Hikari no Ame and Tampen comments

[M Arnold]

>On Saturday, December 8, 2001, at 02:14  pm, M Arnold wrote:
>>can anyone explain to me (briefly) what his claim to fame is?  Why did he 
>>end up with a project like "Hikari no Ame"?

>From: Stephen Cremin <asianfilmlibrary at mac.com>
>Well, I guess his original 1988 DOOR, co-scripted by Oikawa Ataru, was a 
>landmark horror film.  Hearsay, since I haven't seen it myself.

Ah, I forgot that he did the first one too.  I saw it a few years back and 
thought it was a little bit interesting for a horror movie (unlike part 2, 
which I don't think we can call "horror" anyway).  Tahakashi hasn't done a 
whole lot of horror movies, has he?  I can see a slight (very slight) 
connection to "Hikari no Ame" there though.

I forgot to mention one thing.  I wrote that "Hikari no Ame" has a 'movie 
within the movie' so to speak; the documentary that's being made within the 
film.  There's also a real "making of" documentary.  In the lobby of the 
Shin Bungeiza they were selling two pamphlets, a regular one for about 700 
yen and one including a 30-minute "making of" DVD for 1500 yen.  I bought 
the latter and watched about half of the DVD.  It was mostly short 
interviews with the young actors, asking them what they thought about the 
film and how they got into their roles, etc.  In other words, the same thing 
we saw being created in the fictional 'documentary' inside the film.

I've had a couple of weeks to digest "Hikari no Ame" now and I did think it 
was pretty good, but it almost tried too hard to tell (or teach) the story 
to young people... assuming young people in this country are even 
interested.  I kind of wish there had been a more complex conclusion, but 
the film seemed to end up with "there really was no good reason," or "they 
were all good kids, just like you and me."

I watched "Dokuritsu Shonen Gasshodan" the other day on video, another film 
that touches on the terrorist activities of the 70s.  I was a little more 
impressed with this one though.  Has anyone else seen it?

>Yes, interesting but the experiment largely proved that, yes, one does need 
>a director.  Deal was that anybody on the set could call CUT at any time.

At the discussion I attended they talked about the difficulty in choosing 
someone to call "roll film" and etc.  I believe they gave the job to Aoyama 
Shinji for the scenes he acted in Tamura's short.

Michael Arnold

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