[KineJapan] Olympics Films: Side A, B & +

[Markus Nornes]

Having managed to come to Japan, I've been able to catch the three Olympics
films out there (I wonder if there are more). Some unorganized thoughts
follow. The takeaway: Side A was much better than I expected, Side B was
beyond the pale, and an indie doc in Shimokita was like a Sanrizuka Series
film without the outrage.

First Side A.

With Kawase stepping into a tradition deeply identified with Leni
Riefenstahl, one naturally frets about how she'd handle the politics in
tandem with the aesthetics of sports and bodies. She throws a nice wrench
into that in the first scene, with Fujii Kaze singing "Kimi ga yo" in a
quiet, almost trembling voice. It's complete with cherry blossoms, but the
vocal styling and almost lugubrious pacing almost feel like a Kamei
Fumio-like subterfuge. Especially because she leaves this behind quickly
and moves on to the sports.

Throughout there is minimal flag-waving and the trappings of nationalism
are pushed back behind a diversity of athletes we usually don't see (she
side-steps queer athletes, even though it was an issue at these games):
refugees, a BLM activist that turned her back on the American flag,
middle-aged competitors, competitors that lose, and mothers.

Lots and lots of breast-feeding mothers. This is, of course, a career-long
obsession of Kawase's and it gets out of hand here. It would have been
enough to show the Canadian basketball player that cracked open the system
to allow for new mothers to compete. But she throws in a couple more and
keeps coming back to them over and over again—breezing past all the parents
who left their kids behind, most notably the single mother Gwen Berry.

There were bureaucrats galore, but probably the minimum possible. She also
sets this off balance with extreme close-ups, slightly fragmented cutting,
and bold white on black intertitles that quote key words as they talk. It's
a mash of Anno and Oshii's approach to bureaucratese, and nice but not
well-sustained. Plenty of interviews are quite straight. There's little BS
flag waving and such.

However, it was almost hilarious that the daihyo for Japanese nationalism
and patriarchy was not the athletes, artists or bureaucrats, but the ugly
American women's basketball coach (did I mention that there was a focus on
this sport as excessive as the breastfeeding—which were conveniently
interconnected, since BB was Kawase's own sport in her youth). This tall
white guy berates the women playing under him for not understanding their
respective roles and keeping in their lanes—it's the worst kind of asshole
coaching. And when they reach the finals, he praises them for finally
understanding their roles and coming together as a team—and in a way that's
only possible in Japan. My eyes almost dropped out of my head from that
particular roll.

Yet, to her credit, Kawase avoided the tropes of fascist aesthetics. Very
little monumentality; what there is is undercut by empty seats. There are
beautiful bodies (almost all men), but they rarely line up as mass
ornament. Rather, they are nicely natural and disorganized. There is far
less visual spectacle than you'd expect. The finest, most striking images
of the athletes come in a final, 2=minute montage at the end.

Instead, there is a refreshing focus on the sound of sport. Ironically,
this is made possible by the lack of crowds. The centerpiece of Ichikawa
Kon's film was the 100-meter, but it was for its slow-mo visuality via
long lenses. Here, the 100-meter was amazing for its sound. Some of the
sound is clearly foley. But a lot of it was natural, and I loved that. It
brought a completely new perspective to the sports, and it's purely
cinematic rather than televisual.

The other effect of empty stadia was the revelatory aesthetic of waste. The
Olympics' focus on athletes always hides the real show: the money corruptly
changing hands from the nation to politicians, architects and builders (not
to mention national Olympic committees, coaches, etc. etc.). This is the
strong impression—what a breathtaking waste—in the first 5 minutes of the
film when you see all the empty seats. But it goes uncommented on, of
course. That's to be expected, but it's not hinted at either. At least as
far as I could sense.

When Kawase was chosen, I dropped her a line to congratulate her and
encourage her to reach back into her 8mm experimental roots and attempt
something novel in the history of Olympics films. She responded, "That's
the plan." I was excited to see that she had dusted off her Super-8 camera
during the games. That footage is in the film, but it's mainly innocuous
shots of kids or *Nitsutsumarete*-like imagery of sun filtered through
leaves. In other words, pretty and pretty meaningless. Still, it's a very
different Olympics film. Not great. But really quite interesting and
definitely worth watching.

And then there's Side B, which raises all sorts of intriguing expectations
and delivers on none of them. On the contrary, it's a remarkably annoying
film that undercuts my appreciation of Side A. She should have left well
enough alone. I'll write about that wreck tomorrow.

Markus
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