Japanese Culture in New York - Chopsticks NY

Japanese Cinema At Large
Conversation with Two Japanese Cinema Experts

With such an intense cultural background, Japan has established unique film styles and its own history. Although it is impossible to give an overview of multifaceted Japanese cinema in a few pages, we will try to give you a good introduction. Here, CNY talks with two experts on Japanese cinema: Mr. Bruce Goldstein, Director / Repertory Programming of Film Forum, and Dr. Susan Napier, Professor of Japanese Studies at Tufts University.

What motivated you to curate the NAKADAI series?
This is a project I’ve been working on for several years. For me, Mr. Nakadai represents the golden age of Japanese cinema, since, in his long career, he has starred in movies by many of the great directors: Kurosawa, Kobayashi, Ichikawa, Naruse, Gosha, Teshigahara, Okamoto, and many others. So the series is both an opportunity to spotlight a great movie icon and to sample all kinds of films from this exciting period.

In the series, I’ve included many classic films in which Mr. Nakadai is featured -- among them, five by Kurosawa (HIGH AND LOW, YOJIMBO, SANJURO, KAGEMUSHA and RAN) -- as well as those that are completely unknown in this country. With the help of Japan Foundation, we are importing about ten films which are unavailable here on DVD or any other format. Among these are Ichikawa’s I AM A CAT (based on the novel by Natsume Soseki), Kinoshita’s IMMORTAL LOVE, Naruse’s UNTAMED, Gosha’s GOYOKIN, and others. The festival will culminate with a three-week run of Kobayashi’s epic masterpiece, THE HUMAN CONDITION, which is an event in itself.

Mr. Nakadai has more than 50-year acting career in film, TV, and theater, and he is still active. Do you find such an actor in the United States?
There are not too many actors in the West who can make this claim. Until his recent retirement, Paul Newman had a career that roughly parallelled Mr. Nakadai’s. He has been a star since the early 1950s. Sean Connery has been a movie star for a little over 45 years. Mr. Nakadai’s rise to stardom was meteoric. He can be glimpsed for a few seconds in THE SEVEN SAMURAI; five years later, he is a bona fide star in Kobayashi’s THE HUMAN CONDITION, which began filming in 1959. So he has been a true star for just about 50 years.

Most of the Japanese films you screen at Film Forum are classic or art films. What do you think of current Japanese films? Do you find anything good these days?
Since my focus is on classic films, I really don’t follow the current Japanese film scene. The Japanese film of recent years that most impressed me was NOBODY KNOWS – Kore-eda is one of the most interesting directors working today -- and I look forward to every new film by Miyazaki. Japanese pop culture is exploding in different directions and the Kurosawa of today may be working in an area I’m not at all familiar with: the video game industry, for example.

Would you tell us about your favorite Japanese film?
It would be impossible to name one. The obvious answer is THE SEVEN SAMURAI, which incorporates every aspect of the medium like no other movie and delivers a powerhouse entertainment as well. There’s little wonder that it’s often named the greatest film -- Japanese or otherwise -- of all time. A less obvious answer would be Ozu’s I WAS BORN BUT... a silent comedy that I could watch over and over again (I prefer it to the director’s more famous TOKYO STORY). And two early Kurosawas that show his mastery of mood and character: STRAY DOG and DRUNKEN ANGEL. But there are others that I could easily name as well.

Of the films of Mr. Nakadai’s that I’ve seen, his greatest performance is as the impoverished ronin in Kobayashi’s HARA KIRI, which is a masterpiece. I love him as the punk samurai in Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO and as the King Lear character in Kurosawa’s RAN. What makes him interesting as actor is that he didn’t allow himself to be typecast, as most film stars are. In America, a star like Gary Cooper or Humphrey Bogart played the same kinds of roles in movie after movie (with a few exceptions). But Nakadai has risked playing a wide range of parts.

