Review: Apples

Posted on March 12, 2022 by philipbrasor

Greek directors have in recent years coopted that species of European ennui that used to be associated with Scandinavia, but filtered through a more mordant sensibility. There’s a fatalism inherent in the work of the most celebrated of these filmmakers, Yorgos Lanthimos, whose former assistant, Christos Nikou, foregoes his ex-boss’s typical black comedy and settles into a kind of droll numbness. Apples‘ premise is high concept, but Nikous doesn’t take sufficient advantage of it. There’s a virus at large in the greyed-out society depicted that renders its victims memoryless, and while amnesia is one of those cinematic cliches, like the forlorn hitman, that’s been wrung dry, here the loss of a recognizable past is complete to the point of erasure. Language is all that remains.

The patient offered for our consideration is Aris (Aris Servetalis), who is stricken while on a bus, and once he falls into the hands of the authorities–he has no ID on him–he is placed in an institution that specializes in his condition. By this point the specialists understand there is no use in trying to recover memories (the title refers to the only thing that Aris knows he “likes”) and thus the “rehabilitation” involves constructing a whole new identity. The comic potential is ripe, and to a certain extent Nikous finds a lot of dry humor in Aris’s situation and his road back to social normality. What’s most interesting about the script is the clinical means that Aris’s doctors use to bring about this transformation—and it is presented as a transformation. Regardless of Aris’s blank slate condition, there is still a personality there, and as a character study of a man without character, Apples works well. Aris’s mission is to relearn everything a modern human being learns to become a functioning member of society, from riding a bicycle to picking up sex partners in a bar, and the fact that all these tasks are documented (with, of all things, a Polaroid camera) emphasizes the conventionality of what we take for human development, which has become yet another function of capitalism.

But Nikous himself is trying to present something conventional as well, and the movie’s wry take on social conditioning eventually gives way to an emotionally fraught melodrama. This change in tone should be startling, but it feels less than consequential since Aris’s default behavior is, by definition, impossible to read. When he becomes sad, it actually seems like an improvement. Nikous is defeated by his own cleverness.

In Greek. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670).

Apples home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2020 Boo Productions and Lava Films

Posted in Movies | Leave a comment

Review: Where Is Anne Frank

Posted on March 10, 2022 by philipbrasor

Moviegoers who approach this animated feature about the famous teenage memoirist because it was written and directed by Ari Folman should be warned that it is very different in tone and substance from his most famous movie, Waltz With Bashir (2008). Bashir was a shocking depiction of wartime memory that was clearly aimed at adult sensibilities, whereas Anne Frank is more or less a children’s (or YA) movie, with an edifying theme and a story that moves adroitly between straightforward melodrama and action scenes. As such, it doesn’t quite pack as much of a visceral punch as Bashir, though it has much to recommend it as a serious reimagining of Frank’s story in the 21st century.

The framing is modern: the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, where tourists line up for hours every morning to look at the recreation of the secret apartments where Anne and her family hid out from the Nazis for two years during World War II. It also contains Anne’s actual diary, displayed in a glass case, which, one morning, is shattered by a fierce storm that hits the city and breaks the windows of the museum. Exposed to the elements, the diary comes to life in the form of Kitty, the imaginary friend in whom Anne invested as an interlocutor, a kind of ideal composite of all her favorite Hollywood stars and her own better angels. Kitty at first does not realize she is not in 1944 any more and watches curiously at the multinational crowds who come through the museum. In a panic, she eventually leaves the building with the diary, and the whole city itself panics because that volume defines Amsterdam’s existence, both spiritually and economically. Kitty the fugitive takes sanctuary with some refugee street kids, and the movie moves back-and-forth between the tale of Anne Frank as related to Kitty in the 1940s and Kitty’s own on-the-lam existence in the present.

Folman’s visual style is rooted in simplification: the Nazis are all identical, silent droogs, impossibly tall and draped in black. And while the city itself is impressively rendered as a believable urban sprawl—half museum piece itself and half neglected municipal everywhere—the characters are all types, including the refugees who are meant to show the (young) viewers that while the kind of fascism that led to the Holocaust may no longer be extant, the displacement of innocent lives by war continues unchecked. Folman, an Israeli, doesn’t try to compare the Jews of World War II to Middle Eastern and African migrants. That said, the current refugee crisis involving Ukrainians gives the movie an added subtext that highlights his potent plot point about how these non-European refugees were refused asylum in one European country after another, including the Netherlands. Basically, Forman just wants to show that the ideas people take away from Anne’s writing are more universal than the way they applied to her own tragedy. More seriously, the Anne “industry” as it’s conveyed in the film is a betrayal of these ideas, but by couching this aspect of the movie’s theme in action cliches (there’s a heart-stopping chase over the city’s rooftops and through its myriad frozen canals) designed to attract young people who, presumably, wouldn’t watch the movie otherwise, it tends to lose some of its power as a result. Folman also assumes most of the viewers know something of Anne’s story, which makes much of the exposition seem heavy-handed, though I suppose he is just covering all his bases. Ideally, he expects young people to either have read Anne’s diary or at least know what it’s about, but that may not be as much of a given as it once was. 

