A very late entry into Art Theatre Guild’s catalogue of Japanese art movies, Did you See the Barefoot God? (君は裸足の神を見たか, Kimi wa Hadashi no Kami wo Mitaka) marked the feature length debut of Korean-Japanese director Kim Soo-gil who, though he remains active in many fields up to the present day, sadly did not go on to build up an extensive filmography after the film’s release. Like many ATG films, Did You See the Barefoot God? is a “seishun eiga” or youth film with a contemporary setting which looks at the internal difficulties of adolescence running the gamut from romantic problems to familial responsibilities and the decision of whether to give up the dreams of youth in favour of the calm and ordered adulthood that the wider world demands.
Shinji and Shigeru are two best friends currently approaching the end of high school in a small rural backwater. Both boys currently have a crush on, thankfully, different girls but each is too shy to do anything. Shigeru is a painter and has restricted himself to painting the object of his affection as a special project that he intends to enter in a national competition. Shinji is also an artist, a poet in fact, but is much quieter about it. He’s got a crush on a girl who goes to the local girls’ Christian school and goes to great lengths to stalk her though he hasn’t spoken to her since they both attended the same middle school. As it turns out, Shigeru remembers Shinji’s girl, Hitomi, quite well as they shared a (strange) bonding experience during their middle school years. Shigeru then decides to contact Hitomi and convince her to date Shinji to help his sensitive friend out. Little does he know this will set in motion a tragic series of events which will change all of their lives forever.
Anybody can see where this story is going – it’s the oldest story in history. Boys A and B are friends, boy B likes girl C who prefers boy A, A & C eventually get together behind B’s back but feel so bad about it that the hot acid venom of their betrayal burns straight through everything in sight. Yes, this film is no different though its somewhat overwrought and melodramatic subject matter manages to feel oddly realistic. Intense painter Shigeru takes the leading role with his “complicated” personality and tortured artist dreams, whereas the gentle and sensitive poet Shinji ends up just as much on the sidelines as he would be in real life. The girl who comes between them, Hitomi, is in truth a little under developed and is largely defined by her religiosity (which is never fully explored).
Shigeru wants to be an artist but his father wants him to take over the family construction business – even his school advisor recommends he consider architecture. Shinji lives alone with his mother who runs a small bicycle store that she doesn’t particularly want to pass on to him but eventually Shinji, in a surprisingly mature fashion, decides that a quiet life as the proprietor of a bicycle store who writes poetry on the side might suit him (and perhaps a wife?) better than that of a starving urban poet. Headstrong Shigeru doesn’t waver under the constant pressure to conform to a “normal” life though fear and resentment conspire to fuel his already fraught nerves to near breaking point. Shinji looks at the sort of life he might have and makes his decision accordingly. Hitomi, alas, has far less personal agency to decide her own fate and seems destined for a life as a missionary nurse in some far off land in need of relief. Each is caught in the difficult liminal space of adolescence where they’re still trying to decide which parts of their childhood selves they’re going to keep, and which discard.
That’s without the added romantic complications which, again, leave Hitomi stranded in the middle like some kind of damaged prize. Both boys look down on a poor, Saraghina-like figure who dances madly in the graveyard and makes untoward advances to young boys – even the more understanding Shinji is reluctant to sympathise because she’s “prostituted” herself. Hitomi, as the nice kind of religious person, pities the woman and explains that it’s only because she’s been betrayed by so many men over the years that she’s ended up like this – if Shinji won’t sympathise he’d better take his place on the guilty side with the rest of the menfolk. Ultimately, Hitomi fears ending up this way herself, betrayed by faithless men and slighted by her own faith as a “fallen woman”. The boys can mourn their pride, throw a few punches and forget about it but for Hitomi, it’s not so easy.
Well, this being a seishun eiga it doesn’t end particularly well for the boys either. Everything’s ruined, dreams are shattered, hearts are broken and lives are ruptured beyond repair. In the end, it may be Hitomi who’s best placed to pick up and move on as a running subplot regarding the changing economic environment offers her another opportunity, but for Shigeru he’s left with nothing but the pain of realising how many lives he’s ruined with his self centred lack of consideration. Typical seishun eiga stuff, but well done. Director Kim Soo-gil handles the epic scope of the material with assurance and a good deal of directorial flair, it’s a shame he didn’t continue directing feature films to a greater extent. Not without its flaws, Did You See the Barefoot God? is nevertheless another interesting effort from the later ATG catalogue.