Which Japanese film influenced you the most?
I’m not a filmmaker, so I’m not sure what you mean by “influenced.” But the first Japanese movie I ever saw (maybe in my teens) was Mizoguchi’s SISTERS OF THE GION, which was made in the 1930s. I thought it would be completely foreign to me, but I remember liking it enough to want to see other Japanese movies. So this one film got me curious enough to discover Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu and their contemporaries.

Who is your favorite Japanese filmmaker?
My favorite is the director who has sometimes been accused of being the least Japanese, in that his movies have worldwide appeal, and that of course is Akira Kurosawa. For more than four decades, he made more great movies than any other director, anywhere. My two favorite Japanese actors are Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai, who co-starred in several movies. You can see their extraordinary chemistry in films like YOJIMBO and SAMURAI REBELLION, which are both featured in the NAKADAI series.

Film series: NAKADAI
(June 20 – August 7)
This series celebrates Tatsuya Nakadai’s career of over half a century. Films include YOJINBO, HIGH AND LOW, SWORD OF DOOM, SAMURAI REBELLION, and the series highlights Masaki Kobayashi’s THE HUMAN CONDITION. Mr. Nakadai will appear in person for a Q&A following HARA KIRI on June 20 and for an extensive onstage interview on June 24. For full schedule, go to the web site.

Film Forum
209 W. Houston St., New York, NY 10014
www.filmforum.org

WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS (1960) ©Toho Co., Ltd.

Would you tell me about your most favorite Japanese film?
May I give two examples of my favorite? My first is, SHICHININ NO SAMURAI (THE SEVEN SAMURAI). It’s just an extraordinary film. We showed it in the longest version which is about 3 hours 45 minutes in my Japanese Film class, and they loved it! These are young Americans who are 19 or 20 and they totally understood. In fact, we all liked it so much I thought I would ask them what makes a great film, and all of the things you can think of is what THE SEVEN SAMURAI is. You have great characters, an exciting, involving plot, wonderful imagery. Just characters’ faces alone; Kanbei and Kikuchiyo, the farmers, they’re all very distinctive faces. And you have a very strong story with good vs. evil, but also with tragedy and poignance. At the end, yes they win but 4 of the samurai are killed. It also has a greater, epic scope. It’s about modernization because all the samurai are killed by guns, none of them die by the sword, so it’s really the end of a certain era. There’s also humor, Kikuchiyo, the Mifune (Toshiro Mifune) character is very funny. And there’s romance, and they’re handsome men, cool men. It’s so great. So that’s my first favorite.

What is the other one?
The other one is a lot different, and it’s much more recent. Kitano Takeshi’s HANABI. It is violent in some ways, but is again very controlled violence and very beautifully worked into the plot. It’s not really gratuitous. There’re so many interesting characters and the relationship between the characters is so beautifully done. It’s about this former policeman whose partner is shot and loses his legs, and at the same time his wife is dying so he quits the police force and he actually robs a bank. So you see this man who is very violent but also cares about his wife, cares about his partner. It’s a very complex story and in a way compared to THE SEVEN SAMURAI it’s not about outright good and evil but more about the good and evil inside a human being, how nuanced and ambiguous that can be. I didn’t think such a gangster film could be so psychologically deep, it’s just extraordinary.

THE SEVEN SAMURAI and HANABI are very different in terms of the pacing. In THE SEVEN SAMURAI everything is fast pace, but in HANABI is slow. But American students still accept both?
In a number of films we saw they mentioned the slowness and also “awkwardness,” which is an interesting thing to say. There are moments when you feel uncomfortable watching it. That’s true of HANABI and another Kurosawa film that we saw, IKIRU. There are very uncomfortable moments where the camera zooms in on the protagonist Watanabe’s face and it holds the shot for a long time. The same with HANABI, very slow, very long shot, and you can feel yourself getting uncomfortable but they found that intriguing. About the slowness some people said, “Oh, it’s too slow compared to DIE HARD,” but others said, “This is much more interesting because you really get into the whole story of these people and you get into their lives and their heads in a different way.” So it depended on the student of course but many of them really appreciated that slowness.

