[KineJapan] Revolution + 1 Talk Show

[John Junkerman]

I managed to get a ticket to the Loft 9 screening, timed to coincide with
Abe’s state funeral. The screening started with a remote feed of Adachi
Masao, outside Budokan, confined within the police lines that kept
protesters away from the venue.

The film was remarkable. It uses rain heavily, which is apparently an
Adachi trademark. When asked why, he said, “If I knew, I wouldn’t make
films.” But it was clearly a metaphor for the reality that fell upon
Kawakami (the renamed killer of Abe, Yamagami) over the years. It is
raining in the scene where he kills Abe, at odds with the news footage of
the same scene. An early scene shows him in his cell, flooded to his knees.
That’s when he begins telling his story.

Everyone here is of course familiar with that story: his father’s suicide,
his mother’s entrapment in the Unification Church, the family’s
impoverishment and bankruptcy, his brother’s suicide. But the depiction of
the steady accumulation of humiliation and despair is compelling and
empathetic. There is an amazing scene toward the end where the actor,
Tamoto Soran, does a frenetic, feverish dance, as if trying to shake off
the demons and scales of psychic pain.

The film raises lots of questions, and the post-screening discussion delved
into issues of perpetrator/victim, the violence of state power, the
consequences of loss of family and social support networks, precarity, etc.
There was also a good deal of discussion of the Wakamatsu school of
filmmaking: the initial script apparently ended with a bomb explosion at
the state funeral, which screenwriter Inoue Junichi commented, would might
be how Wakamatsu would have ended the film. Instead, Adachi has Kawakami’s
sister address the camera to say she respects her brother for doing what he
believed he had to do, but that she will follow an alternative path. Adachi
said he saw the film as a story about the breakdown of love and connection
and that choosing that ending showed that he had matured. To which Inoue
quipped, “It took you 83 years to grow up!” (He included what amounts to a
scene of self-criticism, where the daughter of revolutionary activists
commiserates with Kawakami, two “nisei” whose lives and families were
sacrificed to their parents’ convictions.)

The 50-minute rough cut will be finetuned and supplemented into an
80-minute film by the end the year or so. Now that the state funeral
(fiasco) is behind us, the film will continue to probe the Unification
Church and the other symptoms of social breakdown that remain. Personally,
I hope they rethink the. “Revolution+1” title, which doesn’t really capture
the spirit of the film, but perhaps they’re already too deep into
promotion, with all the attention the film has gotten.

I'll attach a couple of photos: Adachi with Tamoto and other cast members;
and the panel, with Inoue on the left.


John Junkerman

On Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 11:36 AM Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> Last night was the premiere of Adachi’s new film Revolution +1.
>
> The venue was Loft+1 in Shinjuku. Afterwards, he sat on a panel with
> musician Darth Raider, Miyadai Shinji, and screenwriter Inoue. They
> broadcast it live via Vimeo. Now I see that the recorded it and left it up:
>
> https://player.vimeo.com/video/753485644?h=09313605ac
>
> I look forward to hearing how the film itself is. Everyone at the
> screening seemed excited.
>
> Markus
> --
> ---
>
> *Markus Nornes*
> *Professor of Asian Cinema*
>
> Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages
> and Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design
>
>
>
>
> *Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/
> <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/>*
> *Department of Film, Television and Media*
> *6348 North Quad*
> *105 S. State Street**Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> KineJapan mailing list
> KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu
> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>


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