Nobuhiro Yamashita is, in this writer’s opinion, one of the best Japanese directors working today. Probably best known for the girl band high school comedy drama Linda, Linda, Linda, Yamashita has made gentle character studies infused with wry humour and occasional social comment a speciality. Tamako in Moratorium is a slight diversion in his career so far as it had a slightly unorthodox genesis beginning as a series of TV shorts intended as a vehicle for ex AKB48 star Atsuko Maeda (who also starred in Yamashita’s previous film, Drudgery Train). Its TV origins bring both an episodic structure plus a slightly different shooting style and aesthetic than we’ve previously seen from Yamashita yet given these constrained circumstances, he’s been able to craft yet another nuanced and charming character drama that is perhaps his quietest yet.
23 year old Tamako has returned home after graduating university but has failed to find a regular job and is content to have returned to the days of blissful adolescence where she rejects all adult responsibilities in favour of hanging out at home reading manga and playing video games while her father cooks, cleans and does her washing for her. We follow her through four seasons as various things change or don’t and really nothing much happens but that’s the beauty of the tale. Tamako has called a moratorium on being herself, as for when or why it might be lifted? Only time will tell.
It would be easy to read Tamako a symptomatic of a larger cultural malaise and a growing class of young people who have, quite literally, lost the will to live were it not for the fact that most of Tamako’s contemporaries seem to be doing OK (“seem” being the operative word seeing as one late scene in the film would suggest it’s not all as hunky-dory as it looks). We’re given plenty of possible reasons for Tamako’s lack of enthusiasm for life though no one great explanation for her refusal to engage. “Japan’s rubbish” she’s fond of shouting at the TV as if to blame her current lack of success on an entire nation, “No it isn’t” counters her dad “You are”. A fact which Tamako doesn’t seek to refute.
Her lack of self esteem also prevents her completing her current CV where she can’t come up with any personal hobbies or skills and ends by saying that she doesn’t quite feel herself right now, as if everyone’s just expected to play several different roles throughout a lifetime. A realisation which sees her set her sights on a rather improbable career opportunity which nevertheless cheers her father up and leads to her forming a slightly strange friendship with a young teenage boy. Indeed, Tamako avoids most of her old friends in town, preferring to stay at home out of sight, and only really communicates with her father (and then barely).
Her father by contrast, though perturbed and worried about what’s to become of this listless child who’s sinking like a stone, is nevertheless content to try and give her the space to figure out how to get herself out of this mess that seems to be of her own making. However, paradoxically, this may actually be the exact opposite of what she wants and it’s only when the bond with her father looks as if it’s about to be disrupted that something begins to reawaken inside Tamako’s soul. Like an odd subversion of Ozu’s Late Spring, father and daughter must one day part – it is the natural way of things after all, but this time it feels like a much more positive thing.
Tamako in Moratorium began on TV and unsurprisingly has a televisual quality that’s difficult to escape from. Shot with a largely static camera and shallow depth of field, it also feels oddly formalist relying as it does on classical compositions and close-ups with the added effect of making the world seem claustrophobic, as if some invisible pressure is pressing down on Tamako and keeping her sleepily imprisoned within the frame. Aesthetically, the film has a much more HD video look than Yamashita’s other work with a hyperreal sharpness that paradoxically makes everything look unreal and is occasionally distracting but not detrimentally so.
“The feelings just naturally disappeared”. Sometimes it’s like that, no grand event or epiphany just a gradual process of things working themselves out, almost unseen in the background. Has the moratorium been lifted by the end? Not sure, but something has changed, shifted into gear. Uneventful on the surface, Tamako in Moratorium is a wry and nuanced character study that is full of incidental details begging to be unpacked and reassembled by the attentive viewer and is another well crafted effort from Yamashita.
I had the opportunity to interview Blue Gate Crossing director Yee Chih-Yen on behalf of UK Anime Network when he was over here promoting his latest film, Salute! Sun Yat-Sen which was featured as the closing night Gala of the Chinese Visual Festival 2015. You can also read my review of the film which I liked very much and be sure to catch Salute! Sun Yat-Sen when it receives a UK DVD and VOD release courtesy of Facet Film Distribution on 27th July 2015.
Trailer and a few more images from the film below.
Terracotta have always been keen to bring us the best of contemporary Asian cinema but with the “Classic Kung Fu Collection” they aim to shine a light on some of the much loved movies of the martial arts golden age that have been absent from UK screens for entirely too long. This third entry in the series, King of Fists and Dollars, is a more niche release than the others in the series and has been long unavailable in its original Mandarin language version. Shot in Taiwan in 1979 but starring a host of Shaw Brothers favourites King of Fists and Dollars is a fairly typical example of its genre but perhaps fails to offer anything more.
In feudal China, a tyrannical lord, Chien, rules over the local population with extreme cruelty and disdain. Following a mining accident in which several miners are killed or injured and Chien outright refuses to pay compensation to their families and the townspeople begin to look for a champion to fight Chien on their behalf. Luckily a famous kung-fu master lives in the town, but unluckily he’s retired and not that keen on helping. Nevertheless he finally agrees and a mini rebellion begins to take place, however, Chien is not someone to be lightly overthrown.
