#japnese cinema

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grimace

(d’après Mother de Mikio Naruse)

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MOVIES I WATCHED THIS WEEK # 272:

"Kapitan!"

DERSU UZALA (1975), Kurosawa's only non-Japanese film, about the friendship of a Manchurian hunter-trapper with a Russian surveyor who mapped the Taiga of the Far East. (Photo of the real pair Above.) A Siberian epic noted for his simple, sprawling beauty. Nature vs. Civilization. "Zen mind and Zen spirit". Life and death.

There are still nearly 20 of Kurosawa's masterpieces that I haven't seen yet: Sanjuro, Kagemusha, Drunken Angel, The Idiot, Stray dog, Etc. Onward and upward...

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"What if 'Cinema Paradiso' but for music instead of movies?" THE CHORUS (2004) is a sentimental Oscar-nominated French drama about a teacher at a harsh boarding school in 1949, who is able to transform his pupils' life through the power of music.

Jacques Perrin, the adult "Salvatore" from 'Cinema Paradiso', repeats here a similar role, of a successful, world-renown classic conductor drawn back to his childhood. He learns that the old teacher, with whom he had lost touch years ago, passed away, and in a flash-back reflects on his youth as a troubled boy.

It sounds predictable and cliche and it is, but it still is a sweet, feel-good tear-jerker.

Catnip for people who loved Jean Vigo's 'Zéro de conduite', Truffaut's '400 Blows', 'The war of the buttons', 'Au Revoir Les Enfants' and similar inspirational tales about French kids. Recommended.

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2 REVISIONIST WESTERNS:

🍿 My first by William Wellman, THE OX-BOW INCIDENT (1943), a superb, nuanced psychological western about mob justice carried out at night, with Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews. It's called an "incident" when it was but a triple-lynching by a "posse" of town-folks who ignore the law and turn into vigilantes. Prejudice, conscientiousness and moral fluctuation.

🍿 THE GREAT SILENCE (1968), my first "Spaghetti Western" by Sergio Corbucci. A bloody Wild West drama, played in a majestic snowy country, 3 years before 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller'. But instead of Leonard Cohen's mournful dirges, it has an unmistaken score by Ennio Morricone.

Everybody is shooting and killing everybody, and it ends with the traditional gunfight in the snow between Silenzo and Loco, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Klaus Kinski. Trintignant, like Eastwood's 'Man with no name', doesn't speak, and Kinski is as murderous and kinky as ever. But unlike most westerns up to that time, the bad guy wins.

The trailer.

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The randomly-picked INVENTION (2024) was my best odd-viewing of the week. After his death, a daughter is trying to untangle the threads of her late father's life. In beautiful Massachusetts countryside in the fall, she discovers that he left her only debts - and a patent for a mysterious "electromagnetic healing device".

This is a real narrative, but it is told in such a unique style, pulling many separate threads together, without apparent focus (or a unifying conclusion!) into an experimental, mesmerizing fable. Maybe because it was a fictional version of the magnetic Callie Hernandez's real-life father. She wrote the script, produced and co-directed it, and she was magnificent playing the lead character. The father appeared to be a holistic quack with a following of eccentric followers.

The trailer. 9/10. Highly recommended. [Female Director.]

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Another random, off-left-field indie production (which, like 'Invention', also has 95% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes!), EL PLANETA (2021) is my second offering from captivating Spanish-Argentinian director Amalia Ulman [After 'Buyer Walker Rover (Yiwu) Aka. There then', which I hated...]

This, her debut feature, is an original and strange story of a mother and daughter (played by herself and her real-mother), small-time grifters who ignore their dire financial situation, and maintain an appearance as if they still live in relative luxury. They are about to be evicted from their apartment, their electricity is being shut down, sometimes they go hungry, but when they venture outside, they look like any normal, good-looking, well-to-do citizens.

It's a restrained and stylish, low-budget art-film. It was shot in beautiful black & white in the province city of Gijón, where the empty streets and many closed storefronts reflect on a larger economic crisis. It's smart and evocative, like early French New Wave, episodic and fragmentary; campy & wry - with a heart-breaking ending. The trailer. Recommended - 7/10. [Female Director.]

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"When Robert Altman gives a project everything he's got, his skills are such that he can make poetry out of fake poetry and magic out of fake magic..." (Pauline Kael)

Another of Altman's complex "Women films", COME BACK TO THE 5 & DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN (1982). It starts as a 'Last picture show' and 'Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf' combo, then unexpectedly turns to deal with the aspects of coming out as a trans woman - in 1975 and in rural Texas. It's an interesting theatrical one-room, seven-friends melodrama, sympathetic and painful. The McGuire Sister doo-wop score was wonderful.

Altman never won an Oscar. Next on my list: His 'Images'.

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Pop Quiz:

What politically-incorrect Citizen Kane-related film starred John Wayne, Robert Redford, Robert Mitchum, Clark Gable, Elvis Presley, Lauren Bacall, Orson Welles, Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, Ricky Nelson and 20 other big stars - and all were making ridiculous fart and butt-sex jokes in French?

The answer: Michel Hazanavicius' 1993 LA CLASSE AMÉRICAINE (1993). Re-watch ♻️.

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WORK IN PROGRESS (2001) is my 3rd by Catalan artist José Luis Guerín. It's a "normal" documentary about a construction of an apartment building at the Barrio Chino/Raval neighborhood in Barcelona, during a period that turned the area from a run-down, low working class into a gentrified modern one.

In the end, the most interesting parts are when the demolition crew discovers remains of an old Roman cemetery, as well as the quiet observations of some of the characters on display, the bricklayers, the young hooker and her lazy boyfriend, the young girl flirting, the foreman...

