Tag: japanese film

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A still from Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Monster" (2023), depicting a man with his head bowed in front of a blurred crowd, as reviewed by poet and critic Ezekiel Yu for the automachination literary magazine.

Extinguishing Sin: On Hirokazu Koreeda’s “Monster” (2023)

Hirokazu Koreeda’s films reap many rewards, if one is willing to take them at their own pace. The comparisons to Yasujiro Ozu are somewhat tired but also fitting—and much to the later Japanese filmmaker’s credit. His Monster (or Kaibutsu, in the original Japanese) is no different, though perhaps the more salient comparison would be to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, since both films fold differing perspectives over the same central event in order to gradually complexify both the story as well as the viewer’s initial impressions.

Monster is a masterclass in playing with the viewer’s expectations in this regard; from its very title, and from the rising action of the plot, one is primed to expect something sinister at work, as the son of single mother Saori Mugino (Sakura Ando), Minato, begins to exhibit strange behavior at home. He becomes withdrawn, and refers to himself as a “pig brain in a human body” and talks about being reborn in ways that seem to indicate suicidal ideation. After she finds him wandering through a dark tunnel, singing to himself, long after he was supposed to be back home from school, he flings himself out of the car on the drive back. An emergency MRI yields no cognitive abnormalities—what exactly is wrong with young Minato? […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A still from Yasujiro Ozu's "Late Spring", featuring Japanese actress Setsuko Hara, as reviewed by poet and critic Ezekiel Yu.

Refusal’s Art: On Yasujiro Ozu’s “Late Spring” (1949)

Composition—the word that most immediately comes to mind when contemplating the work of Yasujirō Ozu. The composition on the screen, yes—of camera placement, of atmosphere and object(s)—but also of bodies and their moods, of characters forming, de-forming, and forming again in response to excitation and/or sorrow and/or slight, contained within the strictures of social decency. One thinks of Setsuko Hara, too, and that winning smile; and one thinks of that moment with the apple peel in Late Spring, with Chishū Ryū, where there is no smiling, and all the world seems to converge upon his slow and magnified severance.

Late Spring is certainly one of the saddest films ever made, and not because of any deliberate tearjerking on Ozu’s part (though the viewer is free to weep with the father, at film’s end), but because the director, in fact, attempts the very opposite: His characters deflect from sadness, from what might be seen as hysteria or selfishness, at every turn, providing every practical reason to accept what Late Spring’s principal characters feel they cannot accept, and would not, but for the risk of communal disapproval.

Those characters are Shukichi Somiya, an elderly professor, and his twenty-seven-year-old daughter Noriko (played by Chishū Ryū and Setsuko Hara, respectively). His sister, Aunt Masa (Haruko Sugimura) and the rest of their small community, in a town just outside Tokyo, are pressuring him to marry off Noriko, for she is nearing the end of her marriageable “prime.” It is clear that Shukichi is not particularly enthused about the decision, but he goes along with the steadily developing plans, unwilling to set himself as the obstacle for Noriko’s potential prospects. […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A still of the lead actress in Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "Asako I & II"

Beauty’s Filth: On Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Asako I & II” (2018)

Stillness, aesthetic rest, relaxed pacing, static, almost banal, framing – these are all hallmarks of the great Japanese classics of Kurosawa, Ozu, and co., and even contemporary directors like Hirokazu Kore-eda. Yes, other directors from other countries deploy these techniques, but it was Japanese cinema (particularly in the early part of the prior century) that engraved them into custom and international renown. Think of the great shots in Ozu’s Tokyo Story, of characters doing nothing yet exemplifying everything within the interplay of objects in the frame: the pairs of shoes in the bathhouse, an old couple by the sea, or the father sitting alone as the ship in the distance drifts past.

Stillness, aesthetic rest, relaxed pacing, static, almost banal, framing – these are all words you can use to describe Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2018 film Asako I & II. It is a solidly built thing, in terms of its structure (you are never lost or confused as to what is happening), but composure can be deceiving. What might be construed as elegance, an aesthetic serenity, is really just detached posing, a pretty exterior that mirrors the elfin perfection of the film’s protagonist, Asako – and just as empty, within. […]

Film by Gabriel Massó
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Three stills from chanbara: Seven Samurai, Twilight Samurai, Harakiri

Dissecting Chanbara: The Evolution of the Samurai Film Genre

There are samurai films, and then there are films that, while falling into this genre by happenstance, become the high points of cinema itself. I intend to examine three films in the chanbara tradition, and, in doing so, I will show how they’ve helped evolve the genre, advancing it into high art by building on previous achievements.

Perhaps the most important (even if not the best) film in the chanbara genre is Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), which tells the story of a group of warriors recruited by a village aiming to free itself from harassment by local bandits. It is a great action/adventure film that manages to transcend that label because of its pristine characterization and Kurosawa’s skill as a storyteller. The village farmers have only rice to offer in exchange for the service of the samurais, so that the viewer knows the only warriors who will agree to help are those righteous enough to sympathize with their struggle, or those desperate enough to take the job.

From its opening, one of the film’s few limitations becomes clear: Kurosawa’s proclivity for melodrama. As one of the farmers (Bokuzen Hidari) overhears bandits planning their next raid, the villagers whine and scream, worried about their future. However, even this aspect of the film is ameliorated by two things: 1) although the presentation is a bit cheesy, it makes sense for the farmers to be upset, since their lives are at risk; 2) the film is extremely concise and well-paced, with this scene an immediate point of departure. In fact, although Seven Samurai is three and a half hours long, it feels more like two. This is partly due to Kurosawa’s editing, which often cuts amid a character’s movement to maintain seamlessness in the flow of each sequence, then alternates loud and quiet scenes, so that they rarely feel monotonous. […]

Film by Gabriel Massó
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A still from Shohei Imamura's The Insect Woman

On Shohei Imamura’s “The Insect Woman” (1963): Cycles, Transitions, Ellipses

The first time I watched Shohei Imamura’s 1963 classic The Insect Woman, it took me a few seconds to understand why its strange ending works. As there were only two or three minutes of the film left, I kept looking at its runtime, thinking “How the hell will this movie end?”, and then it did.

It ends in an ellipsis, but not the sort of cliffhanger one would normally think. It is not like the one closing Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, which immediately makes sense, as there is a hovering hint of disaster that would be missed were that film “resolved”. Instead, The Insect Woman ends where one would least expect it; in the middle of a long walk the main character is taking. Not only does there not seem to be a logical conclusion to the events in the narrative, but there is no closure at an emotional level, neither.

The reason such an ending works is that Shohei Imamura’s film is about cycles, found between generations, without origin or completion. Were the film to conclude more traditionally, its themes would not be as hard-hitting as they are. Life does not have beginnings or endings as much as it has “transitions”, and although Imamura’s film is, like all art, artifice, it commits to framing this reality. It may be because of this commitment that, although the film sometimes seems like a stream of tragedies in the life of its main character, it never overwhelms nor devolves into melodrama. […]