They all look the same...

[Kerim Yasar]

> They didn't go to "see themselves misrepresented" --
> the large female
> audience went to see a love story.
> Chalk up the success of the film here (Y6.88 billion
> gross) to clever
> marketing.

I think it's safe to say that a film produced by
Spielberg, one in which he has taken a special
interest, will also have some pretty accomplished
marketing heads behind it.  And it's a love story . .
.. er, of sorts.

> They didn't necessarily "swallow Tom Cruise getting
> all chummy with the
> Emperor" -- but they were genuinely moved by the
> film. Did you see it with a
> Japanese audience?

I did.  I witnessed the same thing.  I saw hard-bitten
salarymen, many of whom were there alone for the
afternoon screening, probably coming to see the film
for the second or third time.  There were sniffles all
around when the film ended, including, I must confess,
from my own nose.  I'm sure there were many sniffles
among American audiences as well.  Hollywood knows
well that extended stretches of intense violence
followed by a well-engineered emotional catharsis
tends to have that effect on people, from Cape Horn to
Anchorage.

That said, the Japanese audience with whom I watched
"Armageddon" during something like the second month of
its obscenely long theatrical run here also seemed
"genuinely moved."

> I'm not talking about raging xenophobes, but
> ordinary folks who have certain
> proprietary feelings towards certain things
> Japanese. Enough said!

No, I think you're absolutely right about that.  I'm
still not sure though that casting non-Japanese
actresses, in and of itself, has to sink the film.  I
mean, those Japan-themed movies that flopped had
Japanese actors in the Japanese roles, but that didn't
save them.  As far as "Memoirs" goes, the story
already has a following here: Golden's book has been
translated, and much hay has been made over the rift
between him and his informant Iwasaki Mineko.  If the
overall sensibility is tasteful, flattering, and
sympathetic and if the film has a hanky rating of
three or above, I think curiosity *could* get the
better of them and Japanese audiences *could* be
persuaded to overlook the fact that most of the geisha
are in fact non-Japanese.

What I think COULD be a real problem is that two of
the female leads are from mainland China and have had
anti-Japanese attitudes pounded into them from birth. 
I hardly ever hear Chinese people call Japanese
"Ribenren" (the Chinese equivalent of
"nihonjin")--it's almost always "Riben guizi"
("Japanese devil"), even in very calm, everyday
situations.  I think it will be very difficult for
them to play Japanese characters sympathetically and
convincingly.  If Zhang Ziyi, in particular, fails to
do so it will effectively wreck the whole film.  So,
while I agree with you that this particular casting
decision makes the chances of this film succeeding in
Japan quite small, I do not believe that casting
non-Japanese in Japanese roles ensures that a film
will flop here.  

One possibility is that the filmmakers are ignoring
the "Last Samurai" phenomenon altogether and are far
more conscious of the track record of failure that you
pointed out.  In other words, perhaps they made a
conscious decision to write off the Japanese market
(i.e., "No matter what we do with it, they're not
going to like it") and try to maximize their revenue
in the US and other markets.  In that case they made
absolutely the right decision because there is no
Japanese actress who has even remotely the kind of
global star power that Zhang, Gong, and Yeoh have.

In any event, this is a case without any exact
precedent so we may all be surprised by what
eventually transpires.




		
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