In English. Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063).

Where Is Anne Frank home page in Japanese

photo (c) Anne Franks Fonds Basel, Switzerland

Posted in Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Media watch: Trans parent throws family court for a loop

Posted on March 6, 2022 by philipbrasor
Family court

In response to yet another earnest challenge to Japan’s family register (koseki) system, the Tokyo Family Court on Feb. 28 refused to recognize a person as the father of two children despite the fact that this person provided their own sperm to produce the children in question. The donor is not married to the woman who gave birth to the children, and as we’ve mentioned in this space previously, Japanese law prioritizes married couples, which means the husband of the mother is automatically assumed to be the father of the child. And while this protocol would seem to be obvious and unassailable, there are exceptions that test this rule, as when the couple is separated for whatever reason and the mother is in a relationship with another man who impregnates her. Relationships considered unconventional but which produce a child can confuse matters when it comes to registering the child’s birth. These include same sex relationships or mothers who remain single. In other words, if the mother is not in a heterosexual marriage recognized by the state, the family register system is thrown for a loop. Granted, these exceptions are rare in Japan, but they do happen and there are indications that they will increase in the future.

The Feb. 28 decision is tricky, but not because the father is not married to the mother. Though in such circumstances the resulting child is officially designated as being illegitimate in the koseki, the father can still claim paternity as long as they acknowledge the child administratively within the proper timeframe. The problem here is that the father is not a man. The person who is suing to be recognized as the father of the children in question underwent gender reassignment surgery between the time she had her sperm frozen and the time her partner was inseminated with that sperm and then gave birth to the resulting babies, one in 2018 and the other in 2020. There is no doubt that the woman, who is unnamed in the Asahi Shimbun report on the matter and is in her 40s, is the biological father of the children, but that means nothing to the arbiters of the family register because there is nothing in the law that takes such circumstances into account. So while there is a blood relationship between the woman and the children, there is no legal relationship.

It should be noted that the woman officially changed her gender designation on her koseki in 2018 in accordance with a special law that went into effect in 2004. Since then, more than 10,000 Japanese people have legally changed their gender designation, and while this has been seen as progress for the rights of transgender individuals, when children enter the picture matters get complicated. The judge in the Feb. 28 case did recognize the blood relationship between the woman and the two children, but said that the Civil Code does not recognize a parent-child relationship involving a woman who is not the birth mother. Moreover, the court said that the law’s interpretation of paternity is premised on the father being a man, so the plaintiff can be neither the children’s mother nor their father, at which point the law runs out of parental designations. 

Continue reading →
Posted in Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Review: Possessor

Posted on March 4, 2022 by philipbrasor

Brandon Cronenberg’s sci-fi thriller will be, as one critic whose name escapes me at the moment once said of another film, “strong meat” for a lot of people. Extremely violent and cynical about our present capitalist situation, the movie posits an alternative universe that sees assassination as a viable corporate venture, and while assassins have become a trite commonplace of both popular and art house cinema, the ones in Possessor are particularly difficult to empathize with.

Cronenberg is the son of David Cronenberg, the Canadian filmmaker who has probably done more for the hybrid sci-fi/horror genre than anyone in film history. Brandon is more playful than his father but in treating the assassination scenes as if they were style challenges he ratchets up the disgust factor to a level that transcends the typical body horror David made into an art form. For one thing, the actual assassins are “possessed” by a remote host who controls them, thus they are killing against their will; but Cronenberg adds an extra layer of terror by making the possessor, in this case a young woman named Tasya (Andrea Riseborough), repelled by her task. She is the horror-show equivalent of a corporate tech engineer with a very specific skills set. In the opening scene, a black woman marches into a high-scale restaurant and proceeds to disembowel a rich white man with a steak knife under the supervision of Tasya, who is writhing in agony in a kind of submerged coffin back in her company lair. Even beyond the loaded subtext of a black person murdering a white person at the behest of another white person, the sequence practically normalizes the whole concept of killing by proxy.

