Swallowtail

[Aaron Gerow]

I appreciate Martin Beck's passion in defending _Swallowtail_ and 
certainly respect his position.  I genuinely do want to hear why people 
like that film and think this can serve as another base for discussing 
what is a very controversial--and thus rich--work.

But I do think taking the side of the "popular" and "successful" to 
complain about "high brow critics" is not too different from the high 
brow critics taking the side of "art" to dump on the "popular": neither 
stance is very fruitful.

There is certainly a problem of taste here.  Martin was deeply moved by 
the film.  I wasn't.  Frankly, my wife and I saw it in a regular theater 
in Kichijoji with hundreds of teenage and early 20s Japanese (Iwai's 
audience) and were both bored out of our skulls.  I'm afraid it's been a 
long time since I have been so tempted to leave the theater, especially 
knowing that we were due to be subjected to yet more hours of this.  I'm 
afraid the audience we were with was not too thrilled either.  (The film, 
by the way, was only a mild success in Japan: in general, it was 
considered a disappointment because of even greater box office 
expectations after the success of _Love Letter_.)

We should praise Iwai for being a very skilled artist: he certainly is 
one of the most visually expressive filmmakers working today and can 
create some images no others can.  But I am less inclined to call him 
"original" or "innovative."  He is the product of TV and commerical work 
and a lot of his techniques are regularly visible there.  Purely from the 
aesthetic standpoint, I also question his use of technique.  Maybe it is 
the Bazinian in me, but I have always objected to the excessive use of 
film technique without proper aesthetic motivation.  Iwai has the 
tendency, for instance, to cut excessively (I think of the scene when 
Chara's fellow prostitute comes to Mamoi Kaori to sell her story: she 
falls against the blinds and Iwai cuts that 5 second action into about 5 
or 6  shots.  What was the reason for doing that?  I found it wholly 
gratuitous).  It does serve to heighten the scene, but there's frequently 
nothing behind that which justifies such cutting.  I get the impression 
Iwai may be cutting a lot precisely to hide the lack of narrative 
substance.  To some this may be his postmodernity, his emphasis of 
surface over depth, but I do feel that good filmmaking is as much 
figuring out when not to add technique as adding it.  Iwai, I don't 
think, has learned that (as have a lot of TV bred filmmakers).

I look forward to more discussions on Iwai and _Swallowtail_.

Aaron Gerow
YNU