FCS ’15: The World of Kanako

Showa Fujishima has made just about every parenting mistake a father can make and invented some that are uniquely his own. Not surprisingly, he really hasn’t been around much to see the results. At least that allows him to cling to a few willful misconceptions regarding Kanako. However, when his estranged ex-wife begrudgingly requests the ex-cop’s help finding their missing daughter, he learns far more than he bargained for in Tetsuya Nakashima’s The World of Kanako (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 edition of Film Comment Selects.

Prepare to have your head messed with. Nakashima will fracture his timeline nearly beyond recognition and do his best to represent Fujishima’s warped perspective. The former copper now working as a rent-a-cop always had anger management issues, which directly led to his personal and professional disgrace. He is supposed to take drugs for his temper and mood swings, but they do not seem to be working, even though they might somewhat skew his perception of reality.

Kanako has already been missing for five days before Fujishima’s ex finally asks for his help. Intuitively, he assumes her disappearance is linked to the punky gang kids she has been hanging with, which is largely correct, but his presupposition that Kanako is an innocent victim will be rudely disabused. He soon learns she is up to her neck in drugs and pimping out classmates to well-heeled pedophiles. She was also apparently somehow mixed up in the suicide of her classmate Ogata. We will learn just exactly how so in flashbacks seen through the eyes of Boku, a secondary POV character, whose experiences with Kanako will parallel those of poor Ogata.

Meanwhile, Fujishima’s hostile former colleagues are more than happy to treat him as a suspect in a gangland-style killing perpetrated at the minimart he was ostensibly guarding. It turns out Kanako’s world is a small world when links turn up suggesting a connection between the convenience store massacre and her disappearance. Fujishima is in for a lot of pain and humiliation, but he will deal out plenty more to anyone he considers a potential suspect or accomplice.

Man, Kanako is dark, even by the standard Nakashima set in his previous films, Confessions and Memories of Matsuko. However, unlike the seamlessly constructed escalation of Confessions, WoK is a bit of a rat’s nest, compulsively flashing forward and backwards and liberally tossing unreliable perceptions or downright hallucinations to the point where many viewers will just drop the narrative thread and stop caring altogether, despite the occasional tongue-in-cheek hat-tips to 1970s exploitation cinema. The form of the film is enough to give you a headache, separate and apart from the rampant cruelty it depicts. Based on Akio Fukamachi’s novel, WoK is a nihilistic indictment of just about everything—that’s nihilism spelled with a capital “F” and a capital “U.”

To his credit, Kôji Yakusho doubles down over and over again as the violently erratic Fujishima. It is a messy, let-it-all-hang-out performance, but Yakusho takes it to such dark places, it is ultimately rather soul-scarring. Nana Komatsu is ethereally evil as the deceptively innocent looking Kanako, while Satoshi Tsumabuki chews the scenery with swaggering glee as Det. Asai, the sucker-sucking cop who apparently thinks he’s Kojack. Ai Hashimoto manages to add a thimble full of humanity to the film as Kanako’s estranged and disgusted middle school friend Morishita, but such figures of decency are few and far between in Kanako’s world. Frankly, it is hard to fully judge Kanako’s former homeroom teacher, Rie Higashi, but (Matsuko star) Miki Nakatani’s performance is truly riveting and maybe even redemptive.

If this is what life is really like for Japanese middle and high school students, I would immigrate if I were a parent. It is hard to imagine a more exhausting film than WoK, for reasons of both style and content. It is clearly the work of a genuine auteur, who does not get his just international due, but Nakashima really demands a great deal of indulgence this time around. Lacking the tightness of Confessions and the pure gut-wrenching emotional payoff of Matsuko, it just starts to feel like it is piling it on after a while. For those who enjoyed cult hits like Confessions, Lady Snowblood, Audition, and the real Oldboy, but found them too artificially optimistic, WoK will give you the straight shot of bile you crave. Recommended accordingly for ardent Nakashima admirers, The World of Kanako screens this Thursday (3/5), at the Walter Reade Theater, concluding this year’s Film Comment Selects.

FCS ’15: Fires on the Plain

Joseph Heller’s Yossarian has nothing on Private Tamura. He is caught in miserable catch-22 and the only thing that will dislodge him from his vicious cycle will be a further downturn in Japan’s fortunes of war. There is absolutely nothing heroic about combat throughout intense auteur Shinya Tsukamoto’s faithful but bloody remake of Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain (clip here), which screens during Film Comment Selects 2015.