But once you get that concept Possessor has no real place to go except into the realm of the macabre. Tasya’s own supervisor (Jennifer Jason Leigh) also has Tasya’s talents but seems much less pained about the moral dimensions of her job. We soon figure out that they work for a corporate entity that carries out elaborate contract killings, the more elaborate the better. A good part of the running time is devoted to the task of inhabiting the mind of Tate (Christopher Abbott), a drug kingpin who is about the marry the daughter of Parse (Sean Bean), a rich data raider, in order to make him kill his future father-in-law so that the relative who is paying for the hit can move up the inheritance list. Explaining this subterfuge while creating a repugnantly impressionistic visualization of Tasya’s struggle for Tate’s mind is somewhat beyond Cronenberg’s own skills set, though he does come up with some wildly surreal ideas about what goes on in the lower depths of the brain. And the scenes where we can recognize Tasya’s “consciousness” steering Tate’s actions are as creepy as anything in Cronenberg pere’s ouevre.
 
Still, the people who will want to see Possessor are those who enjoy the clinical depiction of what violence can do to the human body. The horror elements on display have an emotional component that often feels cold and thus the displacement is doubly terrifying. The movie is a series of visceral nightmares acted out by individuals who are not really themselves, but get to watch themselves do awful things.
 
Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Possessor home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2019 Rhombus Possessor Inc./Rook Films Possessor Ltd.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Media column March 2022

Posted on March 3, 2022 by philipbrasor

For this month’s Number 1 Shimbun we wrote about the government’s bid to make the Sado gold and silver mine a UNESCO heritage site. Link to the column is here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Review: The Roads Not Taken

Posted on February 27, 2022 by philipbrasor

Getting the viewer to believe Javier Bardem is the father of Elle Fanning is only the first of many points that director Sally Potter tries and fails to put across in her movie about a day in the life of a young woman taking her dad, who is stricken with early onset dementia, to a dentist’s appointment. Fanning’s Molly exhibits a Ulysses-like fortitude in the face of one ridiculously complicated trial after another, while Bardem’s Leo is lost in his own confusion, which is partly explained to us when we occasionally drift into his unconscious, where, despite his affliction, he explores the possibilities pondered in the movie’s title. None of it really works and, frankly, I didn’t fully understand why Potter would think it would. It’s not just a slog, but a tediously frustrating one.

We eventually come to learn that Leo is a semi-famous novelist who grew up in Mexico before crossing the border illegally. How he ended up marrying Rita (Laura Linney) and raising Molly we never learn, and the lack of backstory poses its own questions, like why doesn’t Molly understand any Spanish (which Leo babbles a lot in his state) and why is Rita such a bitch about her ex-husband’s condition? We do, however, learn something about his life in Mexico, since he imagines what might have happened had he married his first love, Dolores (Salma Hayek), and also why his marriage to Rita didn’t last, since he also imagines what might have happened had he carried out his plan after Molly was born to abandon his family and move to Greece. Obviously, none of these things happened—or, at least, they didn’t happen the way he imagines them—but they point up Leo’s sense of crisis as he got older and, by implication, his writing skills dried up, but since we have no idea what he’s written or what Mexico and Greece really mean to him, most of this development just feels like running in place. 

The real drama is in the here-and-now as Molly struggles to keep her job as the trip to the dentist in New York City really does become an Odyssey potholed with rude doctors, locked doors, abusive cab drivers, and an ex-wife whose flip attitude makes her daughter seethe with anger. The through line is Leo’s incomprehension of the outside world, but his inner world is not particularly coherent, and neither is Potter’s movie. 

In English and Spanish. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011).

The Roads Not Taken home page in Japanese

photo (c) British Broadcasting Corporation and the British Film Institute and AP (Molly) Ltd. 2020

Posted in Movies | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Review: Ushiku

Posted on February 26, 2022 by philipbrasor

Ian Thomas Ash’s documentary about foreign detainees in Japan’s immigration facilities is a pointedly activist work. In interviews Ash has said that his main purpose was to make the Japanese people understand what their government is doing in their name, and much of the footage depicts unnecessary cruelty in the carrying out of what the authorities deem their legal obligations to the state. In fact, it’s easy while watching the doc to get the feeling that the whole idea of basic human rights means something completely different to the Japanese authorities than what it means to most of the rest of us—including the average Japanese citizen—who have grown up in what is generally referred to as liberal democracy. Ash is counting on this dynamic to gain traction with Japanese viewers, so the difficult part is getting them to see the movie in the first place.

