A Week of Movie Recommendations: Less Known Asian Cinema
Ever since shelter in place began in March, on my Facebook page, I have been recommending a film daily. Several people have asked if I could compile those recommendations. So this begins a series of recommendations where each day I recommend a movie based on a theme.
Today I will begin a week of recommending Asian Cinema, especially movies that are not as often discussed. So, sorry but there won't be "Ikiru" or "Hero" or "Old Boy" in these suggestions.
I was inspired to do this particular selection by the number of great papers my students wrote on the film "Parasite" which is a masterpiece that became the first movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture even though it is not in English. Hopefully audiences who were hesitant to watch a movie with subtitles will now be more open.
Less Known Asian Cinema
Day 1 Movie Recommendation
"The Horse Thief" **** (1986)
ZhuangZhuang Tian is an incredible Chinese director. Like most of the famous directors in China, at some point, their films come into disagreement with the Communist ruling party and they are reprimanded. Sometimes their films have to be finished outside of China.
In 1999, I had seen Zhuangzhuang's most famous film "The Blue Kite" which is an amazing telling like Zhang Yimou's "To Live" about the upheaval of the cultural revolution. That year, my father and I, which was our practice every Sunday, watched the program Siskel & Ebert. Gene Siskel had recently passed away and Roger wanting to not rush to fill the chair invited numerous film critics to sit in. But on this special occasion in 1999, the great film director, Martin Scorsese, took the chair opposite Ebert to discuss their selections for the ten best films of the decade. To my shock, Scorsese chose a film I had never heard of. Zhuangzhuang's "The Horse Thief".
Trying to find a copy back in that day was difficult, but eventually, I did. I have been haunted by this film ever since.
The movie takes place in Tibet and seems like a place very alien to the life I have. In many ways the first Inuit film "Atarnajuat" reminded me of this movie. The main character, Norbu, lives with his wife in rural Tibet. Food is scant and money is even harder to come by. Norbu resorts as he has done in the past to stealing horses to feed his family. But, there is a call for purging evil to try and stem the tide of drought and other aliments. His people decide to exile him to the Tibetan waste.
Even though it is foreign, there is something so familiar about this. Humanity's desire to try and control its own fate. Choosing to scapegoat others for hardships. Arbitrarily choosing to suddenly enforce a code of conduct.
Living in the wilderness, Norbu and his wife are forced to watch as their son dies. After, he repents to the village and his accepted back. But then, his wife gets pregnant and gives birth to their second child. With another mouth to feed, Norbu is forced back into stealing horses.
The movie is beautiful in its simplicity. Shot in cinema verite and incorporating elements of Italian Neo-Realism, Zhuangzhuang captures the sere humanity of these characters as they struggle with the same worries that we do, a century later, and in another part of the world.
This film is slow, meditative, and observant. In many ways, this film plays with the suggested ending of Di Sica's "The Bicycle Thief". Rather than cut away at the end when they fail to find the bike, the father, to feed his family, resorts to his own theft. He is imprisoned and while there his first child dies. When he gets out to provide for him family he must steal again... the cycle never ends as the instruments to overcome poverty are not in people's own hands.
Again no trailer, but here is a clip from the film that really demonstrates the beauty with which Zhuangzhuang shoots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvH-ZsQ5s7M
Day 2 Recommendation
Next on our list of unsung or not often spoken about Asian films, I turn from China to Japan. We started with the great Chinese director Zhuangzhuang Tian and his haunting masterpiece "The Horse Thief". Today I turn to director whose reputation has grown in recent years. With his film "Nobody Knows", Hirokazu Koreeda made a big splash. "Nobody Knows" made my top ten films in 2004. Then, with his most recent film, "Shoplifters", he received a much deserved Oscar nomination. But, it is his second film, first movie of his I saw in 1999, that I want to recommend today.
"After Life" by Hirokazu Koreeda (1998) ****
The films "Blade Runner" and "Dark City" both deal with the premise of human identity and whether we are merely a collection of our memories or do we indeed have a soul. They do so in a Science Fiction thriller setting. Koreeda, here, takes those questions and turns them into a premise for a very quiet, but beautiful film.
There is a flash of white light, accompanied by bells. Suddenly we are in a new place. It is familiar, not alien, looks like some place we've been before as one of the main characters is approached by a younger person who explains to them that they have just died. This is not the after life per say but a waiting place for the next life. While they are here, they are to review the memories of their life and select one to take with them into the after life. It will be the only memory they have of their life before this.
