easternkicks.com » Japanese classics

Hana

Andrew Heskins — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 09:44:51 +0000

Writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s thoughtful and hilarious take on the samurai genre…

There have been plenty of films that concern themselves with showing superhuman prowess of samurai fighters. Few, however, suggest that that might all have been pretty normal, if not actually a bit useless.

Soza (Junichi Okada) lives a life of squalor in an Edo period slum. His father’s dying wish was that he avenge his death, but Soza has a few problems with that, not least of which is he’s useless as fighter. He also isn’t really concerned with the whole vengeance thing anyway, being more interested in teaching reading and writing in the local community – a rather pointless occupation for a swordsman, so he’s told.

Even his own clan are ashamed of him, but amongst the rag tag peasants Soza starts to find both a sense of purpose and even true happiness. He even begins to fall for a local widow Osae (Rie Miyazawa, Ashura, The Twilight Samurai, Peony Pavilion), fast becoming a surrogate father for her son. But when the community is threatened by the local landlords greed can Soza hatch a plan that will save both his own dignity and the homes of all his new friends?

Set against the famous (and very true) legend of the 47 master less ronin of Ako, writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s (Afterlife, Nobody Knows) approach mirrors the same irrelevance that has dominated other filmmakers recent takes on the samurai genre recently. Deconstructing familiar storylines by introducing a whole new perspective, it’s part of the same breed that has recently spawned films like Yôji Yamada’s Twilight Samurai and Takeshi Kitano’s Zatoichi. In fact it doesn’t matter if you don’t know about the Ako legend, other than remembering the number 47.

There’s also more than a passing nod to Akira Kurosawa. Soza’s fellow slum residents themselves are not unlike Kurosawa’s peasant characters in The Hidden Fortress. And Kore-eda deliberately references the trademark Kurosawa sweep between scenes that George Lucas liked so much- though in the more glamorous form or a swirl.

Kore-eda uses a lighter touch, filling his movie with hearty comedy and often broad if not vulgar humour. He even has the 47 ronin running around more like Life Of Brian’s People’s Front of Judea (or should that be the Judean People’s Front?) Dispelling the myth with a rather less spectacular truth (as Kurosawa often did) Kore-eda disguises what is an intelligent re-imaging of the samurai film, tackling head on the issues of empty vengeance and how violence perpetuates itself.

The cleverness of the script and exquisite cinematography lift this far above being a course comedy, with superb performances from the ensemble cast that includes Tadanobu Asano and Susumu Terajima, all truly relishing their colourful roles.

It’s a joyous movie that feels little of it’s over two hours in length, and the sort of warm, glowing world view that puts a smile on your face when you leave the cinema. And you can’t say better than that…
Hana was released as part of the London Film Festival. A wider release in the UK is yet to be announced.

Tony Takitani

Andrew Heskins — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 18:40:09 +0000

Director Jun Ichikawa’s beautifully understated reading of a short story by Haruki Murakami is a touching study of loneliness…

There’s always one. A great movie you catch at a festival you fall in love with that promptly disappears, never to be properly released or seen again. You enthuse about it to friends, but as the months pass into years, the memory fades, and you find that you even forget about it yourself…

(Which is my way of saying this review is long overdue…)

For me, at the 2004 London Film Festival, that film was Tony Takitani, an understated reading by director Jun Ichikawa of a short story by Haruki Murakami. It was the same year Wong Kar-wai’s troublesome 2046 debuted, that beautiful but flawed, self-indulgent spectacle. The films touched on similar themes, but Ichikawa seemed to get right everything Kar-wai got wrong, and despite its diffidence his film was all the more powerful for it.

Perhaps distributors felt one Asian art movie was enough at the time? Despite author Murakami’s enduring popularity, and even though the film came at the end of a period when his name had hardly been out of the media, no distributor felt game enough to give this movie a chance in the UK.

Until now…

Tony Takitani (Issey Ogata, Yi yi: A One and a Two) is a successful illustrator of vehicles, machines, engines, in fact anything remotely technical. As a boy his mother died young, and his father, a jazz player, left him with a housekeeper while he toured and relating to living beings is something of a problem for him. He’s spent so much of his life alone he doesn’t see how lonely his existence is. That’s until Eiko (Miyazawa Rie, Peony Pavilion) comes into his life as a new client. He falls in love with her instantly and proposes to her.

Eventually she gives in and marries Tony, who feels a wealth of emotion he never even knew existed. But for Eiko, she can’t escape the emptiness she feels inside that fuels her shopping addiction. Instead it gets worse, leading to devastating consequences…

Tony Takitani was the first feature length adaptation Haruki Murakumi approved from his own work, and Ichikawa’s screenplay stays close to his original prose, taking it as his starting point. It becomes the narration that drives the film far more than I’ve ever seen before, at least beyond short movies. The narration is not there to flesh out aspects that can’t be shown or spoken by characters; it is the crux of the whole movie, with those characters often ending the narrator’s sentences.