King of Fists and Dollars is pretty much your typical late ‘70s kung-fu film. The plot is fairly simple and set piece heavy with the consequence that we simply move from fight scene to fight scene with a few comedy moments thrown in. There is the standard trope of the young hopeful who is forced (or in this case tricked for comic intent) to complete a series of bizarre tasks – this time including catching 100 frogs and hanging upside down all night in a tree in order to prove worthy enough to be allowed to train with the great master. Indeed, training scenes make a large percentage of the movie as Iron Fist trains up a force to beat Chien with the usual bucket based workouts and tricky games of agility.
However when the action scenes arrive they are fairly impressive. All of the different characters fight in different styles and poses and the choreography leans more to traditional clearly defined moves than the more fluid technique prevalent later. There is a fair bit of obvious wire work and off camera trickery at play but fans of old school action will find plenty to enjoy here, especially in the later part of the film which sees the gang facing off against Chien’s seemingly unstoppable champion.
Fans of older kung-fu movies may be more likely to forgive the obvious problems with the film’s presentation which to put it kindly is “imperfect”. The film is presented in 1.78:1 aspect ratio rather than the original 2.35:1 (explaining why one character finishes her martial arts trick off screen) and has not been particularly well preserved. Crackly, worn and a little fuzzy the image quality is often disappointing though to be fair this may be the best available at the present time. The disc comes with the English dub as the default soundtrack with the original Mandarin plus French and Spanish dubs with English subtitles available from the menu screen. The Mandarin language soundtrack is similarly fuzzy with a few brief drop outs every now and then and the subtitles are generally fine. Given the film’s rarity (particularly in its Mandarin language version with English subtitles), many genre enthusiasts may find tolerating these defects an acceptable trade off in return for seeing the film but casual fans may have a much harder time forgiving them.
King of Fists and Dollars is therefore something of a mixed bag. A fairly ordinary, pretty typical Taiwanese martial arts film from the late ‘70s it offers everything you would expect but perhaps not much more. The cast of starry Shaw Brothers faces including: David Chiang, Danny Lee, Pearl Cheung Ling and Chao Hsiung are all accomplished performers doing what they best but nobody is really expected to stretch here. Genre fans will certainly jump at the chance to see this rare film but for the casual viewer its charms may be harder to discern.
Available in the UK now from Terracotta Distribution
I just wrote this up for UK Anime Network but seeing as no one clicks on these links and actual paying work was thin today ( 😦 ) I’m going to put them here too in a bit more detail.
Most of these films are making their UK Premieres and there are some pretty high profile films from Japan that probably aren’t going to fetch up anywhere else plus a few from China, one confirmed big name guest and….nothing at all from Korea (sorry Korean cinema fans – better luck next time). I’ll just outline the Japanese ones for now though. OK, here we go:
Sakura Ando plays a slacker who ends up fighting her way out of her lacklustre life with a new found taste for boxing! The female Rocky? Maybe, who knows. What a reductive comment – sorry about that. Also starring Hirofumi Arai this one of the festival’s most promising titles.
This one looks like a riot – latest movie from Nobuhiro Yamashita (Linda, Linda, Linda, My Back Page, Drudgery Train – pretty much all the most amazing movies ever). Guy comes out of prison, gets conked on the head and ends up becoming a rock star – could happen to anyone right? Stars real life rocker Shibutani Subaru and one of today’s best young actresses, Fumi Nikaido. Can’t wait to see this!
Don’t know so much about this one but it’s the directorial debut of Korean-Japanese producer and actress Kiki Sugino (Au revoire l’été) and it’s based on a novel by Shiki Asaka. Apparently it’s a new take on “women’s cinema” centring on a lawyer and his interactions with three different women. There’s a favourable Telegraph review by Robbie Collin from the Tokyo Film Festival here.
This is getting a release from Third Window Films so expect to see it turning up in various places and, of course, an eventual UK DVD release. I guess “Makeup Room” room is the new English language title but you might have seen it as “Make Room” which is just a rendering of the Japanese title. It’s a comedy set in the makeup room of a porno shoot (because, of course!).
Latest movie from Yuya Ishii, director of Japan’s oscar entry The Great Passage and some fun indie comedies – Sawako Decides, Mitsuko Delivers, A Man With Style. This one stars Satoshi Tsumabuki and looks like it’s heading back in a family drama direction as a family becomes scattered when the mother is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Playing as the “midnight movie”, well, 23.30. And it’s only part one (and I heard it’s not that good but, oh well). This adaptation of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s manga stars Shota Sometani as a mild mannered teenage boy who suddenly finds his right hand has been invaded by an alien parasite. Also stars Eri Fukatsu, Sadao Abe, Ai Hashimoto, Masahiro Higashide, Nao Omori, Hirofumi Arai, Kimiko Yo and Tadanobu Asano!
