Why I Watched This
Movie
I watched
this movie because a co-worker of mine was watching it.
I have a
co-worker who is a real film buff. He
was a film studies major in university, and is one of those people who is
always seeking out obscure artsy foreign films to watch.
Recently he
told me he was planning to watch this movie over the weekend. He described it
as a Japanese film noir from the 1960s. The
reason he wanted to watch it was because Roger Ebert had added this movie to
his list of the greatest films of all time, and had given it a glowing review
on his website [For Roger Ebert’s review of this film see here.]
I told him,
“If you watch it, give me a call. I’ll
bring the popcorn.”
It’s good
for me to watch a Japanese language movie every now and then. Since leaving Japan 3 years ago, my Japanese ability has deteriorated rapidly, and watching the occasional
Japanese film helps me from forgetting everything completely.
(Actually I
really should be watching a lot more Japanese films than I
am. However I often find Japanese cinema
a struggle to sit through for one reason or another. Whereas American cinema knows exactly how to
cater to my short attention span. So
whenever I’m in the video store, unless I’m feeling particularly conscientious,
I almost always find myself gravitating towards the movies that are easiest for
me to understand.)
But the fact
that a friend was watching this movie anyway gave me the perfect excuse to
watch it with him. But there were a
couple other factors that drew me in: classic - film - noir - is a genre that I have
some interest in , plus I’ve always been interested in - 1960s - era - Japan.
The Review
Three of us
ended up watching the film together.
When it was over, my friend talked about how beautiful the
cinematography was.
“Yes, the
cinematography was pretty impressive,”
I said. “But what about that story? There was hardly
any story, and what little story there was didn’t make a lot of sense, and the
story got drawn out way more than it needed to be. The film was only 90 minutes, but am I the
only one who felt like it seemed to last way longer than that?”
“Yes, but
it’s film noir,” my friend replied. “Film
noir has always been about style over substance.”
There are
probably lots of cinephiles around the world who
love films like this that put so much emphasis on style. And if you’re one of those people, you’ll
probably love this film. But I’m not one
of them. Here I must confess myself a
philistine, and probably someone unqualified to review this film. Really, you should stop wasting your time
reading my review, and just follow the above link to Roger Ebert’s review. You’ll get much more out of it.
However,
since I am committed to putting down my two-cents on every movie I watch, here
are my thoughts.
The Style
If it is
true that film noir is always about style over substance, then it must be
admitted that this film does have style.
It’s a gangster film, and the gangsters do a good job of looking
cool. They wear nice looking suits, smoke
cigarettes, and regard the world with cool disdain.
The yakuza
(Japanese mafia) in the 1960s, at least as far as their portrayal on film goes,
look just like a Japanese business man—short hair, nice suit, carefully pressed
pants. The only thing that seems to
distinguish their uniform is the dark sunglasses some of them wear, even at
night.
Almost the
entire film takes place at night, and the film makes good use of the loneliness
of night. You have lots of shots of
characters walking alone down empty alley streets.
But there
is also an intimacy about the night.
When the whole world is asleep, it seems like you and the person you are
with are the only two people who seem alive at the moment. The film makes good use of this as well.
The film
opens with a voice over complaining about how crowded Tokyo has become. But then after several opening shots
establishing the crowds in Tokyo, Tokyo is then portrayed
as looking deserted for most of the rest of the film. At night the characters have the streets of Tokyo entirely to
themselves.
And then
there’s the excitement of the night.
When most decent people are in bed, it seems like there are no rules and
anything can happen.
At one point
the heroine exclaims, “I would be okay if the morning never comes. I live for these evil nights.” As she says this, she presses down on the accelerator
and, for no reason except mischief, engages in a race on the highway with the
car in front of her. At night they have
the entire highway to themselves, and it ends eventually when the other driver
stops, laughs with them as if they were good friends, and then just drives off
again.
Other
stylistic points:
* I suppose
it’s cliché to say about any black and white film noir that they make good use
of light and shadows. But there is some
good use of light and shadows here. The
character at points walks in and out of shadows while walking down the
street. And in one of the opening
scenes, his embrace with his girlfriend is totally obscured by the shadows, leaving
the audience to just guess what is happening.
* Also the
sound of footsteps are amplified a lot in this movie. Whenever any character walks anywhere, you
can hear very loudly the “click, click, click,” sound of their shoes on the
streets.
Exactly why
this is, I’m not sure. It might again
have to do with the emptiness of night, where in the absence of the usual daily
noise, the small noise of footsteps seems louder.
Or maybe,
as Roger Ebert seems to be hinting, the rhythmic sound of the footsteps on
the pavement is meant to parallel the rhythmic clicking of the picture plaques
being shuffled in the gambling scenes.
Or my friend
thought the footsteps represented the ticking of the clocks. Which brings me to my next point.
* There is
definitely some clock symbolism here. One
of the characters works and lives in a clock store. In one particularly obvious scene, her lover
comes home from prison, and, amid the loud clicking of clocks she asks him, “When
did you get out? When? When? When?”
