Thanks To All + Explanation

[Michael McCaskey]

Since my original plan seems to have gotten recirculated, I thought this might be a good occasion to add a few updates, after having made the presentation recently.

1) Early in Lost in Translation, Charlotte visits a Buddhist temple in Tokyo. Then she calls an American friend, and is upset because she was not able to get any feeling about the service, or about ikebana. (In fact, in Sofia Coppola's original shooting script, there was more about the temple, then about ikebana, then after that came the phone call, so audiences may wonder why Charlotte is suddenly so upset--especially since she attends the ikebana session after the call in the final film.) Anyway, in Lost in Translation, they just get to the outskirts of Buddhism, and then take a step back.

2) After these scenes from Lost in Translation, I switched to Enlightenment Guaranteed, a bit before Uwe and Gustav go to the Zen temple. The rest of the film is all about day-to-day life in the temple.

3) There's a shorter (and more fun) Japanese TV drama series called Manhattan Diaries, which I used instead of the grittier Moyuru Toki. It's about three young women from Japan who come to live and work in Manhattan. There are no subtitles, but it's fairly easy to explain the scenes as they go along. This film is far friendlier to American culture than Hazard or Moyuru Toki--though there are some scenes showing organized crime, discrimination, and violence. At the end, one of the three decides to stay in Manhattan long-term. An American character tells her then that he and she are both authentic New Yorkers, and being American is something else.

4) I had second thoughts about Fear and Trembling, based on the book by Amelie Nothomb, which I shared with the students. Nothomb was indeed a young child in Japan, but after that she went on with her Belgian diplomat parents to Beijing, age seven, then after a couple of years they moved to New York--it's hard to be sure exactly how well grounded she really is in either Japanese or Chinese culture or language. She has written another book, Le sabotage amoureux, about how she and other West European kids passed their time picking on other kids--East German kids. She shows little sympathy for or interest in the Chinese in this book. This book is also being made into a film in France, right now. Nothomb, while an artistic genius, who has written many brilliant books, it seems as if she may tend to be quite abrasive, and it's possible that her interpretation and construction of the world around her may reflect some of that. I want to see the second movie and read more of her boo
ks to find out more definitively.

5) One other thing is that Dorrie's Enlightenment Guaranteed has references to the Wim Wenders film Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989), which was partly set in Japan, and is about the Japanese fashion designer Yamamoto Yohji. A German-speaking Serbian woman in Tokyo, played by Anica Dobra, is there to somehow become one of Yamamoto's students. Also Dorrie switches back and forth from a "candid" hand-held digital to one run more professionally--the way Wenders switched back and forth from a video camera to a conventional one in his film. Also Dorrie has made another film, Der Fischer und seine Frau, which is also partly set in Japan.

There was a roomful of students, maybe 30-35, and they seemed very interested in going on to learn more on their own after the session, about Japan, and recent Japanese, German, and French films in general.

Michael McCaskey
Georgetown Univ.

----- Original Message -----
From: drainer at mpinet.net
Date: Monday, September 3, 2007 2:33 pm
Subject: Re: Thanks To All + Explanation

> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Michael McCaskey" <mccaskem at georgetown.edu>
> To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2007 1:59 PM
> Subject: Thanks To All + Explanation
> 
> 
> Thank you very much Bill Tyler also--I just pasted your 
> information in a 
> separate file. (I put material from others in separate files so 
> I'll 
> remember to give proper credit if I use the information in 
> handouts or a 
> course web site).
> 
> The reason I was looking for information is that I need to give a 
> presentation, as part of a program for Georgetown's incoming 
> Freshman Class 
> the end of August. The previous two years I dealt with recent 
> American 
> remakes of Japanese films. This time I'm going to try to compare 
> Western 
> impressions of Japan and vice versa using four films (my spiel 
> blurb 
> follows):
> 
> 
> 1) Lost in Translation (2003)?a successful award-winning film 
> about 
> Americans trying to adapt to life in Tokyo, directed and with a 
> script by 
> Sofia Coppola. This film is partly based on experiences Coppola 
> herself had, 
> while residing in Japan a decade earlier. Coppola regards the film 
> as having 
> three main characters ? the Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray 
> characters, 
> and the people of Tokyo. Outside their Americanized hotel, and 
> even at times 
> inside it as well, the American characters find themselves totally 
> engaged 
> with Tokyoites, and Murray?s character is at a particular 
> disadvantage due 
> to the language factor. While this film retains some traditional 
> attitudes, 
> it offers many new perspectives on expatriate life in Tokyo.
> 
> 2) Fear and Trembling (2003)?a French film about a Belgian woman 
> starting a 
> job in a Japanese corporation in Tokyo, starring Sylvie Testud, 
> plus an 
> all-Japanese cast. The film is based on a book by Am?lie Nothomb, 
> a Belgian 
> novelist who grew up in Japan and worked in such a corporation. 
> Nothomb?s 
> book won the French Academy Prize, and the film won the Cesar 
> Award for best 
> picture. Testud, who is multilingual and has recorded readings of 
> Japanese 
> Buddhist texts in France, portrays a character well acquainted 
> with Japanese 
> language and culture, who has to overcome unexpected cultural 
> misunderstandings with her female supervisor and other coworkers. 
> Virtually 
> all the cast members except Testud are established Japanese film 
> actors.
> 3) Enlightenment Guaranteed (2000, re-release 2003, 2007)?a German 
> film 
> about two inept middle-aged men who decide to live in a Zen 
> monastery in 
> Japan. The director and screenplay writer was Doris D?rrie, a 
> German 
> novelist and American-trained film director with a deep interest 
> in Asian 
> religions. This film recently attracted new attention due to 
> D?rrie?s 
> growing reputation, and the later success of Lost in Translation. 
> Like 
> Coppola?s characters, the two Germans start out in a foreign-style 
> Tokyo 
> hotel, but quickly lose all their money. After an attempt to live 
> as 
> panhandlers, they become waiters in a German-style Tokyo beer 
> hall. Finally 
> arriving at the remote unheated monastery in mid-winter, they must 
> carry out 
> unexpected full days of physical labor, as part of their 
> meditation course. 
> Used to being losers in their own culture, they unexpectedly 
> discover a new 
> path to success. Filmed in an actual monastery with a full cast of 
> Zen 
> monks, who were impressed by D?rrie?s sinc
> erity and enthusiasm, and by her actors? hard work.
> 
> 4) The Excellent Company (2006)?a Japanese film set in Southern 
> California, 
> about a real-life tragicomic hero, simply trying to make his 
> company's Ramen 
> Cup of Noodles No. 1 in L.A. Directed by the award-winning Hosono 
> Tatsuoki, 
> noted for his crime films, and based on a story by Takasugi Ryo, 
> known in 
> Japan for his ?business-focused novels? (keizai shosetsu). The 
> Japanese 
> characters are conventional company management employees in 
> California and 
> Tokyo, while the American characters are ramen plant workers, 
> materials 
> suppliers, or people connected with rival US companies. Nakai 
> Ki?ichi, a 
> leading film star, plays the California plant manager, and 
> Samantha Healy, 
> an Australian film and TV actress, plays the role of his Japanese-
> speaking 
> American interpreter. Conventional cultural patterns create 
> challenges for 
> both of them, which can only be resolved in very unconventional ways.
> 
> 
> I'm not completely satisfied with Moyuru toki/The Excellent 
> Company, for 
> this purpose, because it is framed in a pretty confrontational 
> way. So I was 
> looking for something more subtle, and you've all helped me a lot.
> 
> I figured Lost in Translation just had to be there because of its 
> prominence.
> 
> I found that the French film seems not to be well-known in Japan--
> I did find 
> several different online blogs and journals by young women in 
> Japan who 
> rented a copy by chance, liked it, and thought it was a pretty 
> good 
> representation of some things they had to deal with in the 
> workplace 
> themselves.
> 
> I?ve liked the Dorrie film since I first saw it several years ago, 
> via 
> European DVD--but there was no logical way of fitting it in a 
> course?but in 
> this comparison framework it works, I think. It's on US DVD, has 
> just been 
> re-released in Germany on DVD in 2007, and was recently shown at a 
> major 
> Buddhist Conference in SE Asia (Dorrie has recently finished a 
> documentary 
> film: Wie man sein Leben kocht/How to Cook Your Life (2007), about 
> an 
> activist San Francisco Buddhist Guru, Edward Espe Brown, who 
> writes 
> best-selling vegetarian cookbooks).
> 
> Some other good German films with a Japan focus are Tokyo-Ga 
> (1985) and 
> Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989), both by Wim Wenders, but 
> they're too 
> old and specialized for my purposes.
> 
> Sylvie Testud, who is from an Italian immigrant family in France, 
> has also 
> acted in German films, playing regular German roles, most notably 
> in 
> Jenseits der Stille/Beyond Silence (1996), directed and written by 
> Caroline 
> Link. Testud is a co-star in what is hopefully a great new French 
> movie 
> about Edith Piaf, titled La M?me/The Brat (2007)--I have an order 
> in for the 
> 2-disk DVD edition from France, to come out soon. There are 
> several more 
> French movies based on Am?lie Nothomb's novels, but Nothomb is 
> perhaps 
> better known in Japan as a writer than is the Fear & Trembling film.
> 
> I wanted to find a Japanese film set in the US that worked better 
> in 
> comparison with these other three than Moyuru toki, and you all 
> have helped 
> me a lot.
> 
> Please feel free to criticize my plan if you wish, point out 
> errors, and 
> make suggestions, which I will appreciate very much.
> 
> Thanks Again To Everyone,
> 
> Michael McCaskey
> Georgetown Univ.
>