(Parasyte Part 1 is screening courtesy of Animatsu Entertainment who have also licensed the anime adaptation and will presumably be releasing this on home formats at some point in the future. However, they ONLY make mention of Part 1 and this is really one movie split into two parts so we’ll see how that goes.)
Anyway, all the links are live now on the Edinburgh Film House Website and if you happen to be a member you can book right now! Otherwise you have to wait until Friday. Sucks to be you (and me, because these are all very far away and inconveniently scheduled. *Le Sigh*).
Reviewed the latest film from Blue Gate Crossing director Yee Chih-Yen Salute! Sun Yat-Sen for UK Anime Network. Also interviewed the director when he was here for the film’s screening as the closing night gala of the 2015 Chinese Visual Festival (under the old title of Meeting Dr Sun). This will also be getting a DVD/VOD release from Facet Film Distribution on 27th July if you didn’t manage to make it to the festival. Good movie, kind of cute but with bite too.
Salute! Sun Yat-Sen is the long awaited new film from Taiwanese director Yee Chih-Yen which arrives a massive 13 years after the award winning Blue Gate Crossing. Like Blue Gate Crossing, Salute! Sun Yat-Sen centres around the everyday life of teenagers with a subtle level of social commentary though this time it swaps sexuality for social inequality and complicated male friendships.
Lefty is a typical high school boy, at once giddy and lackadaisical. His major problem in life is that he’s behind on his school fees and despite his attempts to dodge the issue, it’s become an embarrassment for him around the school. Lefty lives with his grandmother who’s on a low income and he simply does not have the money to pay. That’s when he catches sight of an abandoned metal statue in a school storeroom and hatches on a plan to steal it and sell it for scrap. However, just when it looks like the plan is complete, Lefty and his friends discover another group of boys has hatched on the same idea! It’s then up to Lefty & co to figure out a way of getting to the statue before the other gang.
Salute! Sun Yat-Sen mixes comedy caper tropes with high school drama as the boys try to beat each other to this overly symbolic statue that they intend to sell for scrap. The plan is, of course, a little bit ridiculous – first of all the business of sneaking an extremely heavy and cumbersome metal statue out of the school with no one noticing and then simply taking it to a scrap metal merchant and selling it, all without anyone asking how exactly they came by this distinctive statue, is quite a childishly naive plan but one which makes for quite a lot of comedy. One of the best moments being the boys trying to buy masks to hide their faces from the security cameras and having to go for the cheapest one which happens to be a horrible anime style face which is so cheaply priced because it’s made from an awful plastic which gives you a rash and makes your face itch if you wear it too long.
Sun Yat-Sen is obviously a hugely important, inspirational and well known historical figure particularly in Taiwan but also across mainland China. However, it has to be said that he is not such a well known figure in the UK and, especially as his name is not even mentioned until a news report close to the end, UK viewers may find that the symbolism his name carries is largely lost on them as is the film’s subtle social commentary. Briefly put, Sun Yat-Sen was the “father of the Chinese Republic” who sought to steer China towards a democratic and more egalitarian society after the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the Chinese revolution in 1911. Sadly, his utopian vision for the new China was not to be but his idealism and humanitarian thinking are still widely praised in Chinese culture. He also still appears on Taiwanese bank notes and so may be primarily linked with money in the minds of these young boys, but there is a central irony that it’s a statue of the left leaning Sun Yat-Sen that these money strapped young men have chosen to steal and melt down to get the money they so desperately need to get by.
However, even without grasping all of the complex political allusions to Taiwanese cultural issues both historical and contemporary, Salute! Sun Yat-Sen still succeeds as a warm and amusing coming of age tale in which a group of teenage boys on the cusp of adulthood come to realise a few things about themselves and the culture they live in. Though the central two boys are in someways very different, in other ways they have a lot in common and it’s a fun ride seeing how their conflicting personalities rub up against each other until a tentative friendship eventually develops. The second boy (who repeatedly avoids telling Lefty his name throughout the film) is, in many ways, in a far worse position than Lefty which has made him bitter and devoid of hope for the future but thanks to Lefty’s optimism perhaps begins to think it’s not all as gloomy as he once thought.
Like Blue Gate Crossing, Salute! Sun Yat-Sen is a quiet sort of film where plot takes second place to character (although all the heist shenanigans are undeniably entertaining – especially one horror movie inspired episode). The film feels authentically youthful, manages to imbue its young cast with an unusual degree of realism and it’s very hard not to be charmed by Lefty’s giant smile and happy go lucky attitude. Simply put, Salute! Sun Yat-Sen is unlikely to spark a revolution but its quietly encouraging messages are certainly a good start.
