BOTTLE GEORGE and NEZUMIKO JIROKICHI are very different animated shorts, but Daisuke Tsutsumi's stop-motion medition on alcoholism and childhood trauma and Rintaro's rollicking tribute to the silent era of Japanese cinema are both highlights at the 2024 Japan Cuts. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.
The aspiring manga artist-characters in LOOK BACK (screening at Japan Cuts) will resonate on a deep emotional level with manga/anime fans. It also has a particularly lovely piano-with-strings score. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.
The disingenuous act like the tiktok divestment bill is an attack on the
Interstate Highway system, but apps come and go all the time. When did you last
check your Myspace page? In this film, the Mimi app is already past its prime,
but one of its most viral users still pulls a frustrated office drone into the
mystery of her life in Takamasa Oe’s Whale Bones, which screens today
during this year’s Japan Cuts.
Poor
tragically-average Mamiya is blindsided when his fiancée dumps him, so he goes
on a traditional hook-up app, where he meets the woman whom he will know as
Aska. This film really is not about that app. Instead, it is all about who Aska
is, or was. Even though he quite likes her, their date takes a surprisingly
dark turn, leaving him wondering about her.
Aska
explained her status as one of the top users of Mimi, which is sort of like
tiktok, except each video is geo-synched to a particular location. To see the
video, you must be at the spot where it was “buried.” To sleuth out the truth
of Aska, Miyami must discover all the videos she buried. Some are well known by
her followers, who still revisit them often, but others remain largely secret.
In
some ways, Whale Bones (a terrible, misleading title for an otherwise
very smart film) feels more speculative than it probably is. Quite strikingly, Oe
stages each buried video as if Aska is in the room talking to Miyami, like a
full-size hologram, even though she is really just a video on his smart phone. As
a dramatic technique, it is brilliantly effective—sometimes devastatingly so.
It also would make an amazing double feature with Morel’s Invention,
which would be spoilery to that Italian film to explain.
It's a classic question: “who was that boxed man?” It turns out, it is considered
bad form to ask, at least according to this Box Man. Although there is not a
similar racial component, Kobo Abe’s character shares the nihilistic
existentialism of Ellison’s Invisible Man. He also has a bit of Holden
Caulfield and Oscar the Grouch in him. He might be an anonymous drifter, but
people are weirdly fascinated with him in Gakuryu Ishii’s The Box Man, based
on the Kobo Abe novel, which screens today as part of this year’s Japan Cuts.
According
to the man who only calls himself “Myself,” you can see the reality of society
from a box. He knows we’re all a bunch of phonies. Yet, he claims: “those who
obsess over the Box Man, become the Box Man,” and he should know, because he is
the Box Man.
The
nefarious “General” and his accomplice, the “Fake Doctor,” are the latest to get
fixated on his peculiar vagrancy. His box is a bit like Snoopy’s dog house. He
managed to stash a lot of stuff in there, but like a Scot’s kilt you don’t want
to look underneath his box. The General’s interest stems from a murky criminal
plot, wherein he will assume the Box Man’s identity to evade justice. However, Box
Man’s eccentric lifestyle appears to slowly seduce the Fake Doctor.
Meanwhile,
the Box Man might be feeling something remotely human for Yoko, the Fake Doctor’s
fake nurse. Apparently, her checkered past gives the Fake Doctor the leverage
to force her to do his bidding. Of course, her shame only creates a stronger
sense of kinship with the Box Man.
Before
his death, Abe gave Ishii his blessing to adapt The Box Man, which means
this film has been twenty-seven years in the making. It is easy to understand
why it was long considered unadaptable. Clearly, Abe was addressing issues of
identity and epistemology in a very postmodern fashion. However, Ishii manages
to bring it to the screen in a way that still gives us something to watch, which
is appreciated. In fact, it often has the flavor of an obscure Borgesian caper.
Obviously,
The Box Man is not for everyone. If you are unsure, consider it a “no.”
