Tokyo Biyori

[Mark Schilling]

I'm quite willing to entertain different interpretations, even if they are
diametrically opposed to my own -- otherwise I wouldn't have read my
volumes of Pauline Kael to tatters over the years. 

I also agree that language skills are not a be-all and end-all. Bob Greene
wrote an amusing essay about sitting in a Tokyo hotel room with his wife
and listening to her tell the story of a Japanese soap opera that happened
to be on the tube, without, of course, understanding a word of what the
actors were saying. I can well believe that she was right on target. I can
also believe that an older critic who is totally fluent in Japanese can
watch a Gen X film by a 32-year-old director, understand every word and
still not have a clue.   

I do, however, feel that if a critic gets the nuts-and-bolts stuff wrong --
if she thinks the characters in a film are traipsing off to a fascist rally
-- and they aren't -- and bases her interpretation of those characters on
that misunderstanding, then her interpretation is suspect. It comes down, I
think, to rock-bottom professionalism. I've lived here for 22 years,
studied the language formally for five and worked as a translator more than
a decade, but before seeing Tokyo Biyori I studied the script (published in
Scenario magazine) and after seeing the film I bought the program and read
it. Then I sat down and wrote my review. I'm not saying that this approach
eliminates all mistakes -- this Homer has certainly nodded on occasion --
but when I turn in my review I am reasonably certain that I got the story
right. I think I owe my readers that much. Even if they feel that my
interpretation of the film is utterly wrongheaded, they at least know that
it's based on a strong fabric of knowledge, not hunches and guesswork.
That's what I mean by "trust." 


Mark Schilling (schill at gol.com)
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