0.5mm is only Momoko Ando’s second film following on from her lesbian love story manga adaptation, Kakera: A Piece of Our Life. Starring her real life sister Sakura Ando in the lead role, 0.5mm is undeniably more complex and epic in scope than her previous film but retains some of its whimsical atmosphere and benign objectivity. Encompassing such disparate themes as Japan’s rapidly ageing population, entrenched sexism, archaic ideas about gender, and what it’s like to find yourself at the bottom of the heap thanks to a series of unfortunate incidents, 0.5mm is a hugely impressive sophomore effort from Ando and one of the best Japanese indie movies for quite some time.
Sawa is a home care nurse and her current assignment is caring for an elderly, bedridden gentleman who lives with his daughter and grandson. One day, the old man’s daughter makes an extremely odd and inappropriate request of Sawa which she eventually agrees to. However, things go just about as wrong as they could possibly go and Sawa finds herself out of a job and, as she lived in nurse’s accommodation, out of a home too. That’s not the end of her troubles as she manages to leave her coat, in the pocket of which is an envelope containing her life savings, on a train. At this point she’s pretty much down and out when she notices an elderly gentlemen confusedly trying to find out if it’s OK to sleep all night at a 24 hour karaoke box. Pretending to be the old man’s date she hires a room for two and bamboozles him into it for a night of singing and snoozing. In the morning it turns out the old man quite enjoyed the mad adventure as he’s temporarily run away from home because all his son seemed to care about was the inheritance so he thought he might as well spend it all himself. This strange encounter begins Sawa’s odyssey into a series of similar episodes where she blackmails an elderly gentleman into letting her stay with him for a while until one final meeting brings things full circle.
Sawa is definitely a very unusual woman. Good at her job, she’s a caring person in more ways than one. Her new found method of survival is certainly a novel one, and not entirely ethical, but then all she’s doing is exploiting circumstances in the same way circumstances have had a way of exploiting her. Though she weaselled her way into these men’s lives, she did, at least, care for them. Yes, she did the cooking and the cleaning and assisted with healthcare too but she also helped them to realise a few things about themselves and move on with their lives. Whether it’s saving them from yakuza backed pyramid scams or listening to their traumatic memories of the war, Sawa has a knack for seeing people’s hidden pain and another for knowing how to make it better.
Yet, her various encounters with the older generation speak of a number of different social problems that cannot be repaired by one person alone. The first man she meets feels unwanted by his family and is looking for escape, a reassertion of his independence and perhaps a little revenge. The second is really quite mad – obsessively counting the trees in the park, stealing bicycles and letting people’s tires down but he too is alone with no one looking after him. The third man has a bedridden wife and, apparently, a taste for erotic school girl magazines but no children of his own to take care of him. The fourth man discovered a teenage child he’d never met though is incapable of forming a relationship with him. Society is full of lonely, elderly people who either have no close family or have become estranged from them. Some of them have become vulnerable and half mad through extreme isolation and others have become embittered, violent or trapped in the past.
In the way that these men react to Sawa there’s also a complex system of ideas at play as each of Sawa’s employers seem incapable of defining exactly what sort of “services” they expect of her. Nurse, housekeeper, mother, courtesan? From the original, perhaps innocent though far from appropriate, request each of the men Sawa encounters can’t help but view her as a some kind of sex object and react with various degrees of embarrassment about it. To them she is many things though never quite a “person” until, perhaps, their relationship begins to near its end and each reaches some kind of epiphany brought about by her presence. However, Sawa herself is perfectly aware of each of these complexities and perfectly willing to exploit them with a sort of amused ruefulness.
The 0.5mm of the title refers to a metaphor offered on a farewell cassette tape from the second of Sawa’s old gentlemen that one person may be only be able to move a mountain by 0.5mm but if everyone got together the mountain would move and you could start a revolution. At once he bemoans Japan’s military past but also laments that something of the community spirit from those days has been lost. That if we all just stopped living in wilful isolation and embraced the fact that we’re all here together at the same time we could make things better for everyone. Much of the film is about the distance between people – young/old, male/female it isn’t the distinction that matters but the series of invisible walls that exist to keep people apart.
Warm, enigmatic and surprisingly funny (if in a kind of dark way) 0.5mm is is a complex and thought provoking film that is also often very beautiful and immensely enjoyable. At 196 minutes, it’s undeniably a long film with an episodic structure though it largely manages to sustain its lengthy running time without outstaying its welcome. Rich and strange, 0.5mm is all the better for its unresolved mysteries and offers an impressively nuanced cross section of modern society made all the more detailed thanks to its epic scope.
Arrow double whammy up at UK Anime Network as I review both of Arrow’s recent Yasuharu Hasebe releases – Massacre Gun and Retaliation!
