Beloved Japanese
comedy from director Juzo Itami that is equal parts a series of sketches
linking food to sex, death, and all varieties of human experience AND an
engaging narrative detailing how a pair of truck drivers (and the assorted “experts”
they enlist) help a single mum to elevate her ramen noodles and ramen shop to
excellence. Itami makes good use of classic film technique to move between
scenes (closing iris wipes!) but also lets the camera move out of the narrative
by following a passerby into a sketch. I was surprised to see Koji Yakusho (subsequently
a big star, including in Wim Wenders’ recent Perfect Days, 2023) as a gangster
intent on the sensuality of food (whose scenes also reminded me why I haven’t
shown this film to the kids). Ken Watanabe (Inception, 2010) is also here as
one of the truck drivers. But the film
really belongs to Tsutomu Yamazaki as Gorô, the truck driver who initiates the
plan by citing in detail how noodles could be improved and Nobuko Miyamoto (the
director’s wife and muse) as Tampopo, the ramen shop owner. They bring
sincerity, charisma, and conviction (and have the most fleshed out characters).
Overall, this is a joy to watch and while not laugh-out-loud funny, it is
knowing and observant and, most of all, playful and full of heart.
I suspect that I haven’t seen this movie since the
1980s, so it was a real head trip this time to reconcile the nearly 40-year
difference between “now” (2023) and the “now” of the film (1985 – when I was
turning 18 but Michael J. Fox playing a 17 year-old was actually 24) which is
actually longer than the difference between the film’s “now” and the year Marty
McFly (Fox) travels back to (1955 – 30 years).
In fact, at the end of the film Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) says he
plans to travel 30 years into the future, which would have been 2015 (8 years
ago). To add to this, I watched the
movie with my 10-year-old son (born in 2012). He was unfazed but my attention
was attracted to the telephones, cars, hair, clothes and music (e.g., Huey
Lewis) of the 1980s – these seemed more authentic than those featured in the recreation
of the 1950s (although how would I know, except from watching movies). The film itself seemed briefer than I
remembered. After some stage-setting scenes with his parents (Crispin Glover
and Lea Thompson) and Biff (his dad’s tormentor; Tom Wilson), Marty meets up
with Doc at 1:30 AM where he learns about the time machine (DeLorean car) and
the Libyan terrorists who want their plutonium back. They kill Doc as Marty
flees into the past – to 5 November 1955.
There he meets his parents but accidentally messes up the future by getting
hit by his grandfather’s car instead of his dad getting hit; this causes his mother
to fall in love with him instead of his father.
In order to set things straight (and protect his own future existence), Marty
needs to get his mom together with his dad. I had hesitated watching this with
Amon due to the sexual underpinnings of the plot (not to mention the scenes of
sexual violence that are pivotal to it) but we skated right through that. The
final half-hour of the film is like a master-class in creating tension, as
Marty’s ability to return to the present (and also warn Doc about the Libyan
terrorists) is nearly thwarted at every turn.
This was, of course, a huge hit for director Robert Zemeckis who has
prided himself on special effects throughout his career. There’s a classical
charm to the proceedings that makes the film work for both kids and adults, although
the datedness of the ‘80s is something that I still find hard to digest.
The key to understanding
Claude Lanzmann’s 9-hour documentary about the Holocaust (Shoah means “annihilation”)
may be to know, not only that the director was a French Jew who joined the
Resistance at age 18, but that he was an Existentialist who worked with Jean-Paul
Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Although the eyewitness testimonies from the
Jewish men (and occasional women) who were brought to concentration camps such
as Treblinka and Auschwitz and worked there, seeing their friends and family
systematically murdered, are the most heart-wrenching and despairing to watch, Lanzmann’s
interviews of German and Polish bureaucrats clearly exemplify the Existentialist
concept of “bad faith”. Here, we see men denying that they could ever have known
about the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews, men who are demonstrated
by other testimony and documents to have had the facts in front of them, to be
in the midst of a swirl of rumours impossible to reject – and yet, they tell
the camera (sometimes a hidden camera) that they did not know. This denial of
responsibility, the use of the mind’s devious ways of justifying itself, is the
essence of “bad faith” and what the Existentialists suggest is the sure path to
losing one’s humanity. One can surely
add the residents of the towns around Treblinka to the roster of those
demonstrating the concept, as they maintain that the screams from the nearby
camps were highly troubling to them – but yet they did nothing. Perhaps they were afraid of the consequences
of speaking out from the Germans – but I fear that is too generous an
assumption; Lanzmann lets the interviewees indict themselves (and demonstrate a
distressing residual anti-Semitism even in the late 70s/early 80s when filming
took place). Indeed, Lanzmann’s strategy is to let the powerful words of the
eyewitnesses speak for themselves – there is no voiceover, no authorial voice,
no music; instead, we hear interviewee after interviewee recount a list of atrocities
that is too much to listen to, let alone to have experienced. Lanzmann calmly asks for specific details,
such as the measurements of the gas chambers, the composition of the corpses and
how high they were piled, the disposition and behaviour of people crammed into
the railway cars, but also details of a much more mundane variety (for example,
about the haircuts that were given to women before they were exterminated).
