Suzaku review

Aaron Gerow ryuu000
Tue Apr 7 03:23:17 EDT 1998


After nearly half-a-year hiatus, I finally found some time to put some of 
my backlog of reviews onto the Kinema Club site.  (Yes, it does take time 
making links and checking them.) I decided to start with the ones that 
would most interest people abroad, _Suzaku_ and _Hana-Bi_.

Aaron
 

Suzaku

Japanese title: Moe no Suzaku
Production Company: WOWOW, Bandai Visual
Release: 1 November 1997
Length: 95 min.
Format: 35 mm
Color: Color

Staff:
   o Director: Kawase Naomi
   o Producers: Sento Takenori, Kobayashi Koji
   o Photography: Tamura Masaki
   o Music: Shigeno Masamichi
   o Art Director: Yoshida Etsuko
   o Editing: Kakesu Shuichi

Cast:
   o Kozo: Kunimura Jun
   o Michiru: Ono Machiko
   o Sachiko: Izumi Sachiko
   o Eisuke: Shibata Kotaro
   o Yasuyo: Kamimura Yasuyo

Review

                           Betting On a Long Shot

Kawase Naomi's rise to stardom has been nothing less than astronomical. 
Just
a year ago, she was known only to experimental film aficionados as a
talented 8mm filmmaker who won of a couple of prizes at the Image Forum
Festival and the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (where I
helped program her work).

But since May of this year, after she was graced with the Camera D'Or for
best new director at the illustrious Cannes Film Festival for her first 
35mm
feature Suzaku, she has become the darling of the media: even her marriage
last week to her producer, Sento Takenori, was reported with the bravura
normally reserved for a budding idol's nuptials.

The big treatment, however, seems unbefitting of someone known for such
small films. Her 1992 Embracing ("Ni tsutsumarete") and the 1994 
Katatsumori
were both highly acclaimed personal documentaries, made by herself about 
the
people around her: the former a touching search for her long lost father 
and
the latter a gentle portrait of the grandmother who raised her.

The leap to a 35mm commercial feature thus presented quite a challenge for
Kawase. Though the result has been justly celebrated, it shows a director
still uncertain of her field.

She does tread familiar waters in Suzaku. The film is set in the mountains
just south of her native Nara, in a small hamlet that is steadily losing
population after a railroad project, on which the region laid its hopes 
for
development, was canceled. Kawase's focus, however, is not on these
socio-economic changes, but on the relationships within a family that 
slowly
disintegrates within these conditions over 15 years.

This household is, like the one Kawase herself grew up in, a little out of
the ordinary. There's not just Kozo (Kunimura Jun), his wife Yasuyo
(Kamimura Yasuyo), daughter Michiru (Ono Machiko), and mother Sachiko 
(Izumi
Sachiko), but also Eisuke (Shibata Kotaro), the son of Kozo's less than
reputable sister. While Kozo's frustrations over the railroad come to
represent the larger social picture, it is the innocent but impossible 
love
Michiru holds for the brother-like Eisuke that becomes the film's 
emotional
center.

The approach to this world is largely that of documentary. Like the great
Japanese documentarist Ogawa Shinsuke, Kawase and her staff lived with the
residents of the community for some time before filming and picked a cast
almost entirely composed of amateur locals (Kunimura is the only trained
actor).

The result, at least at the beginning, is a delicate slice of life so true
to reality it seems that dialogue and narrative action are unnecessary. 
The
photography by Tamura Masaki, Ogawa's cameraman, beautifully enhances the
naturalness of the surroundings.

The problem is when the narrative starts in earnest, when Kozo's
frustrations drive him to suicide and Michiru's feelings for Eisuke rise
into jealousy.

Kawase chooses the long take, long shot style common to the 1980s and 
early
1990s, one that creates a distance between camera and characters and 
refuses
to melodramatize. However, it also hampers the emotional sympathy between
camera and subject that is Kawase's hallmark. Perhaps recognizing this,
Kawase tries to mitigate it by inserting documentary sections shot more in
the style she is noted for: posed close-ups of people interacting with the
camera, and shots of flowers, trees and other elements of nature. Therein
she gently draws out the spirit within things, manifestations of the god
Suzaku that watches over this region.

As a feature-length narrative then, Suzaku is still rough at the edges. 
Some
scenes are overlong and drawn out, others lack crucial narrative
information. The family structure itself is hard to understand without
reading the program beforehand.

Especially when Kawase inserts an 8mm film shot by Kozo into the film, it
seems clear that she is still quite attached to that, her former format. 
As
if dissatisfied with the 35mm results in Suzaku, she even returned to the
region to shoot a true documentary in 8mm about the same village 
inhabitants
called The Weald ("Somaudo monogatari") which recently showed at the
Yamagata Film Festival.

Kawase Naomi has deservedly come to public attention with a strong first
feature film. But as a filmmaker so talented in working in a smaller, more
personal format, it has yet to be seen how well her gentle gaze can
translate onto the big screen of commercial fame.

Reviewed by Aaron Gerow
onogerow at gorilla.ne.jp

Originally appeared in The Daily Yomiuri, 6 November 1997, p. 9.

Copyright 1997: The Daily Yomiuri and Aaron Gerow




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