Tatsuya Fuji tests his gun out in Massacre Gun (and looks cool in the process)
Arrow have been turning up some hidden gems and neglected classics as they trawl through the world of the populist cinema from the Japanese golden age of the 1960s and 70s – they’ve already brought us the iconic Lady Snow Blood, the lesser known Blind Woman’s Curse, the anarchic Stray Cat Rock series and now, following on from their release of Seijun Suzuki’s famously crazy Branded to Kill they’ve turned their attention back to Nikkatsu Noir with Massacre Gun. The first of two releases from director Yasuhiro Hasebe who also directed three films in the Stray Cat Rock series (Retaliation will follow next month), Massacre Gun has everything any genre fan could wish for – depressed hit men, warring gangs, jazz bars, boxing clubs, stylish monochrome photography and the melancholic ennui that permeates all the best noir movies. Perhaps not quite as impressive as the greatest hits of Nikkatsu Noir such as the afore mentioned Branded to Kill or Nikkatsu’s other offerings like A Colt is My Passport, Massacre Gun is nevertheless another impressive entry in the studio’s short lived action output.
As the film begins, thoroughly dejected Kuroda has just been asked to carry out a hit on a woman who is in love with him – feelings which he may have have reciprocated but, but like any good lackey, Kuroda chose his boss over his heart and sent the love sick girl into a lake with a bullet in her chest. When Kuroda’s two younger brothers find out they do not approve and hot headed youngest brother Saburo who trains at a yakuza run gym hoping to become a a pro-boxer, decides to have a word with Kuroda’s boss, Akazawa. As might be expected things don’t go Saburo’s way and he’s brutally beaten to the extent his hands are all but crushed leaving him unlikely to box again. At this point, Kuroda wants out of the game – but for a yakuza hit man there is no out. His only option is to take down Akazawa’s empire and build one of his own.
Like most of Nikkatsu’s late ‘60s action output which would later retroactively become known as Nikkatsu Noir, Massacre Gun is heavily indebted to the American B-movie and particularly to the film noir. Its settings are those of “low culture”, Western bars and cafes where people drink expensive whiskey and wear sharp suits and sunglasses. In fact, the Kuroda brothers’ side business involves running a jazz bar with a half Japanese-half African American jazz singer playing piano in the corner and a pair of Western dancers doing some sort of scantily clad, artistic ballroom dancing routine in the middle. Most importantly it’s full of the classic Film Noir feeling of spiritual emptiness and existential ennui with the very depressed contract killer Kuroda at its centre.
A very male affair (perhaps the key missing element from a Film Noir is a femme fatale), the bulk of the film is the opposition between Kuroda on the one side and his former boss on the other. Other than the closeness with his two younger brothers and to a lesser extent the other workers at the club, Kuroda’s other most notable relationship is with his old friend Shirasaka who coincidentally married another woman Kuroda may have had feelings for. Though the two have enjoyed a close friendship up until now, Kuroda’s decision to leave Akazawa’s employ has meant Shirasaka has had to make a choice and he’s chosen Akazawa. The two are are now mortal enemies on opposing sides of a war – a fact which causes them both pain but which, nevertheless, cannot be otherwise.
Hasebe is best known for his striking use of colour which makes Massacre Gun a notable entry in his filmography as it’s the only one he made in black and white. Other than the perverse habit of sticking colours into the names of his leading characters and locations (the “Kuro” in Kuroda means “black”, the “Shira” in Shirasaka means “white” and the “Aka” in “Akazawa” means red making this one very complicated game of checkers), Hasebe still manages to make an oddly “colourful” film even in monochrome. Taking a cue from Suzuki, Hasebe has come up with a fair few arty and unusual compositions of his own though not quite to Suzuki’s absurd extremities and neatly retained the classic Nikkatsu Noir aesthetic in his superbly crisp black and white colour palate.
Coming as a late addition to the genre, Massacre Gun also takes a fairly unusual approach to violence with a far more explicit representation than would be expected from this period. Simply put – lots of people die in this film, many of them in quite exciting ways. Blood is everywhere and there are so many bullets fired you start to wonder if some one in the yakuza equivalent of the administration department isn’t having some kind of heart attack behind the scenes. Massacre Gun might not be the best entry in the Nikkatsu Noir series, but it is perhaps one of the most typical. Edgy and arty, exquisitely framed and perfectly photographed it brings out the effortless cool that came to symbolise Nikkatsu’s late ‘60s output. Aside from all that – it’s just fun as most of these films are. Another welcome release from Arrow who continue to root out these lesser known genre movies, Massacre Gun is a must see for fans of classic ‘60s action movies.
