AW: Miyazaki/Kitano/Oshii at Venice

[Roland Domenig]

The new Kitano film "Akiresu to kame" was rather dissapointing (and I was not expected much). The film is unbalanced and lacks consistency and the characters remain one-dimential to the end. The portray of the life of the painter Machisu, the protagonist of the film, starts with his childhood. As son of a weathy entrepreneur he spents a priviledged childhood and is treated like a raw egg by everyone in the town. Kitano's portrayal of the rural town in Gunma in rather strange. The sets and costumes look more like from the Taisho period than from the 1950s and the whole staging brings to mind TV-dramas set in pre-war era. When Machisu's father gets bankrupt he kills himself and the family is left penniless. Machisu is taken into custody by his stepmother's elder brother, a poor and violent farmer (played by Osugi Ren). The film abruptly changes to the 1960s. Machisu is now in his 20's (though he looks like he is in his 40's) and makes a living as newspaper delivery boy. When he shows his pictures to a gallery owner he is advised to study painting, because technical accomplishment is not everything. So Machisu enters university and becomes a student of painting. The film gives no clues why the talented painting prodigy had become a dull imitator of modern art. Following the trends of the time his fellow students reject ordinary painting and turn to action painting and performative art. Machisu partakes seemingly untouched in the experiments (the part is played by Yanagi Yurei whose (non)acting turns Machisu pretty much into a yurei-like existence). A clerk in the printing shop where he works nevertheless takes an interest in him and they marry. Switch to Machisu's "middle age" (played by Takeshi now who looks his age, that is a man in his 60's). Machisu's pictures are still not selling even though he follows every advise of the gallery owner. The film now becomes a mere string of episodes of Machisu's painting experiments helped by his wife. Some of the episodes are quite funny, for instance when they get caught in graffitiing their neighborhood, and would have made a wonderful short film. Machisu's obsession with painting escalates and endangeres his life and his family's lives. His wife abandons him, but in the end returns. This is where the film ends.
My impression is that Kitano's main interest was less in the directing of the film, but more in the paintings. What for Kitano perhaps is reassuring is that  even if the film failed at the box office he can make a lot of money by selling the paintings.

Roland


________________________________________
Von: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu [owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu] im Auftrag von Mark Nornes [amnornes at umich.edu]
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 30. Juli 2008 18:08
An: KineJapan
Betreff: Miyazaki/Kitano/Oshii at Venice

Venice just announced their line-up for the next festival, and three Japanese films are in competition: Takeshi Kitano's "Achilles and the Tortoise," Hayao Miyazaki's "Ponyo in the Cliff by the Sea," and Mamoru Oshii's "The Sky Crawlers." The new triumvirate to replace Mizoguchi/Ozu/Kurosawa!

I'm just back from Japan, a busy trip where I managed to see only one film?Ponyo. The theater was packed and filled with energy, a nice change from the empty theaters I usually see in Japan. This film felt like a return to roots for Miyazaki. I won't go into the (green, and somewhat incoherent) narrative here, excepty to say that this is more Totoro than Mononoke. Kids will love it, and the audience in Tokyo cheered and clapped when it was over. But a word on the style. What CG he's used is pretty well hidden and seamless, while most cel-animation films these days are aesthetically schizophrenic. I appreciated that. The opening scene must have sucked up half the budget; set deep in the ocean, there are thousands of hand-drawn bubbles and stunning splashes of color. It subsequently settles into a less flashy style. The figures are fairly simple, often set in occasionally awkward movement through limited animation. Backgrounds are pretty pastel drawing that evoke picture books for young Japanese children. However, half-way through the film, a storm whips the animation into pure spectacle, the proportions of which few artists besides Miyazaki could achieve. It's a truly stunning sequence, and probably pretty scary for small children. The bright pastel palette of the backgrounds, turns dark; where they were frozen backdrops before, the ocean and trees begin to move and whip into a frenzy. It's masterful stuff. Finally, I'd note that the darkness of the storm is filled with subtle detail that will be lost on a television screen. Many scenes feature tiny animated objects that will probably fuzz into cloud, even on an HD monitor. I often found myself admiring an animator that is conceptualizing his film, start to finish, for the big screen. Be sure to see it in a theater.

Now has anyone seen the other two films?

Markus



A. M. Nornes
Professor
Department of Screen Arts & Cultures
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
University of Michigan
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Suite 6111, 202 South Thayer Street
Ann Arbor, MI  48104-1608
Phone:  (734) 647-2094; FAX: x0157
Homepage: www.umich.edu/~amnornes<http://www.umich.edu/~amnornes>