These little details pile up and make the scenes vivid in an absolutely
horrifying way but also serve Lanzmann’s purpose of offering an historical
document for future generations (so that we are not doomed to repeat it). The hundreds of hours of interviews (in
Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, French, and English) took 5 years to edit down to 9
hours – curiously Lanzmann and his team allow the witnesses to speak in their
own language unsubtitled and only the interpreters’ translation into French is
later translated into English. This allows the camera to study the faces of the
men and women while they are speaking and later waiting, allowing viewers to observe
and let it sink in. The film is not chronological but moves back and forth,
letting the mammoth logistical undertaking of the Final Solution gradually
emerge, but wisely ending with a look at the Warsaw Ghetto and the active
resistance of the people there, showing that Jews fought back as best they could,
even as their neighbours turned their backs. Between and during the interviews, Lanzmann
shows us the current locations where events took place (replicating that famous
shot of Auschwitz from Night and Fog, 1955) but he never shows us the archival
footage that we already have burned into our nightmares anyway. These quiet
places and modern towns and cities look different, harbouring their awful
secrets, recounted by these old men with sadness and pain in their eyes. Again,
it’s the Existentialist’s philosophy to capture only the present moment, to ask
how are you choosing to act now in your current existence? (This is not to deny
the past but to learn from it). Are you, we, making the right choices today, in
how we treat each other and in our support for those who are not treated right?
Albert Brooks excels at using the neurotic
and pathetic rant for comedic purposes.
It’s the comedy of pain, I guess – not slapstick but emotional pain. And it’s all the more excruciating because
the character Brooks plays almost always brings the pain on himself through his
own actions. Except in Lost in America,
Julie Hagerty, playing his wife, also contributes to the pain (and Brooks can’t
handle it). The film basically moves
from comedic set-piece – a social interaction gone so wrong (forcing your boss
to fire you), for example – to comedic set-piece, another social interaction
gone wrong (e.g., punched in the face by a murderous ex-convict – funnier than
it sounds). You watch these interactions
unfold and they keep going until you almost can’t stand it anymore (but Brooks
doesn’t know when to stop). But, oh yes,
the plot: Brooks loses his job as a
highly-paid advertising executive and, with his wife, decides to drop out of
society a la Easy Rider (to the strains of “Born to be Wild”). Being yuppies
they cash in all their assets, buy a giant RV, and set off to find themselves
and the real America. But first they hit
Las Vegas to get re-married and it all goes downhill from there. Director Garry Marshall has a great cameo as
a casino boss. Music and editing are
used expertly to keep things perfectly paced (and also to bring on the laughs)
across a swift 90 minutes shot mostly on location. If only Brooks would return to making films
like this.
Mishima:
A Life in Four Chapters (1985) -- P. Schrader
I’ve only read one of Yukio Mishima’s
novels (Temple of the Golden Pavillion) and it’s dark and complex. I was familiar with the story of his ritual
suicide and right-wing pro-Emperor views (as well as his reported
bisexuality). I even watched the short
film he directed (Patriotism) and the film by Masamura that he starred in (Man
of the Biting Wind). As Schrader depicts
him here, Mishima seems to have treated life as a sort of performance art,
rigidly applying a controlled discipline to his writing (at midnight each
evening), his body (excessive workouts at the gym), and his politics (leading
his own private militia). Schrader
segments his film into inter-locking thirds:
the present (in “normal” color, detailing the final hours of Mishima’s
life), the past (in which Ken Ogata narrates Mishima’s own autobiographical
words to show key events), and scenes from several of his novels (shot on
theatrical sets in garish candy colors).
The three threads come together in one final knot at the end. Although not always enthralling (if you don’t
know Mishima’s books), Schrader’s film is certainly a work of art and extends
his well-known themes (e.g., Taxi Driver). Of course, there is an added layer
to contemplate when one thinks of Japan as mediated through Western eyes –
apparently Mishima’s family complained and the film was banned in Japan.
In America in the
early 90s, Jackie Chan was an underground cult figure. His 1970s movies were available in badly
dubbed, incomprehensibly edited versions that nevertheless retained some charm
and great kung fu skills (especially Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow or Drunken
Master). But Jackie was changing,
directing his own movies and continuing to do his own stunts even as they
became more dangerous and spectacular.
In the 80s, with Project A (a period pirate movie) and this film, a
modern crime thriller, Jackie reached a new level integrating his comedy and
action into blockbusters. And he never
looked back. Of course, Police Story is
far from slick and the comedy is pretty low-rent. But the editing is pretty great and shows an
understanding of the pacing needed for action.
The set-piece stunts include cars driving through a shanty town and
Jackie sliding down a pole strewn with lights through a three-story shopping
mall. However, the small scale action
and Jackie’s little touches (which display incredible acrobat skill) make the
movie. Here, he is a cop protecting a
secret witness before the trial of a gang boss; he gets framed, kicked off the
force, and then single-handedly gets the bad guys. As if, the plot mattered!
Kurosawa takes on King
Lear (changing the three daughters to three samurai sons) and has Tatsuya
Nakadai slowly go mad with crazy white hair and beard while his fool (Peter)
speaks and sings the truth (i.e. he screwed up) as the audience's surrogate. I saw this (my second time) on a really huge
screen in 1991 in Surabaya, Indonesia, in Japanese with Bahasa Indonesian
subtitles, and the majestic images of blue, yellow, and red armies with banners
waving in the wind have never left me.
Now watching it on blu-ray (but with only a 32" screen), setpieces,
such as the brutal battle which leaves the castle in flames, are still pretty
amazing. True, its epic length could be
a bit wearying and the plot operates well on a grand scale and not so
sensitively on a smaller interpersonal scale.
But these are quibbles and this is a fine elegiac last triumph for AK.