Ichikawa’s attitude to the composition is to illustrate that narration, with beautifully composed scenes that flow one into another. Working with cinematographer Hirokawa Taishi, Ichikawa’s ability to take the most mundane of premises and show it from a new angle, stylising each scene, is incredible. His characters fit awkwardly in – or often out – of view, just as they do in the story. According to Ichikawa, much of his influence came from the paintings of Edward Hopper, and again fitting that reserved approach.

Even the soundtrack from celebrated composer (and pop artist) Ryuichi Sakamoto (Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Last Emperor), follows that low-key approach. His score is emotive without the need for dramatic crescendos, drawing instead on the most simplistic elements for effect, and it works!

Understated it maybe, but conversely there is a pace about the film. At a relatively brief but perfectly formed 75 minutes long, you feel it’s as long as it needs to be; a short story that hasn’t been needless extended into an epic.

It’s a beautiful, thoughtful movie, and strangely uplifting, considering the melancholy of the subject, like most of Murakumi’s written work. Tony Takitani comes highly recommended, and not just for fans of the author.

Zatoichi

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 16:27:57 +0000

‘Beat’ Takeshi’s (Violent Cop, Battle Royale) reinvention of the popular 60s samurai b-movie character for the 21st century, the blind, gambling masseur who also happens to be a master swordsman…

Quentin Tarentino isn’t the only person who’s been looking to old samurai b-movies for inspiration, ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano has brought the Zatoichi series radically up-to-date in his own particular style.

Zatoichi began life as a minor character from a novel by Kan Shimozawa, before director Kenji Misumi brought him to life in 1962 (as he would later do with Lone Wolf and Cub). This quirky blind masseur, who had a penchant for gambling drew much on the Akria Kurosawa character Yojimbo for inspiration. A mysterious character that’s motives we never really clear, but whose talent with a sword is truly astonishing. Zatoichi led the way not only in bringing these spectacular abilities to the screen, but also with the bloodthirsty gusto in which it did it. Inspiring not only samurai films in Japan, but swordsman films further a field in Hong Kong and China, particularly innovative directors like King Hu (Come Drink With Me, A Touch of Zen) and Zhang Che – who took the ‘disability’ sub-genre to new incredulous heights with The One-Armed Swordsman.

This massively popular character, as played by Shintaro Katsu, ran well into the seventies, chalking up over 20 films along the way before finally running out of steam. Their enduring popularity was such that Shintaro even returned to the role for one last, big budget swan song in 1989, ironically the same year one of the earlier films (Zatoichi tekka tabi, 1967) was reworked in the USA as Blind Fury starring Rutger Hauer.

After the lukewarm reception both Brother and Dolls received – the former for being a western co-production that pandered a little too far towards a western audience, the latter for taking itself a little too seriously – Zatoichi was a curious next move. Particular as old samurai movies were major target for Kitano in his days as a stand up comedian. Yet he brings a charming and refreshing irreverence to the character, reinterpreting Zatoichi in his own way. Beyond the bounds that he is blind, a masseur and one hell of a swordsman, Kitano has a completely free rein.

Zatoichi visits a remote village held in the grip of the merciless Ginzo gang, befriending a peasant Aunt Oume (Michiyo Ogusu, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Land of Demons, Zatoichi umi o wataru, Kao) and her gambling nephew Shinkichi (Guadalcanal Taka). The village attracts all sorts of lost souls to it, each with there own motives. Hattori (Tadanobu Asano, Ichi the Killer, Dead End Run), the samurai ronin and his fatally ill wife, who quickly becomes employed by the Ginzo. The stunning beautiful geisha girls, Okinu (Yuko Daike, Dolls, Ju-on, Kikujiro) and Osei (Daigoro Tachibana), hell bent on avenging their parents murder. And then there’s legendary Zatoichi himself, just why did he come to this town? One thing is for certain, once the Ginzo gang learn of his presence in the village you know the outcome is going to be pretty messy. Has even the master swordsman pulled off more than he can chew?

To the much-filmed Edo period Japan, Kitano brings a truly fresh eye in bringing it to the screen. Though he’s lost none of his unmistable touch for violence – which he wastes no time showing us in the opening scene – you might enjoy Zatoichi as much for it’s dazzling dance sequences – the geisha dance and particularly the tap dancing finale (I kid you not!) Even throughout the film, labourers in the fields begin to tap the soundtracks rhythm as they dig or build.

It’s stunningly filmed, and even the violence takes on a strange kind of beauty – for instance in one of the striking ways CGI is used throughout the movie blood streams out like ribbons. Cinematographer Katsumi Yanagishima has often collaborated with Kitano, their work together including Sonatine, Brother, Dolls and the stylish violent epic Battle Royale, directed by Kinji Fukusaku.

With echoes of Zhang Yimou’s 21st century take on the swordsman epic Hero, Kitano – in his first ever period film – has breathed new life into the genre and had a lot of fun doing so. You can tell.

This is up there with Battle Royale.

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Hana

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