Creepy (60th BFI London Film Festival Part III)

The first lesser-known-Kurosawa film I saw was 1997's 'Cure', an interesting psychological thriller about a detective trying to solve a series of murders. It worked well and didn't fall into any traps that can so regularly happen with films such as this, keeping the focus on the psychological aspects rather than becoming too horrific.

I've since seen a number of his films, including 2008's mini-masterpiece 'Tokyo Sonata', gaining him greater international acclaim, particularly on the festival circuit, and as such his films are met with expectation, though perhaps mixed reviews.

'Creepy' is very much a film of two halves. It pains me to say that this is 'Cure' meets the Shia LaBeouf-driven 'Disturbia; largely for two reasons: for one, I've reviewed a film as 'X' meets 'Y'; and secondly the admission that I have seen the Shia LaBeouf-driven toss bag.

The first half is something like the vein of 'Cure': a former homicide detective and expert in criminal psychology takes a role as a lecturer following an attack by one of his suspects. Soon realising - on what appears to be his first day - that the life of an academic isn't quite as fast-paced, he starts to look at an unsolved case, from a purely research perspective, he tells his wife.

It is here he uncovers a mysterious story of a family that disappears, leaving only the daughter behind; a daughter that can't remember nothing. All this is being played alongside the middle-aging Takakura and his wife moving to a new neighbourhood, next to one neighbour that makes it very clear they couldn't give a damn about you; the other, the slightly odd Nishino, played by strange-faced Teruyuki Kagawa.

Gradually, as Takakura suspects, the two stories start to merge, with Nishino all that he seems on the surface in the head department as well. The revelation, however, sees the film take a turn for the worse. Much like LaBeouf's neighbour in 'Disturbia', Nishino's strange, homemade death dungeon, that seems implausibly dank in a typically suburban household, is uncovered, with all the psychological images you'd formed in your mind now shown to you on the screen.

In the second half of the film, Kiyoshi Kurosawa decides against the psychological, focusing more on showing the crimes in facto (Latin), which takes away all the first half might have been building. The more that is shown, the less 'creepy' it becomes. This is a disappointment from a director that has worked to create such good psychological pieces in the past.

The mystery is too easily solved, and the suspense is lost, feeling more like an out-and-out horror, that isn't particularly, well, creepy.

Tokyo Sonata

It was September 2008 that I first went to Japan, mainly Tokyo; eight years ago to this month. This is around the same sort of time that Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 'Tokyo Sonata' was released. Eight years on, my love-affair with Japanese culture, particularly its cinema, still holds strong, but can the same still be said for the film which I first saw in January 2009.

For me, a real test of any piece of art is: in ten years time will you still be watching/listening/reading/however you choose to consume it? While not quite a decade, I have recently re-watched 'Tokyo Sonata', a film I have now watched a number of times. While it is quite simple in its premise, and possibly in its conclusions also, it is a film that I always find more to appreciate with each viewing.

Around the time of the global 'credit crunch', salaryman Sasaki finds his department being outsourced to China as part of a cost-saving measure. Unable to find any other skill he can offer the company, he is left middle-aged and unemployed, but too proud to reveal his new status to his wife and family. He, therefore, spends his days queuing for free meals, at job agencies and finding ways to pass the time in his suit with briefcase to complete the facade of 9-5 mundanity to his wife.

But he is not the only member of the family keeping secrets: Wife Megumi takes secret driving lessons to attain her license; eldest son Takashi wants to join the US foreign volunteer army; and youngest son Kenji uses his lunch money to fund after school piano lessons. While portraying a perfectly ordinary family unit, the four lack basic communication and any real knowledge of each other's lives.

For a film with Tokyo in the title, this isn't perhaps specific to Japan's capital itself in terms of the modern problems faced. Referencing the global financial crisis of the last decade and war in the Middle East were problems for every country, and so nothing unique to Japan. What does make it Tokyoite though is its use of shots of some of the less obvious parts of Tokyo, focusing on the more mundane and ordinary parts of the metropolis, a far cry from the typical shots foreign-made films will use to portray Tokyo.

Filming much of the piece in more gloomy twilight also adds to this sense of the ordinary, but also the changing of state in the lives of the main characters, as they take a turn for the worse, reminiscent of Kore-eda Hirokazu's 'Maborosi'. While in parts clunky in how they get there, the father, mother and youngest son all find themselves hitting low points: waking in a gutter, an abandoned beach hut and prison cell respectively, as the most ordinary of families finds itself quickly dysfunctional from their own lack of communication.

Kurosawa is perhaps known more for horror, suspense and mystery than Ozu-esque family structures, but here combining the use of twilight with the film's soundtrack create a haunting image of Tokyo, different from most, showing the city in a different light.

While nothing distinctively groundbreaking in terms of moral message, warning of the dangers of modern isolation and its affect of traditional family structures, it is still a message that holds relevant today, despite its distinctively Naughties setting.

While not perfect, there are some brilliant scenes, notably the revelation of Kenji's piano lessons resulting in a trip to A+E and the film's conclusion where, for once, the family listen to each other. While fairly run-of-the-mill in conclusion, the blank-faced audience left watching them is less so, in anticipation of what is to come.