He’s thus undertaken a Japanese media blitz that has been successful on the one hand—almost all of the press outlets who would likely be sympathetic to his cause have covered the movie uncritically—but on the other hand that coverage may be counterproductive in that many of these outlets have dwelled more on the process of the filmmaking than on the theme of human rights abuse. The Mainichi Shimbun, for instance, which is perhaps Japan’s most left-center national daily, ran an article recently that focused on the fact that Ash recorded much of the footage inside the East Japan Immigration Center in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture, without permission, since cameras are not allowed in the facility. Though Mainichi acknowledges the cruelty on display and that the average Japanese person probably should know more about it, by concentrating on Ash’s subterfuge it makes the movie out to be something that it really isn’t. Ash is not trying to set anyone in the system up. He is simply trying to convey a truth that’s hidden. Reading the Mainichi report, I got the sense that the reporter was slightly bothered that Ash had broken rules to get what he needed, no matter how laudable the end result may be.

That end result is all the more effective for the way Ash interacts with his subjects, the detainees themselves, who represent a wide range of nationalities and sensibilities. There are several disturbing images of immigration staff subduing “uncooperative” detainees with brute force. The facility’s explanation is always the same and they count on people’s acceptance of this work as “protecting” the public rather than administering immigration protocols, the implication being that these detainees are criminals, though for the most part the only things they did wrong was coming to Japan without proper pre-vetting and/or messing up on their paperwork. (Not to mention that many are forced by necessity to work illegally for Japanese employers who are never prosecuted for hiring them.) Most of the detainees came to Japan seeking asylum without fully understanding that Japan does not consider itself a “refuge,” even though it has signed agreements with international bodies to accept refugees. If Ushiku has a drawback it’s that it doesn’t fully explain the bureaucratic mindset that’s behind the cruelty—the idea that while oppressed people should have their human rights respected, it’s difficult to guarantee within Japan’s vaguely defined concept of civil rights, which only exist for native Japanese people. In other words, refugees’ (or any foreign person’s) human rights don’t supersede the Japanese state’s “obligation” to protect itself from what it sees as disruption to public order, which is what foreigners still represent to a certain degree. That kind of edification, however, is not really Ash’s purview, and as far as his movie being a visceral condemnation of Japanese policy rather than an intellectual one, he was right to listen to his conscience. 

In English and Japanese with English and Japanese subtitles. Now playing in Tokyo at Theater Image Forum Aoyama (03-5766-0114).

Ushiku home page in Japanese and English

photo (c) 2022 Ushiku

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Review: Cyrano

Posted on February 25, 2022 by philipbrasor

Though I wasn’t surprised that someone had finally decided to adapt Edmond Rostand’s play as a musical, I was surprised that the producers of the original stage production adapted for this movie chose twin brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the rock group The National to write the music. Though The National’s music can be quite dramatic, it’s also built for the kind of singer I don’t normally associate with musical theater, and in that regard the songs here don’t quite make up for the lyricism that is supposed to be a hallmark of the title character’s poetry. That said, Peter Dinklage in that role gets by just on the strength of that amazing face of his, and director Joe Wright, who loves to show off as much as Cyrano does, makes much of Dinklage’s craggy features and moony eyes. 

The actors Wright chose to play Roxanne (Haley Bennett), the object of Cyrano’s hidden affections, and Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), the handsome young soldier who recruits Cyrano’s literary skills to woo Roxanne, are a little too generic, especially when they have to share scenes with Dinklage. Only Ben Mendelsohn, playing the nobleman De Guiche with lots of pancake makeup and rouge, holds his own with Dinklage, but their scenes together are few and far between. For sure, the juxtaposition highlights Christian’s simple-mindedness to the point where you can’t believe that Roxanne doesn’t see through the ruse earlier than she does. 

If Wright can be commended for anything it’s the way he folds the backdrop of war into a story that most adapters tend to relegate as historical baggage and atmosphere. The National’s songs, which always contain a heavy dose of melancholy, work quite well in this context and while Wright seems to enjoy himself more when staging comedy (and Dinklage is also a great comic actor) he understands the ending is almost pointless without the sense of loss that war brings. His movie will never be the last word on this classic play, but the imagination at work is commendable at times. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905), Shibuya Parco White Cine Quinto (03-6712-7225), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Cyrano home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2021 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. 

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Review: Gagarine

Posted on February 24, 2022 by philipbrasor

Sometimes, the circumstances surrounding the making of a film help make the experience of watching it richer. The most obvious example that comes to mind is Jafar Panahi’s Offside, a movie that was set and filmed during an actual 2006 World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain. In the final tense scenes, as a group of young women who have attempted to illegally sneak into the game are carted away by the police, the whole city of Tehran explodes in celebration when the Iranian team wins. Knowing that the revelry was not staged makes all the difference.

