Thursday 9 February 2017

Odd Obsessions - Desires, Hopes and Impulses in Japanese Cinema

This year, the Japan Foundation, London want us to look at what drives us to action and the different factors that lead to life's choices. The 2017Touring Film Programme, therefore, offers a challenging collection of films that will dare audiences to put themselves in the shoes of the protagonists and understand why the Hell they are doing all this crazy nonsense.

Of the fourteen films offered, I, for the first time in a while, gave myself the opportunity to watch the films I most wanted to see - throwing caution to the wind in the face of work and family responsibilities. Of the four films I saw most are, at times, difficult viewing, but their intense nature put you 'in the moment', making them more experienced than simply watched, particularly one, anyway.

So, shall we take a look?


Destruction babies

Good ol' Third Window Films have been tagging this new release from Tetuya Mariko as 'The most extreme 108 minutes in Japanese cinema history.' Not 97 minutes, or even 124 minutes. Specifically 108. Now, lines like this will typically only ever lead to disappointment. But, trusting Adam Torel at Third Window's cinematic filter, I went into this one with anticipation, but a slight air of trepidation.


We open with a scathing guitar over shots of a sleepy harbour, where Shota spies his brother, Taira (played by the now more grown up Yuya Yagira), being beaten up by a gang of local thugs. Chased off by Taira's boss, he dusts himself off and chases off into the distance, to escape his everyday life and court death.

The next sixty (not quite 108) minutes or so are a beat 'em up style journey as Taira makes his way into town, picking a fight with literally any male he comes into contact with. He provokes, encourages and goads any would-be opponents to hit him, taking some beatings, but always coming back for more. Without a thought in his mind, like a rabid dog, he only wants to fight.

His rage of destruction leaves a trail and soon gains him attention, picking up the cowardly Yuya along the way, an irritating accomplice that films his actions; a youth desensitised to morality, taking satisfaction only in what he can share on social media, eventually building up the meagre courage to hit those weaker than him; while Taira hits out at anybody in his path.


This is quite uncomfortable viewing. The fights are often filmed in single takes, with actors tiring, turning fights into grapples, rather than the cinematic endless fist fights often portrayed in movies. The impact of blows is felt through the screen, without dramatic sound effects in accompaniment, leaving their severity to speak for themselves. The first two-thirds are simply violence without any real purpose, other than the understanding that Taira has lost all sense of meaning for the world. In parts, this is delivering on its extreme promises.

However, with films of this nature, an endless stream of violence will only end up becoming boring for the audience. Once seen long enough, you too will become desensitised to the violence. This is perhaps where 'Destruction Babies' starts to lose its way, if Taira already hadn't. Fleeing the town with the kidnapped Nana, they lack a clear direction, as does the film momentarily, sitting in wait until Nana's fury is unleashed at her situation resulting in murder. A brief return to senseless violence draws the trio's screen presence to a close.

We then switch back to Shota, where we started, searching for his fugitive brother to no avail. It is in Taira's opposite, his more sensitive younger brother, that we find a sense of meaning in all this violence. His earnest search for his brother fruitless, he is left abandoned by friends and family, the result of violent self-interest.

Just before the film's conclusion, we see the traditional portable shrine race, with two competing groups vying for superiority. A raucous and violent affair, we see all men pushing and fighting each other for position. The event is eluded to throughout the film, indicating violence is all around us, celebrated and nothing new, and these 'destruction babies' are a product of a long line of history and cultural norms. Though this violence now takes new forms: Yuya's cowardly ways of attacking those weaker than him, filming the deeds for prosperity, and social media sharing, perhaps the most destructive of a youth seeking faster and more immediate extremes.

Taira's re-emergence in the final shot states that violence is here to stay, with the path to destruction for humanity only to continue.


Kabukicho Love Hotel

'Kabukicho Love Hotel' is another example of how English titles are often designed to draw in Western audiences. 'Sayonara Kabukicho', the original title, is much more befitting, though that wouldn't suggest sex scenes to the ignorant among us.

Young Toru is supposedly an ordinary young man trying to make his way in the world, with plans to marry his musician girlfriend. It just so happens he manages a love hotel in Kabukicho, Shinjuku's slightly seedier part of town. Pulling an extended shift, we follow a day in the life of the hotel, with focus on a select few that tread its dirty carpets, all seeking an escape route.


Cleaner, Suzuki has just two days to wait before the case dangling over her fugitive lover will be closed, allowing them to come out of hiding. 'Delivery girl' Hena hopes to return to Korea to open a boutique having now saved enough money. And young Toru, with aspirations of fronting a top hotel, spends the day discovering his younger sister is a porn star and that his girlfriend is taking less moral routes to the top. None are there by design, nobody is, and it is now time to break free.