Tamura is suffering from a nasty case of tuberculosis and maybe some mild shell shock. Deemed too sick to serve effectively by his arrogant commanding officer, Tamura is ordered to check into the nearest field hospital on Leyte. However, the medical staff refuses to admit him, considering him too healthy to merit a spot on their diseased floor.

Back and forth he trudges between the camp and the hospital, repeatedly turning away by each, until Allied attacks essentially eliminate either option. Receiving word the Imperial forces have been belatedly ordered them all to regroup at Palompon, Tamura falls in and out of small ragtag bands of retreating Imperial soldiers, but his increasingly desperate countrymen might represent a more immediate danger than the Yanks he is supposedly fighting.

The 1959 Plain has to be Ichikawa’s darkest, bleakest film. Tsukamoto does not exactly match its dour existentialism, but he certainly never whitewashes its atmosphere or implications. In terms of tone, the recent Plain could be described as one part Samuel Beckett and two parts Apocalypse Now, but with liberal helpings of severed body parts. Tsukamoto’s Plain is definitely not for the faint of heart, but it is considerably more accessible than the full-on assault to the senses delivered by his Tetsuo series.

It is safe to say vanity had nothing to do with Tsukamoto’s decision to direct himself as Tamura. He is never flashy, but it is grimly compelling to watch the soul steadily seep out of him. You absolutely believe his is just a shell of a person, which is certainly some kind of performance.

Plain is truly serious stuff, intended for discerning audiences, but there might be enough gore to placate his loyal cult-following. It covers all the bases Ichikawa did, nearly beat for beat, yet it is unquestionably and readily identifiably a Tsukamoto film. Together with his co-cinematographer Satoshi Hayashi, Tsukamoto gives his slow descent into tropical madness a distinctively sweaty, feverish, and slightly surreal look that is equally transfixing and disconcerting. One of the better remakes of a genuine classic you will see in sometime, Tsukamoto’s Fires on the Plain is recommended for those who appreciate uncompromising anti-war cinematic statements when it screens tomorrow (2/21) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s Film Comment Selects.

FCS ’15: Tales

Evidently, former Iranian megalomaniac Ahmadinejad did not think much of shorts. That was a good thing. Rather than compromising her artistic integrity to receive official state sanction for a feature, Rakshan Bani-Etemad embarked on a series of short films that were comparatively less regulated by the authorities. With his successor projecting a more conciliatory face, she has since joined them together into a braided narrative. You would hardly know it from watching the finished product, which flows together in an intricate Short Cuts kind of way. She presents a bracing vision of an Iran beset by all manner of social pathologies, but it is always most difficult for the women in Bani-Etemad’s Tales (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 edition of Film Comment Selects.

In recent years, Bani-Etemad has largely worked as a documentarian for reasons explains above, but those who know her previous narratives will find even deeper meaning when her old characters return for call-backs in Tales, criss-crossing each other as they deal with life’s challenges. Fittingly, the two best segments, by far, are the first and the last, but there is still plenty of interesting material in between.

We will sort of see events unfold from the POV of an intrepid but much censored documentary filmmaker, who kinds of acts as Bani-Etemad’s surrogate. As some might know from Under the Skin of the City, the cabbie driving him into the city is deeply in debt from an ill-advised foray into crime. However, it will be his second fare, his sister’s childhood friend who has since been tarnished by scandal that delivers the first real jolt of stinging, naturalistic drama.

From there, we will witness the cabbie’s mother try to navigate the red tape of a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, eavesdrop on two grown children jokingly (we assume) planning to fake an abduction, and witness an abusive husband confront his acid-scarred wife (the eponymous character from Nargess) in her women’s shelter. Eventually, Bani-Etemad brings it home with an intimate but biting verbal sparring match conducted by one of the shelter’s reformed drug addict counselors and the organization’s mini-van driving, who is shuttling her and a new client back to their home bass. In some ways, their exchanges are peculiarly Iranian, yet there is a universality to their increasingly heavy conversation that hits you on a deep level.