Jo Shishido smokes a cigarette in Retaliation (and looks cool in the process)
Arrow are back with another neglected classic of Japanese action cinema produced by Nikkatsu – Retaliation, a slightly later film from Yasuharu Hasebe director of Massacre Gun and three out of five of the Stray Cat Rock series. Unlike Massacre Gun (but like every other film Hasebe ever made), Retaliation is shot in colour and features Hasebe’s trademark use of it. Retaliation is very typical of its genre in someways and very not in others. It stands on something of a borderline seemingly symptomatic of Nikkatsu’s eventual slide into a producer of soft core pornography as their Roman Porno line of sex and violence based movies took over as their main production style. Not as strong as some of the other entries from around this time, Retaliation nevertheless marks itself out as an interesting addition to the genre.
Not one of the most exciting plots in yakuza movie history, Retaliation’s main mcguffin centres around trying to persuade some farming families to sell their ancestral land to developers who want to build a factory there. Having just been released from prison after taking the fall for gang murder, Jiro is offered the chance to head up his own group, however his patch is between two rivals and his best bet is to play the two off against each other as they both vie for this disputed farmland. One group is super old school and the other is the more modern type of thug who’ll do pretty much anything to get what they want – including abducting one of the farmer’s daughters and molesting her in the back of a car as a way to threaten her father. Jiro is given his own mini team to help out on his mission including an out of work actor and card shark, and another top yakuza guy who just happens to be the brother of the man he went to prison for killing and who has already vowed to killed Jiro in revenge. Jiro sometimes dreams of going straight and leading a different kind of life but gang loyalty still means something to him and those outside of the life aren’t always so understanding. Retaliation is the only way to stay alive in this new, empty yakuza world.
Retaliation starred three of Nikkatsu’s famed “Diamond Line” stars – Akira Kobayashi is the film’s lead leaving Jo Shishido playing second fiddle (his star had fallen a little at Nikkatsu and they didn’t see him as an actor who could carry a colour film as the leading man), and Hideki Nitani coming in third. Tatsuya Fuji and Meiko Kaji round out the almost famous section of the cast and each would soon find fame (or notoriety) in the new landscape of ‘70s Japanese cinema. There’s undoubtedly an air of everybody just doing what they do – it is after all what they’ve been employed for but at the same time no one’s really pushing themselves to do anything very notable. That said, you do have five of the biggest (or soon to be biggest) names of the time in one movie which gives it a feeling of a prestige project. However, in another move that anticipates the direction in which Nikkatsu was headed, the sex and violence quotient has been significantly upped.
Nikkatsu action films could already be shockingly violent for the time period, but Retaliation unfortunately adds a layer of sexualised violence against women which is undoubtedly being offered up as something for the viewer to enjoy. The early scene in which Meiko Kaji’s farmgirl is molested by a gang of thugs before being dumped at her parents’ house is unsettling on one level, but is shot with such a voyeuristic camera style that it’s difficult to not feel complicit in this fairly horrific act. There’s even another such sequence later in the film when one yakuza is forced to give up a girl he’s with so all his yakuza mates can have a go first which is again shot with a lingering camera often cutting back to the salivating gangsters. Of their time in one sense, these sadly salacious scenes of sexual violence against women filmed with an encouraging eye give the film an unwelcome sleazy quality from which it is hard to bounce back.
The other notable theme of the film is that it positions itself between the glamorous, modern samurai, gangster movies of the past and the grittier tales of modern thugs that were about to become the mainstream narrative. Jiro has been away for a long time, the yakuza world has moved on and his old clan would have died out if weren’t for another gang’s generosity. Jiro is the last of the honourable men who place loyalty above personal gain and seek to protect women and the put upon rather than exploiting them. Unfortunately, modern yakuza think differently and it’s no small irony that it’s a group of farmers they’re falling over themselves to ruin given that farmers are the very people old school yakuza, as the receivers of samurai values, would be expected to protect. Jiro and some of his cohorts still believe in these “old fashioned” ideas and are thought brave and noble. The other gangs who rape and torture women whilst forcing farmers off the land they’ve worked for centuries are not.
Again, it’s a fairly manly affair with women becoming little more than props to be used and abused throughout the film but the relationship between the two central guys Jiro and Hino takes on an oddly homoerotic context even ending with Shishido’s character getting rid of his girlfriend because he apparently falls in love too easily before telling Jiro that this is the first time it’s been with a guy. Considering their relationship began with Hino determined to kill Jiro, to end it with a quasi declaration of love (even half in jest) is a pretty steep character arc but one of the better things about the film.
Retaliation isn’t a perfect film, and it might not have the most exciting basis for its plot machinations but it certainly has its moments. Entertaining enough, the film is marred by its unpleasant treatment of women and takes a few dramatic missteps towards the end. The action is good however, as are the performances and production values. Perhaps not an essential Nikkatsu action movie but nevertheless a very interesting one from several different perspectives, Retaliation deserves a view from the genre’s committed fans.