This question of course forces the audience to ask... what one memory would you take into the next life? Would be of a lover or a friend, of parents or of a moment of pure contentment. Would it be of a piece of art or of the birth of a child? My answer has changed as I have grown older and now, even with all this time for reflection, I admit, I do not know what I would choose.
We see many people being interviewed in this waiting place. Apparently Koreeda filmed many real people asking them about their lives. Their interviews are woven into the film where they discuss which memory they wold take with them. We are not informed which people are actors and which ones are real people.
Such a fantastical premise if done in Hollywood would accompany massive special effects, a heaven like atmosphere, probably angels and choirs and choruses, etc. Not here. Koreeda treats this waiting place like it is a place on Earth. There are two main sets of characters those who are waiting and selecting their memory and those who work in the waiting place. Some of them have beautiful and revelatory connections to each other that I will not reveal here.
After the memory is selected, the workers have to recreate the memory in film. Sets have to be designed. Actors have to prepare. Scenes have to be edited. Once that memory is done, the film is handed to the person and they depart for the next life.
Koreeda here speaks of the magic of cinema. The film is as celebratory of cinema as "Cinema Paradiso". It speaks to the importance of cinema in such a beautiful and elegant manner, something that Quentin Tarantino wants to approach in "Inglorious Basterds" but never gets near.
Movies about death are rarely beautiful and uplifting. This is one of those rare films.
Day 3 Movie Recommendation
After talking about Zhaungzhaung's "The Horse Theif" and Koreeda's "After Life" we turn now to Korea. Korean cinema has two directors that are known world wide. The first, and most famous, is Bong Joon Ho whose film "Parasite" won the Oscar and whose filmography is nothing short of amazing. I recommend almost all of his films but especially "Mother", "The Host", "Okja", and "Memories of a Murder". The other famous Korean director world wide is Chan-wook Park. Park has made infamous horror films along with his Revenge trilogy : "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance", "Old Boy", (his masterpiece) and "Lady Vengeance". A few years ago he released his most polished film "The Handmaiden" which made my top ten that year.
But today, I want to recommend a great Korean War film. For American cinema, there are few notable films about the Korean War. The most infamous is "MASH". But, for Korea, the Korean War was of course a civil war. It pitted brother against brother and is still a scar for the Korean people.
"Tae Guk Gi" ****
This is a heart breaking war story told in both visceral, gritty detail and high melodrama. The Lee family is a poor working class family in Seoul, South Korea. The entire family has sacrificed and put the hopes on the youngest brother of the family, Jin-seok. They have saved enough for him to go to college. The elder brother, a shoe shiner, is working on a special pair of shoes for his brothers' big day. Then the Korean War starts and both brothers are forcibly conscripted into the army.
The elder brother, realizing that Jin-seok may not make it out of this war alive strikes a bargain with their commanding officer. If he wins Korea's highest medal of valor, his younger brother will be sent home to go to college. An agreement is struck. The younger brother watches helplessly as his older brother volunteers for dangerous mission after dangerous mission, eventually becoming a heartless killer. But, his sacrifice works. He receives the medal and his brother is sent home.
This seems like a happy ending, but the film is only at the halfway mark. Jin-seok is arrested under suspicion of joining the communist party. His elder brother comes to stop it and a fight breaks out where he believes that his younger brother dies.
The younger brother, Jin-seok, then wakes up in a hospital. He discovers he was saved from the event after being thought dead, but his brother has defected to North Korea and now is the poster child of propaganda for the North Korean Army. Now he must fight to try and save his brother.
It is a powerful and difficult film at times. The scene early on in the medical hospital displays the true horrors for war as well as "Saving Private Ryan". But it is a reminder for me that wars always involve more than one side and that while America was there to fight against a perceived and real communist threat, for the Koreans the war was between family.
Day 4 Movie Recommendation
After highlighting some less commonly known films from China, Japan, and Korea, today we turn to famous Asian directors but some of their lesser known films.
For the first one of these, I want to turn to Ang Lee. Ang Lee is one of those rare Asian directors who has made the transition into making both films in Asia as well as independent movies in English and blockbusters in English as well. Known for such great movies as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (a film that revived the martial arts genre for America; it had never gone away in Asia) as well as his great "Sense and Sensibility" and his masterpieces "Brokeback Mountain", "The Ice Storm", and "Life of Pi". I have previously recommended his "first" feature film "The Wedding Banquet", but today I want to turn to a wonderful comedy he made:
"Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" ****
There is a long tradition of remaking great Asian films as less spectacular American films. Look at Kurosawa's filmography to see dozens of adaptations. In one way, I guess, that's how you used to know you made it. When Hollywood, rather than marketing and releasing your film, saw how good it was and made their own version. Anyway. "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" was remade into "Tortilla Soup" which is a pale comparison to the original.