Thanks to my friend Murph who used to live in one of the buildings featured in the film, who provided me with a rare copy with subtitles.

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MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN just won this year's Academy Award for documentary films. A brave teacher in a small industrial town in the Ural Mountains was the school videographer, and he recorded how the Putin regime turned the war against Ukraine into a brainwashing operation, installing fear, hate and fact-less propaganda into the minds of its young people. The teacher was able to eventually escape Russia, carrying with him the clandestine footage that he had shot during the first years of the war.

It says so much that a film about a Russian guy resisting a blood-thirsty tyrant who's subjecting his people into a 1984 nightmare, won the Oscar in America of 2026.

It was co-directed by an American director who lives here in Copenhagen. 8/10.

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The original 2005 GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK was an acclaimed George Clooney film. In 2025 he staged it on Broadway, and CNN live-streamed the last performance of it, a first airing of such a live Broadway show. The show about 'ethics in journalism' was a big hit, and Clooney himself played Edward R. Murrow, David Strathairn role in the film.

It was a serious civil lesson with a capital M for message, politically-relevant, especially since Murrow was a star on the Columbia Broadcasting System. In an ironic coincidence, I watched this "honorable" discourse on Friday night, and on Saturday morning I woke up to the newsflash that New McCarthyist Bari Weiss just ordered to shut down the 100-year old CBS News Radio this coming May.

It's not enough to take the high-minded moral stand of doing the right thing today though. 5/10.

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SOMETIMES IN APRIL (2005), unfortunately the least accomplished of the 6 films by Raoul Peck that I've seen. It's an HBO drama about the brutal Rwandan Genocide, and it does feel like a made-for television product. Idris Elba starred.

Only a year after the Bosnian war, the mass slaughters in Rwanda were especially extreme, in that up to a million Tutsi were systematically executed, many by machetes, in the course of only 100 days. But there have been at least 6 other major genocides since 1994, so every 5 years a new one erupts. Against the Sudanese in Darfur, the Yazidi people, the Uyghur, the Rohingya, and of course the campaign against Ukraine and the Palestinians in Gaza. The pledges of "Never again" ring hollow.

I remember Philip Gourevitch's moving book about Rwanda "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families", and I hoped that this will be as stirring. But it's hard to show the inhumanity in an acceptable way, so the movie dramatizes the tragedy as a story of two brothers.

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A few years later, and on a second attempt, I was able to finally finish the too-intense, anxiety-producing UNCUT GEMS (2019). Yes, it's super energetic and full of frantic nervousness, but this is not my type of entertainment. Degenerate Gambling addict Adam Sandler was simply an unpleasant asshole, hyper and abrasive, and the action was too fast and too loud. 5/10.

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"It's like going to El Prado Museum and eating a Velasquez painting."

THE LEGACY OF EL BULLI (2021), a Spanish documentary about Ferran Adrià, owner of the modernist El Bulli Restaurant in Costa Brava. Having spent 10 years as a cook in my youth, Haute cuisine is of interest to me, especially with such a fascinating personality and innovative philosophy. But like most hagiographic documentaries it was lazy and lame. 2/10.

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THE SHORTS:

🍿 Another of Les Blank's authentic portraits of country musicians down south, THE BLUES ACCORDIN' TO LIGHTNIN' HOPKINS (1968. 31 min.). After seeing 'Sinners' again last week, it was a breath of fresh air to see the original music men jammin', strumming their cheap guitars in the middle of the dusty road, playing their hearts out. They were poor as the red dirt where their wooden shacks laid, they had no agency, but they sure could play that blues. 8/10.

🍿 THEY DO NOT EXIST (1974. 25 min.) is a political Palestinian documentary about life (and death) at Nabatieh refugee camp in Lebanon, which was destroyed by Israeli war planes. It is based on the infamous quote from then-prime minister Golda Meir "There was no such thing as Palestinians". It's as if time stood still for the Palestinians and nothing had changed since.

🍿 "Blindness is a new feeling, a new experience, a new state of being".

THE INNER EYE (1972. 20 min), only my third by Satyajit Ray, is a loving portrait of Benode Behari Mukherjee. He was a legendary Bengali artist, known for his large modern frescoes, calligraphy and paintings. He was also blind, partially and then fully, his whole life. It would be even lovelier if a restored version would revive its brilliant colors.

🍿 FORMER CULT MEMBER HEARS MUSIC FOR THE FIRST TIME (2020. 12 min.) is my 3rd by oddball Norwegian Kristoffer Borgli (after 'Dream Scenario' and 'Sick of myself', and while waiting for his new 'The Drama' with Robert Pattison and Zendaya). An uncomfortable little problem with a surprisingly Super-Hollywood solution. 7/10. Check it out.

🍿 FLIGHT OF THE SWAN (1992. 11 min) is a Nigerian ballet fantasy. A little girl is dreaming about performing in a black version of 'Swan Lake', while being ostracized in a school in England. [Female Director]

🍿 "Sometimes I wonder what it's like being who I am..." THERE'S A PLACE IN FRANCE (1985, 2 min.), a funny-weird avant-garde performance by Willem Dafoe (with a cameo by Spalding Grey)...

🍿 ANIMALS (2016. 4 min.), my first artsy-fartsy installation by Eick Alverson. Stroboscopic Val Kilmer sits on a bed in some hotel room, while an eerie song plays. I only watched it because Sean Baker recommended it. 1/10.

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THROW-BACK TO THE ADORA ART PROJECT:  

Adora With Kurosawa.

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(ALL MY FILM REVIEWS - HERE)