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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Dear Kinejapers,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Could I pose a couple of questions on Okamoto's
<EM>Nikudan</EM> ? It was screened at the BFI in the atg season, with
notes from Roland Domenig and an intro. from Tony Rayns.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The unnamed protagonist goes round muttering mathematical
formulae and even finds love through maths. So much else of this film is
autobiographical, but I'd not heard of Okamoto being a mathematician. It
brought to mind the post-war book 'The Naked Island' by the Australian Russell
Braddon who mystifies the Changi guards with maths. It seems a very
unlikely influence. There's a couple of copies at Waseda - not in
translation, so presumably it wasn't translated. But then Okamoto feels
the need to pull up Peter High in <EM>Wide Angle</EM>, 1977, and change the
english title from 'The Human Bullet' to 'A Human Bullet'. That suggests
some facility in english.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>And I see from IMDb that the book was produced as a
play and staged in London - by the Arts Theatre Club.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I expect someone on this list can shoot this overstretch
down ...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The other thing is the focus. or lack of it. The
reason I don't think it's entirely accidental is that there are shots in extreme
close-up that are in focus and then, when the actor moves away, they walk out of
focus and it's never adjusted. Murai Hiroshi seems to have been a safe
pair of hands in a long career. So is it all a clumsy metaphor for myopia
?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The misfocus was accentuated, either in print-striking, or
the projection, by centering on the very crisp subtitles.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Roger</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>