This is not a film about sordid sex, therefore, but more about escape, as the Japanese title would suggest. Though Ryuichi Hiroki's early days as a pinku eiga director are put to use, with a couple of rather graphic fruit 'n' veg fondling scenes accompanying some more tame efforts, in the overarching storyline. These scenes are perhaps not necessary, as we all know what goes on behind these closed doors, though thankfully they don't detract from the film's narrative flow.

The character's are written to know that their situation isn't a great one, all aware that their place of occupation is below society's moral standards. This self-awareness creates sympathy with the characters that fate has led them here, with the film acknowledging that everyone has their reasons for ending up in a place like this, and they probably don't need to be spoken about.

This film, and indeed the Japanese title, are perhaps in response to the 2013 awarding of Tokyo as host city for the 2020 Olympics. Much as London soought to bulldoze most of Stratford and ensure that the Tube actually worked for once for 2012, Tokyo intends to paint a good international image for itself. Therefore, Kabukicho, sitting in the heart of Tokyo's Shinjuku hub, will be taken to the cleaners; the area ridden of all the seedy activities and establishments.


By the film's conclusion, escape from the district brings with it a sense of relief and looking to the future. Whether the same will be said for the city at large, is another matter. 


The Mohican Comes Home

'The Mohican Comes Home' follows a similar fish-out-of-water theme as Shuichi Okita's earlier films, 'The Woodsman and the Rain' and 'The Story of Yonosuke'. But, slightly unusually, this time around it is returning home that sees the protagonist seem out of place, to start with at least.

Eikichi is somewhat distant from his own life. The front man for a death metal band, he seems to let life pass him by with a rather casual, absent-minded stare on his face. His band is struggling financially, his girlfriend whom he plans to wed is pregnant, but these don't particularly seem to be key things on his mind. When he returns home with Yuka to visit his family home in a sleepy, seaside town, therefore, announcing his current life stage seems like nothing to him, but, of course, is much more to his parents. However, his aging father is suffering; his body riddled with cancer. At this, Eikichi is rather glum-faced, to start.


But, the more time he spends with his sick father, the more he feels that there is perhaps more that he should be doing in life. He makes it his aim to help out at home and fulfil his father's dying wishes, resulting in a strange pizza-eating scenario, improvised musical performance and masquerading as his father's hero, Eikichi Yazawa, his father's singing idol whom he was named after.

But this is not an altogether serious film, and Okita finely balances each and every scene with enough comedy to take it away from over-sentimentality; but enough seriousness to stop it becoming too farcical. A stand out moment when Eikichi takes his father to the beach, with his father's deteriorating state becoming evident as he talks to Eikichi as if he has yet to leave for Tokyo, still a teenage boy. While a failure in the eyes of many, his father still wants his son to keep trying to succeed at what he does.

While 'The Mohican Comes Home' has good balance, it does leave it not veering one way or the other, left as a 'nice' watch, lacking in a well-executed ending, as in 'The Story of Yonosuke'. In fact, the ending is perhaps the film's weaker point: the hastily put-together wedding scene stretching a bit too far in to 'goof-ball' comedy, out of sync with the rest of the film.


The line 'go back to Tokyo' is a recurring one, with his mother keen for him to get out from under her feet and his father wanting his new-found kindness to stop reminding him he is about to die. Eventually he does, realising he is not so out of place in his hometown after all, leaving with a new sense of purpose for when he returns.


Pieta in the Toilet

Whichever way you look at it, 'Pieta in the Toilet' is not an easy film to watch: A film about a failed artist-cum-window cleaner diagnosed with cancer is never going to be a laugh riot, and so the life and times of a 28 year old destined to die young has its ups and downs.

Sonoda's reaction is one of apathy to his news. He tries to keep on working as if nothing has happened, initially rejecting his parents' concerns and treatment in hospital. A failed artist, he chooses to sulk himself to an early grave. But it is in two chance encounters at the hospital that he is brought back to life a little.


He intervenes to help young Mai, a schoolgirl he befriends after a you-scratch-my-back exchange. Their relationship is an awkward one: He a young man about to die; she an underage school girl, unloved at home with a chip on her shoulder. Her push-pull attitude towards him becomes annoying, with Sonoda struggling to understand what she wants from him, but this perhaps suggests a well-developed character, perhaps from a male perspective anyway, of a difficult to read teenager.