Directors Fanny Liatard and Jeremy Trouilh attempt something similar but more complicated. Their debut film is set in Cite Gagarine, a housing estate that was built on the outskirts of Paris in 1961, the year that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man ever to venture into outer space and after whom the housing project was named. The film itself takes place as the projects were being torn down in 2019, and yet most of the action is set within its walls. Our hero, 16-year-old Youri (Alseni Bathily), also named after Gagarin, has lived in the projects ever since he immigrated to France as a young child; it’s the only home he’s ever known. True to his namesake, he’s obsessed with outer space, and studies the stars with a native intelligence that’s extended to the practical. He builds an observatory on the roof and helps neighbors set up satellite dishes to catch broadcasts and even repairs the elevators and replaces lightbulbs. During the course of the film, most of Youri’s neighbors, also immigrants from a wide range of backgrounds, move out to new digs as the building around them is prepared for demolition, but Youri stays, a squatter in a homemade plastic curtained cubicle filled with technology of his own devising. 

Mostly abandoned by his mother, who’s off with a new boyfriend, Youri’s only companions are his best friend Houssam (Jamil McCraven) and Diana (Lyna Khoudri), a girl from the local Roma community, meaning she doesn’t have a fixed address by definition. Together, they create their own separate world thanks to Youri’s “spaceship,” for want of a better word, which contains its own greenhouse and facilities for providing sustenance amidst the general extinction. 

Unlike other recent movies about the banlieues, Gagarine is hopeful and buoyant, even when Youri’s schemes turn to sabotage. And while its air of magical realism can sometimes feel forced, it honors the hopes and dreams of France’s marginalized communities without trivializing them. In the end, Youri wants to do right by the people he knows, and even the authorities are forced to bend to his ingenuity. Though it’s mostly unrealistic, Gagarine is a perfect tribute to the power of the unique imagination. 

In French, Romany and Russian. Now playing in Tokyo at  Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011).

Gagarine home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2020 Haut et Court – France 3 Cinema

Posted in Movies | Leave a comment

Media watch: Secret births wreak havoc on bureaucratic protocols

Posted on February 23, 2022 by philipbrasor
Jikei Hospital baby hatch (Jiji)

In 2007, Jikei Hospital in Kumamoto installed a “baby hatch” where infants could be deposited anonymously, presumably by parents who are unable to raise them for whatever reason. Since then, the hospital has received about a dozen babies every year through the system. The purpose has always been to give new mothers who feel they cannot have the child they are carrying an option other than abortion, but, more significantly, it allows the mother (or father, for that matter) to remain anonymous, since one of the reasons mothers don’t give their babies up for adoption is that they don’t want to be identified in official documents, such as the family register (koseki). The baby hatch has always been controversial.

In an interview with the Asahi Shimbun that appeared Feb. 21, the head of the hospital, Dr. Takeshi Hasuda, who came up with the idea for the baby hatch, talked at length about “isolation births” (koritsu shussan), meaning those instances when a woman gives birth alone and, usually, in secret. As with infants dropped off at the baby hatch, the reason a woman may have a child in isolation is to keep it hidden from others, and, as Hasuda points out, giving birth is often dangerous, even when done in a medical institution. Isolated births are thus doubly dangerous to both the mother and the child. In recent decades, the practice of isolated births has become more of a problem as parents found it ore difficult to sidestep bureaucratic requirements. When births happened at home and were assisted by midwives, a woman could manipulate the birth registration with the help of the midwife. So if the mother was, say, unmarried or underage, the child could be registered as the issue of an older married sister or even the birth mother’s own mother. In some cases, the baby chould be given to a third party without the authorities knowing. However, nowadays almost all births take place in hospitals, so such subterfuges are much more difficult, if not impossible. Consequently, many teen pregnancies end with mothers giving birth in isolation. 

This phenomenon was broadly discussed in the media after a Vietnamese technical trainee, who believed she would be deported from Japan if it were known she was pregnant, gave birth to twins in 2020 in secret and the twins died. (We have already written about this story here.) Though the trainee’s circumstances were different from those of most Japanese women who opt to give birth in isolation, the dangers are the same. More to the point, medical institutions that want to address the problem have to contend with its main cause—the registration of the child’s birth, which is mandated by law and requires the name of the mother. As Hasuda told the Asahi reporter, there are no laws in Japan that even acknowledge such a phenomenon. All births in Japan must be reported to the relevant local government within 14 days, and if the required documents are not filled out “properly,” they can be “rejected.” What Hasuda meant was those situations when documents are submitted without a mother’s name. In that case, the baby cannot be placed in a family register and, for all intents and purposes, does not exist as far as the authorities are concerned. 

Continue reading →
Posted in Media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment