoever: this is about human emotion, not social issues.

Hatsukoi (2000)

Teenager mends her relationship with her parents through an unexpected discovery

[17 November 2004]

This is a film about a teenager, unable to express herself clearly, learning a lesson in life and through that mending the relationship with her father.

Prior to entering hospital treatment, Satoka's mother is reminded of the tune of an old musical box. Going through her old possessions she finds the box, but not the key. Satoka finds the key, opens the box and discovers a letter to her mothers first love that was never sent. In it her mother wishes to see Fujiki (Sanada of Twilight Samurai fame) one more time beneath the wishing cherry tree. Satoka eventually tracks down Fujiki who turns out to have let himself go. The film focuses on the relationship between Satoka and Fujiki as she attempts to engineer a meeting between the two under the wishing cherry tree.

The film parallels the growing closeness between the surrogate father figure who may be run down but has a spark in him, compared with the deteriorating one with her real father who she sees as a loser. The scenes between Satoka and Fujiki are quite touching as she helps him to connect with reality and bring him out of his shell, while she learns from him how to relate to older men and temporarily forgets her mothers illness.

As with many Japanese films of this ilk (probably not filmed with the art house circuit in mind or by a particularly well known director), the film is highly sentimentalised and at times the pace is very slow. The imagery (linked with the central theme) is also extremely common: falling sakura (cherry blossoms). If you don't already know, sakura is a metaphor for temporality. Just as it reaches its most beautiful moment, it dies and falls as petals. This instant of beauty also contains the moment of death: a theme regularly featured in Japanese literature, films and music. However it is worth staying to the end just to find out how the meeting turns out. How will the pair react to meeting their first love after all these years? And just like with many people, they still feel the pangs and wonder why it went wrong, and think what if ....

Vital (2004)

Brief review

[8/10 · 5 November 2004]

After the surrealness of the Tetsuo films and the blue filters and voyeurism of Snake of June, I was not sure where Tsukamoto would go with this film. I saw it as part of the London FIlm Festival and it was one of my favourite films.

The story is of a Hiroshi (Asano Tadanobu) suffering from amnesia (as a result of a car crash in which his girlfriend dies) slowly regaining his memory through performing an autopsy on her. It raises questions on the nature of the self and how mutable it is.

For example, Hiroshi was pressured in to becoming a medical student, but he rebelled and became a drifter. After the crash he loses his recent memory, but he is inexplicably drawn to study medicine. Is this the call of his nature or a way of healing? Once the trauma's of teenage years are stripped away and we return to the core of the self before social conditioning steps in, are we more innocent or closer to what we can become? All this may sound very deep, but this film is all about childhood/innocence and the self in my opinion.

Pretty different from the other three films mentioned above, but still has lots of blue/grey filters and an extremely acute sense of sound. Some of the autopsy scenes have some wonderful slurping noises and tension that really set me on edge.

2046 (2004)

philosophy and film

[9/10 · 5 November 2004]

I just saw this in London as a Gala screening for the London Film Festival and Wong Kar Wai did a q & A session afterwards.

I really enjoyed he film, especially the first half which is the filmic equivalent of reading a book of philosophical sayings: it is just full of 'moments'. Charatcers are continually framed and/or filmed from behind screens, posts etc in a way that highlights the visual qualities of the shot. There is one wonderful scene where we see Zhang Zyi on the right of the screen (looking on to it) and the whole left side empty, the sound track is of Leung making love to another woman. I loved the way the emptiness on the screen was filled in that way.

Having said this, I thought the film lost its momentum towards the end when it flashed back to Leung's life in Singapore. This section seemed to have nothing to say and did little for the story world as a whole. It does pick up again after this.

Wai mentioned the melange of languages in the session and said the mixture of Cantonese/Mandarin was very common in Chinese films and meant nothing in particular. He didn't say anything about Kimura Taku and the Japanese though. He did say that some of his effects (slow motion, camera shots) were down to budgetary constraints and lack of film. Something worth remembering when trying to divine directorial meaning.

Japan Organized Crime Boss (1969)

Good all round line up

[19 May 2004]

Good film from Fukasaku and you can see the style getting closer and closer to the seminal jingi naki tatakai (Battle without Honour) series. Many of the elements are there such as the documentary type style narration, the newspaper clippings etc. All these elements make it appear 'real' or jitsuryoku. Still have the concept of jingi and the whole ninkyo chivalry thing here though.

Tomisaburo Wakayama does indeed steal the show but he was not Zatoichi. The mistake is easily made as they are brothers. Zatoichi is played buy Shintaro Katsu, he never quite becomes this fat. Tomisaburo is also known for the kozure okami (Lone Wolf) series, which are also a joy to watch.