Wednesday 10 February 2016

IKIRU: The highs and lows of life in Japanese cinema

London, late-January/early February sort of time, and e Japan Foundation presents its annual Touring Film Programme, starting off at the ICA and moving to the more artistic cinemas in various cities up and down the UK. And every year there must be a theme.

This year's theme is quite a good one: Ikiru, the Japanese verb 'to live', and the name of a famous Akira Kurosawa film (no, not 'Throne of Blood' fans of Stewart Lee's Comedy vehicle Series 3'). In Japanese cinema, this is a genre - if you'd call it that - of cinema typically associated with Yasujiro Ozu and his portraits of change in ordinary, everyday Japanese life; a theme carried on into the new millennium by Kore-eda Hirokazu.

Far from grand samurai classics and out-of-this-world anime, these are slower films, films to provoke more introspection, films to make you laugh and cry, and then vomit while reading this. This, the thirteenth JFTFP (JFTFP!), saw me see fewer films than I typically would, driven largely by busy-ness, seeing Tony Law and not wanting to watch four straight films on a Saturday, especially as Villa had won for once, so I had to watch Match of the Day.

In the words of Scha Dara Parr, let it flow, again...


Cheers from Heaven (Tengoku kara no eru; 天国からのエー)

'Cheers from Heaven' is probably a bit mainstream for me; it's a fair example of low-level mainstream cinema that's decent, not amazing, forcing emotions on its viewers with a tad too much sentimentality. Saying that though, I had to see this one of all the films shown as part of this year's programme.


In a small Okinawan town, a group of not-particularly-musically talented school children struggle to find anywhere to practice their not-particularly-impressive talents. Annoying adults, local bento supplier, Hikaru, disillusioned by a lack of community spirit, takes the group of children in, allowing them to play in a spare area behind his kitchen. But being essentially open-air, this doesn't really solve the problem. But, never one to give up easily, he takes it upon himself to start building a studio for the children to use freely (in each sense), but as long as a community of sharing is followed.

The kids delight in this, and suddenly every child in the town has a guitar and comes knocking on the door. But Hikaru's focus stays on the original group he took in, becoming a manager of sorts in helping them pursue their dream, for reasons that become quite sentimentally apparent. In true light movie fashion, they succeed.

The content meant little to me, however. 'Cheers from Heaven' is set and filmed in the northern Okinawan town of Motobu, where my wife and I stayed as part of our honeymoon. The real life Ajisai studio, opened by once real life man Hikaru Nakasone, was on the winding hill path that we walked passed each day en route to our guesthouse. For the majority of the film, therefore, I was sat looking at the scenery and remembering what I did there, such as the public lavatory I once stood outside, where the headline act's drummer and guitarist have a fight.

Famous Motobu toilet
The 'living' element of this film is a tale of a man perhaps a little fed-up with how things have become, in his own life and society in general, feeling the need to make some sort of change and realise a dream, before it's all tragically too late, if a little forced by the conclusion.

This is a nice film, a steady film, a decent film that perhaps needs to stop trying so hard by then end to get its message across. But for me, it probably serves more as a holiday memory.



I'll Give it My All, Tomorrow (Ore wa mada honki dashitenai dake; 俺はまだ本気出してないだ)

'I'll Give it My All, Tomorrow' is a title I liked the moment I read it, particularly as it came accompanied by a photo of a man in boxer shorts. It's fair to say, this is my kind of comedy.
In his forties, Shizuo gives up his salaryman job to work part-time in a fast food bar and sitting about playing an 'important match' of his Playstation. Living with his father and seventeen year-old daughter, his slack attitude soon frustrates his family and Bob, the foreign employee in the fast food bar. See as a superior by those younger than him, but a waste by those by those who depend on him, he soon makes it his life ambition to become a manga artist...at some point, some time.

This is a film about the life that happens when you're making plans, too busy sitting about and thinking about what you should do rather than getting anything done. While the earnest desire is there, the proactive motivation is somewhat lacking, resulting in a limbo. A mid-life crisis finds your average salaryman working alongside and socialising with young adults still trying to find their place in the world, naturally to the amusement of the likes of me.


'I'll Give it My All...' captures well that somewhat naive compulsion that men have to pack it all in, fight the system and sit in their pants playing Playstation while the rest of society moves on; the freedom we all want, but is probably quite dangerous in misguided and confused hands.

Shinich Tsutsumi is well cast as the anti-hero, seemingly confident to those his junior, but unable to achieve and get his life moving, and Yuichi Fukuda's direction works well in magnifying his shortcomings, as a forty-two year old man asks his seventeen year-old daughter to lend him twenty thousand Yen.


If you too would like to learn about how mundane your life is, the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme travels to the likes of Leicester, Bristol, Birmingham, Derby, Sheffield, Aberystwyth, Dundee, Edinburgh, Kendal, Exeter, Nottingham and Manchester...though you're probably already aware of said fact.