Is there any Japanese film that influenced you?
In a certain way, I think Kurosawa in general influences me because he’s a humanist. I think he really has a vision of people as having potential to be better than they might be. I loved the way Kikuchiyo grows and matures in THE SEVEN SAMURAI. I love the way the samurai sacrifice themselves for glory or for kindness, but not for money, not for the obvious kind of things. Generally I like Kurosawa’s viewpoint in IKIRU and even DREAMS, he really cares about human beings and the future and how to make a better world I think and I like that a lot. I’m a literature person and I work a lot with Kenzaburo Oe who I think is also a humanist. He’s someone who really cares very deeply about the problems of humanity and what we can do about them. His characters are often very damaged and difficult, but they’re trying, they’re “ganbatteiru-ing (doing their best)” which I really like, same for Miyazaki anime. I like all of these people because they all have a vision of trying to create a better world. They have very strong values that they’re trying to impart to people.

Could you pick your favorite Japanese filmmakers?
Of course Kurosawa, but there’s so many different ones. I love Mizoguchi, who did LIFE OF OHARU and UGETSU which I think is a stunningly beautiful film. I liked what I’ve seen of Itami Juzo’s work. I think it’s very tragic that he died. I think TAMPOPO was incredibly exciting and refreshing, and I liked his courage in MARUSA NO ONNA, dealing with subjects that a lot of people tend to shy away from. So that was wonderful. Again, Kitano Takeshi. I don’t know much about him at this point, I’ve only seen those 2 works and also DOLLS.

How about Anime directors?
Oh, I have so many. Obviously Miyazaki, very very much. He’s just a genius, in every area: imagery, music, story, character, just overall. Miyazaki is a world builder like J.K. Rowling who wrote the Harry Potter series and J.R.R. Tolkien of Lord of the Rings. He’s one of those people who can create a fantasy that you believe in. Of course he also writes this manga called NAUSICAA which is an absolute masterpiece. Of course I love him and then I’m very excited about Kon Satoshi. I think he’s wonderful, very imaginative. I like that he pushes the envelope every time he does a new movie, it’s really different. He started as I think a screenwriter for a set of anime called MEMORIES by Otomo Katsuhiro, and he did something called KANOJO NO OMOIDE. That was very beautiful. He does varying women characters, and he has a quality of darkness that he can bring in. I think PERFECT BLUE was exceptional. It’s a murder- stalker film about a pop idol, and he really critiques contemporary Japanese society and the fascination with idolhood and the sacrifices that these people have to make. It’s very cleverly done, it’s a lot like Hitchcock or David Lynch and he’s got a real style, a visual style which is amazing. He loves to play up on the boundary of the real and the unreal. He kind of goes back and forth very effectively, and you don’t know whether it’s real or not. And he uses animation so brilliantly.

My third favorite is Oshii Mamoru, who does KOUKAKU KIDOUTAI (Ghost in the Shell). I think he’s absolutely brilliant, another genius. He’s someone who’s really engaged with some difficult questions, like technology, what it means to be human, about our future. At the same time again he’s just a brilliant imagist. He has a quality of sadness for a science fiction director, but his work is much more poetic and lyrical than most sci fi films are with the exception of a film called BLADE RUNNER. But Oshii acknowledged that he had been influenced by BLADE RUNNER and I think it’s very clear. Oshii’s KOUKAKU KIDOUTAI goes on to influence THE MATRIX, so it’s very interesting all these transcultural influences. It’s fascinating.
*Courtesy of The Nippon Club

Publications by Susan Napier

Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke : Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation
(Palgrave Macmillan)

From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West
(Palgrave Macmillan)

NYAFF returns with more of Japanese tours de force; star-studded ACCURACY OF DEATH, hit movie sequel ALWAYS 2, the Japanese king of comedy’s first feature film DAI NIPPON JIN, and veteran director Koji Wakamatsu’s long awaited new film UNITED RED ARMY.
IFC Center: 323 Sixth Ave., New York, NY 10014 / Japan Society: 333 E. 47th St., New York, NY 10017 www.subwaycinema.com