What's in a name

[Mark Anderson]

What's in a nameDear Jonathan,
    Kore-eda scrupulously avoided commenting on Capra to the best of my recollection. Plausible or not, the impression he left is that the connection would never have occurred to him. 
    I can see particular scenes depicting film production (the cotton-ball clouds, for example) as potentially a critique of Hollywood fantasy. I would be interested to hear how your reading of Kore-eda with Capra goes. 
    For myself, the larger premise of the film strikes me as essentially a paean to independent film production. I find this premise to be nearly as implausible and hackneyed as Hollywood fantasy. The aesthetic seems to work like this: Every person has a film in them. Every person's life is valuable as an aesthetic object--it's value is visible, perhaps even created--only when they record it and project it so that they can objectify themselves before themselves. This aspect of the film seems to exchange Christianity for the art of everyman/everywoman and a conception of life as only justified aesthetically (as Schopenhauer and the early Nietzsche would have it). 
    It is also hard to know what to make of the implicitly Christian premise the work plays off of. My impression is that this film could be made in Japan because Christianity is simply one more possible aesthetic attitude for many Japanese artists. I genuinely enjoy the film and recognize it as an important work, still I find the "choose one memory" formula to be a recipe for passivity and public television more than anything else.
                                                                                                                                                                                        Mark Anderson
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jonathan M. Hall 
  To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu 
  Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 12:18 AM
  Subject: What's in a name




  Let the afterlife alone.  I am much more interested in whether Capra's film was in mind when Kore-eda developed the original film title ... did Kore-eda speak to that question?  Certainly, Kore-eda's film could be seen as a critique of a conventional Hollywood model of fantasy, for which Capra's film is a fine example.  Is it possible, even, to have avoided making that reference?  Is that why he so much likes the "original"?

  Jonathan


    From: "Mark Anderson" <ander025 at umn.edu>
    Reply-To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
    Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 14:03:48 -0600
    To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
    Subject: Re: What's in a name




       Mr. Koreeda's remarks involved concerns which had been brought to him by someone else about U.S. distribution. The assistant in question was present at the event I intended. As best I can recall, he was not very specific about who, what, when, and where. I was left with the impression that he was referring to the distributors of the film, but Dennis Doros's theory may well be correct--that he was in fact referring to a conversation which took place with another party before the company itself became involved. 
      I wouldn't know if he invented the rest of the story or not. I know that is the story he told at the event I attended. It was not a point he particularly stressed, I believe he mentioned it in answer to a question from the audience regarding whether the title was meant to have religious overtones. He replied that it actually had a very pragmatic origin involving these concerns about distribution, and suggested that it was an ad-hoc, stopgap title which he did not feel particularly expressed any artistic intent on his part. 
                                                                                                                                                                                  Mark Anderson

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