Both available now in the UK on DVD & blu-ray from Arrow Films!
Review of this slick but not very scary horror movie up at UK Anime Network.
Juno Mak may be most familiar to UK viewers as the star of the rather macabre thriller Revenge: A Love Story but he began his career as canto pop singer in Hong Kong at just 18. An unlikely superstar in many ways, Mak has gone on to endure scrutiny over his career and family background whilst managing to carve his own path in the perilous Hong Kong entertainment industry. Having made his acting debut with Revenge: A Love Story he now makes another unusual move and steps behind the camera with a slick, modern horror film that seeks to pay homage to the much loved 1980s Mr Vampire movies.
Ditching the series’ trademark humour, Mak’s is a more meta take on its subject matter as it begins with the once famous actor Chin carrying a cardboard box full of his paltry possessions into a rundown apartment complex where he plans to end his own life. His plans are frustrated though as his newly lifeless body is possessed by the building’s resident ghosts. However, luckily or unluckily, the guy who runs the local noodle store doubles as an exorcist and manages to expel the demons from Chin’s body just in time to save his life. His troubles don’t end there though as a nice seeming old lady neighbour hides a terrible secret as does a frightened woman who often roams the corridors with her young albino son. Someone is indulging themselves in a bit of necromancy which threatens to change life on the block for ever more.
It’s certainly a very dour and gloomy affair as the suicidal Chin has flashbacks of his life as an A-list star with a pretty wife and a cute-as-button son whose last voicemail Chin keeps replaying. It’s all gone wrong for him already which is presumably why he’s come to live in such a “modest” place. He comes to build up a tentative relationship with the frightened woman and her son but they have traumas of their own linked to the strange haunting of the building. Mrs Mui who lives upstairs is the archetypal nice old lady who takes in sewing because she’s bored but after her husband dies in a freak accident she’ll stop at nothing to bring him back. It’s her husband that’s the stiff from the movie’s title (well perhaps – perhaps not) and she’s roped in a priest to work some black magic to bring him back but it isn’t really working necessitating her to take ever more drastic measures.
The Mr. Vampire movies are a Hong Kong institution and particularly well loved by the generation who grow up watching them in the ‘80s. However, they are considerably less well known here and viewers expecting a Western style “vampire” story are going to be disappointed. Chinese “hopping” vampires are more like a vampire/zombie hybrid – they feed on qi (life force) but shuffle like zombies and have about the same level of intelligence. There’s only one reanimated corpse here but Mak also throws in a couple of J-horror influenced ghosts with grudges that are also martial arts masters – as are the Taoist priests who are around to keep them in check. Mak has largely ignored the genre’s humorous aspects and gone for a fairly po-faced, supernatural martial arts drama which largely works but may have the less genre savvy viewer feeling a little lost.
Everyone’s just very bored in a very modern way – their ennui is close to religious. The former vampire hunter who runs the noodle stall downstairs and makes sure to produce extra food for the benefit of his customers who’ve already passed over (after all, they still need to eat, right?) spends all day in his boxer shorts and dressing gown and doesn’t even bother to put on any special vampire fighting gear. Chin is, obviously, suicidal and most of the other residents of the block are facing metaphorical demons even if they aren’t actually battling physicals ones (there are a lot of metaphorical layers in the film if you’re the sort that likes to see them). It’s all very cool in a slick and modern way but sometimes feels a little pompous and fails to engage.
Simply put, Rigor Mortis not quite as much fun as one might hope but also lacks the depth that might have made the experience feel more worthwhile. Having said that, it all looks great – aesthetically the film is very interesting and has a lot going for it including some unusually well made and impressively realised special effects. It is all a little style over substance though and the film’s final twist feels like a step too far (as does a strange mid credits shot and odd post credits sequence). There’s something a little cold and unengaging about Rigor Mortis (perhaps appropriately so) but it still has its moments and fans of slick, good looking martial arts movies with a supernatural bent may find a lot to enjoy.
A very late entry into Art Theatre Guild’s catalogue of Japanese art movies, Did you See the Barefoot God? (君は裸足の神を見たか, Kimi wa Hadashi no Kami wo Mitaka) marked the feature length debut of Korean-Japanese director Kim Soo-gil who, though he remains active in many fields up to the present day, sadly did not go on to build up an extensive filmography after the film’s release. Like many ATG films, Did You See the Barefoot God? is a “seishun eiga” or youth film with a contemporary setting which looks at the internal difficulties of adolescence running the gamut from romantic problems to familial responsibilities and the decision of whether to give up the dreams of youth in favour of the calm and ordered adulthood that the wider world demands.
Windows on Worlds 