Good news for Ozu fans

[kiseko minaguchi]

Mark,
Speaking of Japanese films about family, I would love to hear about
responses from Kurosawa fans to the recent release of  Tasogare Sebe (Sebe
in the twilight) that is advertised as a sort of twin of Kurosawa's Seven
Samurais.
The film depicts the sober family life of a low-class samurai, played by
Sanada Hiroyuki, dressed in shabby kimono and without shaving. He lives in a
shabby house with two daughters and an aged senile mother.His drama starts
evolving rapidly once his exceptional martial art, long concealed,  gets an
attention of his lord. Sebe faces a mission of murdering another strong
samurai rebelling against the regime. The breathtaking strife between the
two fighters continue within a hut without any lamp lighted.
A brief  Japanese review mentions that the film is warmly accepted mainly by
those middle aged viewers who could project their restructured tough
occupational life in that  of Sebe  and his competitor.As I look around a
small theater near Kichijoji Station, three fourth of the audience were
middled aged guys wrapped up in coats solitarily.
I think the film faithfully reflects our country's economic recession
everywhere: the limited locations, the twilight within and without, and the
locale of the strife in the yard, at the bank, and within a shabby hut, no
horses, no drums, no gorgeous dresses, and without abundant characters. The
downsized Seven Samurais, however, entertains us with
Sebe's childhood girl friend played by Miyazawa Rie whose suppressed passion
and elegance are just awesome.
Though the film is rated as 4.3/5 by users on Yahoo Movies, I enjoyed the
compactly made  family oriented samurai story except the scene where the
ghostly samurai shows off his deadly queerness by crunching his daughter's
bones.
He might be a  Sebe's doppelganger who admonishes him to bow down to his
lord for his family's sake, otherwise
Sebe has to tread the same miserable path to death in dishonor. Also I don't
highly agree with the additional scene of
Sebe's daughter visiting his grave. That's a forced twin grave shot of
Kurosawa's; not every guy could meet with such a gorgeous second wife as Ms
Miyazawa who was  once  gossiped around  as the sumo wrestler Takanohana's
fiancee.
Minaguchi



----- Original Message -----
??? : "Mark Nornes" <amnornes at umich.edu>
?? : <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
???? : 2002?12?17? 8:20
?? : Re: Good news for Ozu fans


>
> On Monday, December 16, 2002, at 05:54  PM, Don Brown wrote:
>
> >> From this morning's Japan Times:
> >
> > Shochiku Co., a major movie distributor and film producer, will run a
> > yearlong project to mark the centennial of the birth of director
> > Yasujiro Ozu.
>
> This is good only for people that have access to the project. I've
> already started hearing about people locked out of Ozu programming
> because Shochiku is treating this tour of the famous festivals as
> proprietary. New Yorker, for example, is no longer going to be renting
> Ozu films in the US.
>
> Markus
>