Aside from
just symbolism for the sake of symbolism, however, I’m not sure how this
connects with the themes of the rest of the story. But maybe someone a bit sharper than me can
make the connection.
Okay, so much for the style.
Now onto the story.
The Story
There’s
really not much of a story here, and what little story there is gets drawn out
over some very slow scenes.
A gangster named Muraki
gets released from prison, and immediately returns to his old life and his old
hangouts.
At his
usual gambling dens, however, he is surprised to find a young innocent rich
girl gambling alongside the usual gangsters.
No one knows why she is here or what her story is. He is intrigued by her, and then becomes in
love with her, and she with him.
But fate
has them on different trajectories. Because
of his loyalties to his gang, he engages in a job that he knows will send him
right back to jail, while she meanwhile is on a self-destructive path, chasing
more and more dangerous ways to escape her boredom.
(Actually,
now that I’ve just written it up like that, it sounds a lot more exciting than
it actually is. But the film moves very
slowly. The action of the film maybe
takes up only about 15 minutes, all told, and the rest of the film is people
having quiet conversations with each other.
Because of this, the film felt very long to me, even though it was
really only 90 minutes.)
Why he
falls so in love with this girl I never understood, and that hampered my
getting involved with the story.
She is
cute, yes, I’ll give her that. And she
does looks up at him with a doe-y eyed look, and she
talks very innocently and correctly, and obviously comes from a high class
family, and there is a mystery about her.
But cute
girls are a dime-a-dozen, and she doesn’t seem to have any deeper personality
than this. Plus she gives several
indications that she’s real trouble. She
already has a gambling addiction when he meets her, and then she is becoming
fascinated by drugs. With all the girls
in the world, why would you fall in love with this one?
Especially
for a middle aged man who should know better.
(I understand in our young years, men can be intrigued by girls like
this. But surely by the time we reach a
certain age, we realize that they are more trouble than they’re worth, right?)
To my mind,
the movie gives absolutely no reason why he should fall in love with her. It’s simply something we need to accept so
that there can be some sort of story here.
(My friend,
by the way, disagrees with me on this.
He says it was obvious from the movie that they both have very similar
personalities, and they both have trouble connecting to the real world, so the
only person each could open up to was the other. Perhaps.)
At any
rate, I certainly wasn’t in love with her by the end of the movie, and so it
irritated me that he should be so in love with her. I wasn’t able to sympathize with his feelings
at all.
And there
were other things like this—other characters who made abrupt emotional turn arounds
I did not understand. There was the young gangster
(Jiro?) who hates our main character Muraki and tries to kill him at the beginning of the film. For reasons I never understood, a few scenes
later he has become his devoted follower and companion.
I’m not
saying an emotional transformation from hatred to love couldn’t have taken
place, but the film certainly didn’t show me it or give me any reason to
believe it.
Other Thoughts
And in now
particular order, here are a few more things that are rattling around my brain.
* I am reminded of the Showa News Reel clips I watched a few years back. The news reels
from the 1960s also made a big deal about how crowded Tokyo
was becoming, indicating that overcrowding in Tokyo was becoming an issue very much on the
public consciousness around this time. (Tokyo is still very
crowded now, but perhaps now it’s just accepted as a fact, and back then it was
a new phenomenon.)
Assuming I’m
right about this, then the opening narration of the movie, which complains
about the overcrowding in Tokyo,
locates this movie perfectly in its time.
* And speaking of dating this movie to its time period—is it
just me, or during the 1950s and 60s were there a lot of stories about bored
upper-middle class young people trying to “get their kicks”, feel alive, find meaning
in life, et cetera? And if so, does that
young-bored-and restless feeling still exist today, or have we become
completely lulled into passivity by media saturation?
* Other observations from my friend, the cinephile:
He said the
film has a very claustrophobic feel, created by showing lots of characters
crammed into small rooms, and by having lots of close-ups of characters
faces. (I never noticed this myself.)
He said
that it was very obvious the director Shinoda is a protégé of Ozu because they both make a habit of making sure the whole room,
from the floor to the ceiling, is in the shot.
(I never noticed this myself either.)
* Roger Ebert’s review gives a bit of information both me
and my friend found interesting.
Apparently the original screenplay did not include any of the elaborate
gambling scenes in the movie, and instead the only screen directions were “they
gambled.”
The fact
that the director took these very simple screen directions and made very
elaborate gambling scenes does add another layer of interest to the movie. The fact that the screenwriter was not happy
about this, but apparently became furious when he saw the film and saw how
elaborate the gambling scenes had become, is more interesting yet.
* One of the key plot points in the movie is when someone
runs in and informs the gang that Tamaki has been knifed down in the
streets. This caused me and my two
friends to turn to each other and ask, “Who is Tamaki?” We still haven’t figured it out.
* “Film noir has always been about style over substance,”
says my friend. Me— I’m not entirely
sure that’s true. Surely the classic
film noirs in American cinema were just as famous for their dialogues as their
cinematography? Or does dialogue also
count as style?
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