The story is about a father, an aging chef, who is trying to navigate old age, retirement, and the love lives of his three daughters. Each daughter has her own story and go into the dirty details of trying to live successful professional lives while also maintaining a relationship. The youngest daughter's best female friend tortures this boy who has a crush on her, teasing him endlessly. So the daughter decides to make her move on the young guy and the two become a couple. When she tells her friend, Ang Lee cuts to the father stirring a coal fire. The juxtaposition is amazing and hysterical.
The eldest daughter is a professional whose fast life style leads to quick romances. The middle daughter is a teacher who doesn't feel she has time for
While the film is about family and romantic relationships, the film revolves around food. At the beginning of the film, the father makes the family dinner for the week. Even though his daughters all live on their own, they come together once a week to eat together. The manner in which Lee shoots these cooking sequences are mouth watering. The incredible food and time to prepare it is the sign of love. But, for the father, his entire identity begins to be question. He is retiring. He is a widower. And then he faces another tragedy... he is losing his ability to taste. His daughters begin to notice, but don't have the heart to tell him.
The ending is a comedy in the truest of senses, in fact, it is almost Shakespearean. Everyone finds love in some way although not the way they necessarily think they will.
Day 5 Movie Recommendation
One of my dear friends, Matt Young, I met when I was a student at Bellarmine and he was a teacher. Hanging in his classroom was a poster of "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse". I had met few people who had seen that documentary at the age of 16 and none who ever had a poster. We started talking even though I wasn't in his class. Since then, we have seen a number of films together. Highlights include: 70mm print of "2001: A Space Odyssey", the restoration of the original "Godzilla", all of the "Lord of the Rings" in theaters together, the 70 mm print of "Lawrence of Arabia", "Ratatouille" and "Spider-man", both at the Century 22 so many more.
This past year, Matt has really begun a deep dive into the films of the Japanese master Sanjuro Ozu. In fact, he drives his daughter a little nuts by always suggesting "we should watch an Ozu movie!" Ozu's reputation in the larger cinematic community has been growing each decade with directors in the last Sight and Sound poll naming his film "Tokyo Story" the greatest film ever made. Like Troy Heisman, I wanted a guest writer on this blog of film recommendations and could think of no one better to recommend one of Ozu's films.
Here is Matt's selection:
"Late Spring" ****
I love the cinema of Japanese master Yasujirō Ozu, the visionary director who pioneered his own approach to both storytelling and film language in a career that stretched from the 1920s into the 1960s. Like his contemporaries Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford, Ozu started making films and began producing signature works before the introduction of sound in the late 1920s. And like those other filmmakers (with the exception of Lang I suppose), he produced his greatest films in the decades that followed, ones in which sound, color, World War II, and television remade the industry and the art form. Each had their own distinct approach that set them apart. For me, right now, Ozu is the one that matters the most, and Late Spring is a film that speaks directly to 2020 concerns about family, the future, and a changing world.
Late Spring was made in 1949, during the US occupation of Japan following World War II. It’s generally regarded as the film that kicks off the phase of his career for which Ozu is most renowned. It’s his first film (of many) to feature a “seasonal” title, the first (of several) to feature actress Setsuko Hara, and the first in the so-called “Noriko Trilogy,” in which Hara plays three different women each named Noriko, each struggling to find her place in a changed and changing world. The trilogy continues with Early Summer (1951) before concluding with the Tokyo Story (1953), Ozu’s most famous film.
Late Spring, like all of the films that followed (and most of the ones that came earlier), doesn’t have much of a plot. Widower Shukichi Somiya (played by Chishū Ryū) is getting older and worries that he’s a drag on his adult daughter Noriko (Hara), holding her back from moving on with her own life, which he feels necessarily involves getting married and leaving home. That’s pretty much it, start to finish. It’s Ozu though, and that’s all he needs. Instead of plot and twists, he focus almost entirely on character and relationships. Personally I find the masterful way in he depicts both to be nearly unrivaled in film. His films are so personal, and so real. And as a result I can’t help but sympathize with the characters. Certainly the performances have a lot to do with that too, but I don’t know how to separate the credit between the actors and the director. Either way, they are believable in a way I don’t often see. So for instance in Late Spring the focus is on relationship between the father and daughter, or the daughter and friend (played by Yumeji Tsukioka), or between Noriko’s aunt (played by Haruko Sugimura) and Shukichi, who is her brother. The performances are superb. All of these talented actors are Ozu regulars, and Late Spring is a great example of the strength of the Ozu’s ensemble approach. Is it Noriko’s story? Shukichi’s? The friend’s? The aunt’s? It’s all of the above. Every character shines.
