queries: Love Letter; Itami; databases

[Lee A. Makela]

My first message to KineJapan after months of enjoyable lurking!

Whereas Marie Suzuki and Aaron Gerow found it difficult to tune in to
Hiroko's "Ogenki desuka?  Watashi wa genki desu!" cry to the mountain in
Iwai's "Love Letter", I personally found the scene quite moving precisely
because the wording was so vapid and mundane.  To me Iwai was pointing out
the real inadequacies of verbalization among the young in Japan (in spoken
Japanese even) to express the real and complex emotions underlying the words
themselves.  The effect was, then, not so much to "valorize the status quo
and the consumerist reduction of everything to the image" but to critique
that impoverishment by bringing the audience to a realization of just how
much more she was attempting to communicate through that most commonplace of
opening gambits used when two friends meet after a time apart.  Clearly as
well the phrase meets Iwai's criteria that much of his film work emphasises:
placing the responsibility for interpretation squarely on the head and in
the heart of the viewer, each of whom must read into the entire scene its
essentially meaning.

Again, thanks for the opportunity to throw my two cents (yen) into the mix!

Lee A. Makela, Associate Professor
Department of History, Cleveland State University

l.makela at popmail.csuohio.edu
http://www.csuohio.edu/history/lam.html