In a strange way, the secondary tone of Tales constantly shifts between late night existentialism, free-wheeling absurdity, futile romanticism, and outright tragedy. Yet, the bedrock feeling of helplessness is always present. It features a consistently strong ensemble, especially Mohammadreza Forootan and Mehraveh Sharifinia as the cabbie and the fallen woman of the first tale and Baran Kosari and Peiman Moadi as the mismatched couple in the closer.

We like to think Iran has its own special problems rooted in its oppressive system of governance, which it clearly does, judging from the travails of Bani-Etemad’s characters. However, we generally presuppose they are immune to more worldly issues, like drugs, street crime, illiteracy, economic inequities, and AIDS as a result. Tales acts as a corrective to that assumption. They actually have both kinds of societal ills. It is also an engrossing film that really takes us into its characters’ long dark nights of the soul. Highly recommended, Tales screens this Friday (2/20) and Sunday (2/22) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s Film Comment Selects.

FCS ’15: Electric Boogaloo—the Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

They were decades ahead of the curve, making profitable films about terrorism long before it became an overriding concern for Americans. Of course, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus happened to be Israeli, so they understood how dangerous the world could be. Unfortunately, they were not as canny judging the American marketplace with the releases that followed Invasion U.S.A. and The Delta Force. Mark Astley compiles a breezy oral history of their rise and fall in Electric Boogaloo: the Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (trailer here), which opens this year’s 2015 Film Comment Selects.

Yes, Hilla Medalia’s Cannon doc The Go-Go Boys just played the New York Jewish Film Festival, but there is always room for more Cannon. Reportedly, Go-Go is considered the B-movie moguls pre-emptive attempt to tell their side of the story. Hartley’s film even acknowledges the competition, comparing it to the dueling lambada films the former partners rushed to the marketplace after their contentious split. While Medalia spends more time on their early days in Israel, Hartley delves further into the early history of Cannon before Golan and Globus acquired it to serve as their Hollywood beachhead.

Plenty of the executives, writers, and directors associated with Cannon fondly remember the duo’s eccentricities, but there is not a lot of nostalgia coming from Frank Yablans, the former MGM studio head, who was contractually obligated to distribute their mid-1980s output. Hartley, who previously documented the Australian exploitation cinema of the 1970s and 1980s in Not Quite Hollywood and surveyed the low budget foreign and domestic action movies filmed in the Philippines with Machete Maidens Unleashed, not surprisingly shows an affinity for the nuttier movies in their filmography, like the notoriously spaced out futuristic rock opera The Apple and Tobe Hooper’s sci-fi grand guignol, Lifeforce.

Of course, it was their ill-conceived bids for Hollywood blockbuster respectability with the peacenik Superman IV and the Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestling epic Over the Top that would be their undoing. Frankly, it seems they never really understood their true comparative advantage: action cinema. Cannon really did take Chuck Norris to the next level and they substantially prolonged Charles Bronson’s career. They also discovered a Belgian waiter named Jean-Claude Van Damme. Unfortunately, they never really figured out what to do with their potential breakout star Michael Dudikoff, beyond the completely awesome American Ninja franchise and never recognized the untapped star-power of frequent supporting player Steve James (who frustratingly goes unmentioned again, after being overlooked by The Go-Go Boys).

Hartley marries up generous helpings of off-the-wall clips with some hilarious commentary (it is especially nice to see Catherine Mary Stewart remembering The Apple with self-deprecating humor). However, some of his talky head witnesses suggest some of the Hollywood resentment of Golan and Globus was a dark product anti-Israeli, anti-immigrant sentiments, which is a place Medalia’s film never treads. Boogaloo (taking its title from their ill-advised break-dancing sequel) also gives the almost-moguls credit for successfully backing a number legit art films, but it is less interested in this side of their business than Go-Go Boys.

Go watch The Delta Force (with Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin, and the late Steve James) and try to pretend it doesn’t hold up today. The best of Cannon really defined the 1980s. Even after two documentaries, the full importance of those action movies still has not been fully explored. For instance, James may well be the first African American cult actor whose fan-base at the height of his productivity was nearly entirely white (and probably right-of-center). That seems culturally significant, but nobody wants to pick up on it. Regardless, Electric Boogaloo delivers plenty of entertaining nostalgia and attitude. Recommended for genre fans, it kicks off the 2015 edition of Film Comment Selects this Friday (2/20), at the Walter Reade Theater.