As a point of reference, it is somewhat more grounded than the films of
Robbe-Grillet, but also less stylish. Ishii’s adaptation is deeply grounded in existential
and post-structuralist philosophy, but Michiaki Katsumoto’s jazzy score is a
blessing that greatly aids the film’s watchability. However, the deliberately
elusive payoff is intentionally frustrating.
In one way, the timing is good for a busker like Luca (a.k.a. Kyrie),
because she might find fame on privacy-invading, spyware-infecting,
propaganda-spewing tiktok. However, the timing of the 2011 earthquake and
tsunami during her childhood was absolutely tragic. The resulting trauma
clearly persists in director-screenwriter Shunji Iwai’s Kyrie, which
screens during the year’s Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film.
When
Maori first met Luca, the orphaned girl could not speak, but she could sing.
That is still true when she encounters a decade or so later, performing on the
street, but they now call themselves Ikko and Kyrie. The former Luca has talent
and Ikko still feels protective urges towards her, so she volunteers to manage
Kyrie’s career.
Kyrie
needs some help and Ikko’s intentions are honest, but there is something dodgy
about her new manager. Not so surprisingly, Kyrie is too naïve to see that. For
a while, Ikko’s street smarts serve them both well, but she clearly appears to
be running from a mysterious man.
Frankly,
Kyrie/Luca’s backstory is not so difficult to anticipate, but Iwai still takes
great pains to tease it out across the film’s somewhat excessive three-hour
running time. Yet, it should be fully stipulated when the film finally revisits
the fateful day of March 11th, it is agonizingly tense. Many viewers
will be holding their breath, like they never have in any horror movie, even
though they know what is coming.
Iwai
can make viewers passionately love him and viscerally hate him, all in the same
film. Kyrie is a perfect example. There is suffering and there is catharsis,
but in this case, the synthesis of the two is somewhat off. The tunes are also
integral to the story, but only Kyrie’s closing song really lands, either melodically
or emotionally.
The 1980s were an unusually good time to be a jazz musician in America.
Wynton Marsalis made acoustic bop commercially successful again and the
venerable Blue Note Records was re-launched. Evidently, in Japan, the jazz
scene more resembled 1930s Chicago. Most musicians played in Ginza clubs that
were clearly controlled by the Yakuza, at least according to musician Hiroshi
Minami. He survived to write about those times in his memoir, but
director-co-screenwriter Masanori Tominaga splits his persona in half in the
appropriately syncopated and stylized adaptation, Between the White Key and
the Black Key, which screens as the opening night film of the 2024 Japan Cuts.
Hiroshi
yearns to play jazz, but his hip teacher knows he needs some seasoning, so he recommends
gigging in the seedy Ginza cabarets. Sure enough, Hiroshi quickly gets an
education. Fatefully, a mysterious Yakuza freshly released from prison requests
Rota’s “Love Theme from The Godfather.” Hiroshi obliges, even though the
leader on the gig freaks out six ways from Sunday.
It
turns out only Kumano, the boss known as “the King of Ginza” can call that tune
and only Minami (Hiroshi’s future self, who coexists in the same time-frame)
can play it. Fortunately, Hiroshi’s gig was at a club where musicians
traditionally wear masks, because news of the transgression spreads quickly.
As
it happens, the artistically frustrated Minami intends to desert Ginza to study
real jazz at the Berklee School of Music. He only confides his plan to Chikako,
who agrees to aid his getaway. That means they will need a sub to cover for
him, so she recruits Hiroshi, an old friend from school.
Even
though Tominaga and co-screenwriter Tomoyuki Takahashi have that Lynchian
looping time thing going on, it is not what defines the film. Questions of
artistic integrity and compromise are more important (and timeless) themes.
Having played in Al Capone’s clubs, Armstrong would well understand Minami’s relationship
with Kumano.
Even
though little is done to physically distinguish Hiroshi from Minami, Sosuke
Ikematsu is so good at creating such ying-and-yang personalities and carries
himself so differently, viewers might start to wonder if he is the same thesp
(which indeed is the case). Go Morita is also a wild chaos agent as the
mysterious Yakuza. Whenever he shows up, the audience knows there will be
trouble.