The setting is a fascinating blend of familiar and foreign, or traditional and modern depending on how you look at it. Late Spring has tea ceremonies and Noh, and also references to baseball and a humorous exchange about Gary Cooper. It has Kyoto and Coca Cola. Modern girls and patriarchy. Look, I love a good samurai movie, but I also kind of love that Ozu just sticks with ordinary people and the world he, and they, and we all live in. Ozu ventures outside now and then, but mostly he stays in the home, where the action is. That reminds me a lot of how I live my life, in general, but especially right now, during *this* late spring.
Speaking of “late spring,” the title is curious and revealing. Late spring, say the time between Memorial Day and the Summer Solstice, is a time of endings and transition. It’s a time of closure, tidying up, and looking back. Graduation. Saying goodbye. But of course as a door closes, a window opens. Late spring is also quite obviously a time of anticipation, rejuvenation, and change. This is the plot of the film: Noriko tidies up while Shukichi ponders doors and windows.
But it’s the *way* that Ozu depicts tidying and pondering, and the interior-ness and intimacy of ordinary life that sets his sets him apart. Every shot is a visual feast. The framing is so thoughtful, and so artfully composed. The visual invention never ends. There are endless combinations of textures, patterns, and shades (or colors in later films). Late Spring has its share of tracking shots but generally the camera is static; from a low angle, as if the viewer is seated (which by the way the viewer typically is as s/he views); and the compositions are symmetrical and flat. The way characters move through the space, however, creates a type of three dimensionality as they appear and disappear through the various layers in the composition. It’s hyper-real, a dream, a meditation.
Let’s leave it there: Late Spring is a meditation on relationship and rejuvenation. I can’t imagine a more timely film for the late spring of 2020.
Day 6 and 7 Movie Recommendation
Today, I am going to finish out my week of celebrating unsung Asian films or filmmakers. Today, we went with celebrating two of the great Asian filmmakers by talking about their lesser works.
The first is the Chinese director, Zhang Yimou. I have already written about Zhang Yimou's "To Live" in my recommendations for films based on real events. His movies prior to 2001 were famously naturalistic; but, in 2001 he made another masterpiece "Hero" and then directed a number of martial arts films. He also orchestrated one of the great directorial feats of all time in Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.
The other director needs no introduction: Akira Kurosawa. Akira is in the top pantheon of filmmakers and often mentioned in the top five directors of all time. His masterpieces are too numerous to list here but some include: "Seven Samurai", "Ikiru", "Ran", "Yojimbo", "Sanjuro", "Rashamon".
Today's recommendations:
"The Road Home" by Zhang Yimou and "Dodes'ka-den" by Akira Kurosawa
"The Road Home" takes on the same subject as one of his masterpiece's "To Live" but it is done in a very subtle way. "The Road Home" begins in the present, shot in black and white. It is dreary. Sad. Lifeless. A son returns home to bury his father who was a small town teacher for most of his life. His mother refuses to allow them to transport his father's body home. She wants the traditional funeral rights to be followed, where the body is walked from where the person passed away to the location where they will be buried so that their soul doesn't get lost.
The son doesn't understand. So, the film begins a journey into the past. We see the small rural town where his mother lived as a young woman when the new government sends a new teacher to the village. The past is shot in beautiful color. Zhang Yimou uses color better than most directors and here he outdoes himself. Not quite in the stylistic manner of "Hero" but it leaps off the screen. There is a joy and innocence to. Then, the cultural revolution happens and the world begins to change. Intellectuals such as teachers are targeted.
"The Road Home" is one of the best romances I've ever seen, but it is also a brilliant and subtle social commentary between China before the cultural revolution and after.
On the other hand, "Dodes'ka-den" is Kurosawa's anthology film that dives into the lives of several of people who live in the slums. It is a colorful and beautiful story about the poor people who live there. They will not be rescued from this life nor escape, but in their own way they find joy.
The central character that the film rotates around is a young mentally handicapped boy who is obsessed with streetcars. He runs around the junkyard pretending to be a streetcar.
The set Kurosawa build is unlike any set in his filmography. It is a fantastically looking junkyard, full of invention, although we also see the poverty of the situation. In the end, the visuals remind me of what Miyazaki might build a junkyard to look like if he directed live action films.
Of course, the film is a still a tragedy, but even within that there is also joy.
"The Road Home" Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVr6-nR_ZFA
"Dodes'ka-den" Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2oS6Esfow8