While someone he would rather escape, his ward-mate, the perverted Yokota, played by the increasingly popular Lily Franky, provides some humour in the bleakness, and someone that Sonoda eventually comes to empathise with and seek support. The meeting with Yokota leads him to the children's cancer ward, where he humours the young children , particularly Takuto for whom he draws his favourite comic books heroes.

The story is inspired by the diaries of Osamu Tezuka towards the end of his life and sees Sonoda want to leave something behind after he dies, as well as pay tribute to the mother of Takuto and Mai simultaneously, recreating the image of Pieta, naturally in the toilet.  

Little about this film is easy, director Daishi Matsunaga drawing on various sources of inspiration and references. The switching of emotions and somewhat blandly unnatural scripting to facilitate the story can make the viewer feel a little unsure as to how to respond, though this is perhaps by design, as Matsunaga gets you inside the shoes and minds of the characters, unsure what to make of their lot.


Want to learn how you should act on a Japanese-inspire impulse? If you live in the non-London UK cities of Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol, Belfast, Nottingham, Exeter, Derby, Leicester, Kendal, Stirling, Edinburgh, Inverness, Birmingham or, most importantly, Dundee, the Japan Foundation's Touring Film Programme is heading your way, unless it already has, as I'm writing this mid-tour. 

Wednesday 1 February 2017

Unchain

There are many different styles and approaches to take when making a documentary, with the telling of the story very much down to the director's discretion. Though Toshiaki Toyoda's dip into the world of documentary seems initially to be more determined by available footage than any artistic choices.


But this is no surprise. 'Unchain' is a documentary about a man of not particularly much merit, and you would not believe that Toyoda particularly set out to make a documentary about the subject as a breakthrough moment early in his career. Instead, 'Unchain' feels like a personal interest story for Toyoda: a character he had stumbled across and felt the need to explore further; a film not exactly in need of a huge budget.

So, what does 'Unchain' Kaji have to offer the world to make you part with ninety-eight minutes of your time to share Toyoda's interest in him?

Well, in the mid-Nineties, Toyoda became friends with a group of boxers from the Osaka slum Kawazaki. One, notably, had a losing record, achieving one draw his career highlight: the fighter known as 'Unchain' Kaji. However, by the time Toyoda started filming the boxers, Kaji had quit boxing, suffering from an eye injury and subsequent mental health problems. The earlier parts of the film, therefore, rely on previous footage of his fights, and larks, the group of friends already had; Kaji himself now in hospital.


The footage, therefore, is very jittery and shot on lower-quality handheld cameras, an approach Toyoda maintains when he takes over, filming the subsequent fights of the remaining boxers. In between these fights, interviews with the boxers, friends and colleagues are included, minus Kaji, of course, giving a rather illusive and almost sinister air to what may have become of the troubled youth. The story of his descent, resulting in his being sectioned, is accompanied by docu-drama style recreations of the moment he sort to attack a work colleague over payments. It is from here that holes in the storytelling start to emerge.

Now in hospital, Kaji is almost forgotten for part of the documentary, instead the focus switches to the other boxers, trying to resurrect their moderate careers, though all themselves inevitably fail. One marries Kai's ex-girlfriend while he is away in hospital, as if he is almost out of the picture completely. The story of the titular character, therefore, is replaced by Toyoda's coverage of amateur boxing fights.

It is a shame that more was not done to try and cover Kaji's time away in hospital and what happened to him over this period. Though perhaps due to cultural and personal preferences, it was perhaps felt better not discussed. The first half of the film paints an interesting portrait of the erratic Kaji, the type of friend we all have: wild and unpredictable, yet earnest and loyal, leaving you unsure whether to push them away or pull them in for embrace. Toyoda felt an affinity with this 'loser' whose life took a turn for the worse.


The others featured themselves all end up failing, though their more conventional personas make them much less intriguing, and the documentary dips a little as focus switches to them, the extended footage of their fights at times a little awkward and drawn out.

Kaji returns to the scene towards the end, catching up with his old friends who haven't seen him since he went into hospital. He watches on, as he did before, as one of his fellow boxers fights in Tokyo, inevitably losing. Kaji is now a more subdued character than the one portrayed from earlier footage, seemingly coming to terms with his status.

More on how the old Kaji became the new Kaji would have rounded 'Unchain' better. Instead, this is a mere snapshot of a group of friends, perhaps lacking a little more depth, for whatever reasons. Though, as often with these personal interest pieces, it is an intriguing look at the lives of those on the fringes of society, perhaps now boxed into a corner and left to be forgotten.

Thanks to Third Window Films for bringing them back from obscurity...


'Unchain' is available as part of the Third Window Films blu-ray release 'Toshiaki Toyoda: The Early Years' alongside 'Pornostar' and '9 Souls' on Amazon.