Nihon Chinbotsu

[Mark Nornes]

There are two films picking up serious advertising real estate in  
Japan right now. One is Geto Monogatari, a Ghibli film directed by  
Miyazaki Hayao's son (father dissed the film, making for good old- 
fashioned melodrama). The other is Nihon Chinbotsu, a adaption/remake  
of the 1973 novel/movie. Mark Schilling has a review in Japan Focus  
this week:

"Nippon Chinbotsu" gets right down to business from its first scene,  
with a massive earthquake that reduces the city of Numazu to rubble.  
The film, however, lacks the headlong momentum of Steven Spielberg's  
"War of the Worlds," another recent film with an apocalyptic theme  
(if with eruptions of space monsters, not lava). Instead, the  
narrative follows the stop-and-start pattern of many a 70s disaster  
movie -- frequently slowing to a halt for fraught meetings and  
partings, in spaces that are islands apart from the destruction  
raining down outside..."Nippon Chinbotsu" offers enough earthquakes,  
eruptions and general havoc to keep disaster fans happy, even if the  
CG lava flows aren't quite up to Hollywood snuff. For me, though, the  
film's brand of soft nationalism held more interest, No one sings  
"Kimigayo" as yet another cultural landmark falls to rubble, but most  
of the good characters opt to stay with Dainippon until the bitter  
(or rather salty) end.

Full review: http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2188

Markus
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