The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Movie News
Front-Ranger:
I finally saw the latest Harry Potter movie last nite and I was entranced by the character Luna Lovegood. Late in the film she says something like, "The things we lose have a habit of finding their way back to us in time." Was that the right wording? Also, I loved the ending line by Harry, when he said that Dumbledore's Army has something their enemies don't have: "We have something worth fighting for."
moremojo:
I went to see Superbad last night with my sister, and we both enjoyed it. Not a great film, but a fun one. Essentially a raunchy teen comedy, the movie is graced with an underlying and sincere sweetness that is rarely encountered in this genre, and is similarly distinguised by solid performances by a coterie of talented, charming actors.
Possible spoiler alert: I think there was a distinct suggestion that Seth (played by Jonah Hill) harbored homosexual or bisexual tendencies, and that his love for his best friend Evan (played by Michael Cera) was not wholly platonic. One of the striking and admirable features of the movie is its insistence on the worth and importance of male friendships, and its acknowledgement that such friendships are a genuine manifestation of human love. The subplot involving the third friend Fogell (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and the two feckless police officers played by Bill Hader and Seth Rogen also touches on this theme.
Out of a wide range of accomplished performances, I was especially struck by that of Mintz-Plasse as the nerdy but endearing Fogell. This young actor seems to have a flair for understated and idiosyncratic comedy, and is someone to watch for in the future.
Kd5000:
Watching the news yesterday evening, it seems that Harry Potter was considered an underperformer for the summer season. You think with all the publicity about the last book, there would have been a symbiotic effect...
There is nothing at the cinema right now that appeals to me. The summer blockbusters have all been there for some time. And nothing is really grabbing my attn to go see a movie on Labor Day. I don't have any interest in going to see CHUCK and LARRY.
Here's hoping the Fall Season looks more appealing...
moremojo:
I managed to make it to the Kenji Mizoguchi film Ugetsu Monogatari last night.
I had only seen the ending of this film before on cable television, and was pleased to have this opportunity to experience such a major work as a film projected upon a screen. The title, which can be translated as 'Tales of the Pale Moon After Rain', is a 1953 work set in the sixteenth century, during the turmoil of the civil wars. The story is a ghost story which also doubles as a cautionary tale, about how we often don't realize what we have until it is lost.
The main character, Genjuro, is a poor but skilled and ambitious village potter who leaves his family to pursue trade and profit in the towns. He is lured to the luxurious mansion of a mysterious and beautiful aristocratic lady, Lady Wakasa, who indulges him and asks for his hand in marriage. During the course of the story, Genjuro learns that Lady Wakasa and her attendants are ghosts, spirit representatives of a noble clan wiped out by the wars; Lady Wakasa's soul has returned to earth because she died before ever knowing carnal love, and seeks a man with whom she can return to the spirit world. Genjuro's life is in danger, and with the help of a Shinto priest, he successfully wards off the spirits in order to make his way back to his abandoned family, to be greeted by a bittersweet surprise.
The film is distinguished by its evocative black-and-white photography, replete with a variety of creative lighting effects, and an effective, apposite musical soundtrack. Most memorable of all are the fine performances by the central actresses (Mizoguchi was celebrated for his consummate direction of women), namely Kinuyo Tanaka as Genjuro's stoically suffering wife Miyagi, the lovely Machiko Kyo as the dangerous Lady Wakasa, and Kikue Mori as Lady Wakasa's ghostly nurse Ukon. The most powerful scene for me was one where Ukon, realizing that Genjuro has learned of his predicament and seeks to flee, angrily confronts him and then, astonishingly, begins to plead desperately for his eternal presence alongside her beloved charge. The emotional shift in the sequence is striking, and Mori conveys the character's conflict and plight masterfully. The scene is also most unusual in that it is a testament of love by proxy--Ukon reveals that her sorrow over her lady's lack of fulfillment led her to take them both back to the world of the living, and that she wanted nothing more than her charge's happiness, even if it could only be obtained in the realm of the dead. She selflessly advocates for the heart of another, who pines silently to the side throughout the sequence.
All in all, an interesting, masterful film that I would recommend for those who appreciate beauty in the cinema.
moremojo:
I saw an interesting Japanese film last night. Though I retain a general antipathy to war films (which this was), this was nonetheless an accomplished work of cinema that I found rewarding and memorable; I would recommend it, especially to those who are interested in unheroicized stories of war and its real human costs.
The film is Nobi (Fires on the Plain), a 1959 feature directed by Kon Ichikawa. The print shown was visually excellent, looking almost new, and I was impressed by how well the film had been preserved or restored. Shot in black-and-white 'Scope, the film was distinguished by a consistently intelligent visual design, being illustrative of the especially high quality of Japanese widescreen films of this era.
The story involves a private in the Japanese Army named Tamura, who is stationed in the occupied Philippines during the waning days of the Second World War. Diagnosed with possibly terminal tuberculosis at the story's beginning, and shunted between a unit that fears his diseased presence and a military hospital that lacks the resources to treat him, Tamura is thoroughly demoralized, has lost his will to fight, and is only clinging onto life as he knows of nothing else to do. The Japanese realize that their defeat is imminent at the hands of the conquering American forces, and a general retreat to the island of Cebu is underway. Tamura falls in with his equally demoralized comrades, and witnesses a gradual degradation of his fellow soldiers' humanity that tests his own moral boundaries to their limits.
Tamura is a highly flawed character, but is equally fully and recognizably human. Desperately ill throughout the story, some of his reactions and choices may be attributed to a mind racked with fever and fatigue. The ultimate horror that Tamura countenances is not apparently the indiscriminate killing that surrounds him, but the men's resorting to cannibalism to survive their ordeal. In the end, Tamura kills his comrade Nagamatsu as apparent punishment for this transgression, which to my mind makes Tamura a distinctly less heroic figure. He dies himself under a rain of enemy bullets, with the knowledge at least (flawed, to my thinking) that he did not debase himself as Nagamatsu had done.
To speak of the main character's flaws is not to diminish the film's quality. This was an intelligent and harrowing work that seeks to depict the realities and costs of war without romanticization, and also without didacticism. It is surely as relevant today as it was in 1959 (the film is a welcome antidote to many American war films of the same era, and shows war from the angle of the losing side).
The soundtrack of the print was not in as pristine a shape as the visual element, and in the last quarter started to snap, crackle, and pop in a most uncomfortable way, but ironically reflected the increasing hellishness of the story.
Even for those who are not fans of war movies, this classic of the Japanese cinema can provide for time well spent.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version