Sunday, October 17, 2010
Tokyo Sonata
This movie is a social commentary on contemporary Japanese society. It deals with the following issues: the emptiness and loneliness of the nuclear family, for all members, including the loveless couple and the selfish and isolated children; the lack of hope in teenagers as they realise that Japanese society has nothing to offer them; the collapse of the traditional employment system and the subsequent demise of the salaryman and Japan’s reliance on the US for national security.
This movie deals with these issues quite sensitively, but loses some the plot two thirds of the way in. The significance of the wad of money found in the toilet by the protagonist, the car crash and the trip to the beach by the mother was lost on me. Especially considering that nothing actually changed as a result of these events. Or maybe they did. The final scene of the younger son playing the piano perhaps signified a new beginning for the family. The father had obviously embraced the idea of his son pursuing a career as a pianist, signalling a shift in his mindset about his son’s careers, and perhaps an acceptance of the fact that Japanese society has changed for good—something he has to come to terms with considering his apparent lack of employment options.
I think director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s decision to cast Koizumi Kyoko as a full-time housewife was old-fashioned. Married women in Japan tend to go back to part-time work once their children are at school, especially if their husbands are not big earners, which Ryuhei clearly wasn’t. The full-time housewife is a thing of the past (and even so, a phenomenon that has always been limited to the middle-and upper-classes). If Koizumi Kyoko’s character depicted a more realistic married Tokyo woman, this would have enabled a better consideration of contemporary married couples, and pointedly, how the shifts in society have affected women.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Educating Rita
Based on the play written in 1979 by Willy Russell, the movie Educating Rita was produced in 1983 and is set in Liverpool. It stars Julia Walters as Rita and Michael Caine as Frank Bryant, her tutor. Its central themes of class, gender, and privilege are timeless, and as a result, it has aged well.
Rita is a 26 yr old hairdresser from a working-class family, married to a working-class man. She is aware that something is missing in her life. She wants ‘choice’, and realises that as an uneducated hairdresser whose destiny is to have children—and soon, as her husband and father keep reminding her—she doesn’t have much choice at all. She decides to attend ‘Open University’ to study literature. Enter her tutor, Dr Frank Bryant. Frank is a failed poet, who, since his wife left him many years ago, has replaced writing with drinking. He is full of cynicism for life, his students, and for university learning.
Rita and Frank hit it off and both of them are enriched for it. Frank admires Rita’s warmth and grounded outlook. Rita looks up to Frank and can see brilliance beneath his weary and cynical ways.
Rita’s controlling husband has never liked her studying. He’s keen to have children, but Rita is secretly taking the pill because she’s not ready. Unable to identify with either her working-class background or with the educated elite, she feels that she’s a ‘half-caste’. Her sense of entrapment is captured in the poignant scene in the pub where she sees her possible future in her mother’s tears, as everyone around them sings happily, but obliviously. Rita decides she wants to ‘sing a better song’ and leaves her husband. She chooses a difficult path for a woman in the early 1980s and turns her back on not only her husband, but her father as well, who also thinks she should stop studying and have a baby.
Her rationale for choosing this path is the unfailing desire to find out ‘about me’. She likes what she finds and sticks with it. Her eagerness to learn initially outweighs her ability, but soon she is talking and talk and writing essays with the best of them. As the quality of her work improves, Frank’s admiration for what he initially saw in her turns to fear and despair as he witnesses Rita become more like him and all the other faceless academics around him. Gone is her naivety and in its place is her ability to adopt the correct jargon, socialise with other students and write essays that will satisfy examiners.
In short, she gains the knowledge that he has. She is able to enter a world that he takes for granted. Frank does not realise that it is his position of privilege that allows him to be cynical. It is precisely because he is educated that he can see ‘culture’ for what it is. Rita, on the other hand, does not have that privilege. Importantly, once she gains that privilege, she will not necessarily take Frank’s position on it. She will not necessarily become cynical like him, or like her flamboyant and ‘classy’, but deeply depressed flatmate Trish.
As a sometimes disillusioned academic, I found this film easy to relate to, very entertaining and extremely thought-provoking. For a simply made film, it has layers and layers of meaning to it that give it great depth.
Rita is a 26 yr old hairdresser from a working-class family, married to a working-class man. She is aware that something is missing in her life. She wants ‘choice’, and realises that as an uneducated hairdresser whose destiny is to have children—and soon, as her husband and father keep reminding her—she doesn’t have much choice at all. She decides to attend ‘Open University’ to study literature. Enter her tutor, Dr Frank Bryant. Frank is a failed poet, who, since his wife left him many years ago, has replaced writing with drinking. He is full of cynicism for life, his students, and for university learning.
Rita and Frank hit it off and both of them are enriched for it. Frank admires Rita’s warmth and grounded outlook. Rita looks up to Frank and can see brilliance beneath his weary and cynical ways.
Rita’s controlling husband has never liked her studying. He’s keen to have children, but Rita is secretly taking the pill because she’s not ready. Unable to identify with either her working-class background or with the educated elite, she feels that she’s a ‘half-caste’. Her sense of entrapment is captured in the poignant scene in the pub where she sees her possible future in her mother’s tears, as everyone around them sings happily, but obliviously. Rita decides she wants to ‘sing a better song’ and leaves her husband. She chooses a difficult path for a woman in the early 1980s and turns her back on not only her husband, but her father as well, who also thinks she should stop studying and have a baby.
Her rationale for choosing this path is the unfailing desire to find out ‘about me’. She likes what she finds and sticks with it. Her eagerness to learn initially outweighs her ability, but soon she is talking and talk and writing essays with the best of them. As the quality of her work improves, Frank’s admiration for what he initially saw in her turns to fear and despair as he witnesses Rita become more like him and all the other faceless academics around him. Gone is her naivety and in its place is her ability to adopt the correct jargon, socialise with other students and write essays that will satisfy examiners.
In short, she gains the knowledge that he has. She is able to enter a world that he takes for granted. Frank does not realise that it is his position of privilege that allows him to be cynical. It is precisely because he is educated that he can see ‘culture’ for what it is. Rita, on the other hand, does not have that privilege. Importantly, once she gains that privilege, she will not necessarily take Frank’s position on it. She will not necessarily become cynical like him, or like her flamboyant and ‘classy’, but deeply depressed flatmate Trish.
As a sometimes disillusioned academic, I found this film easy to relate to, very entertaining and extremely thought-provoking. For a simply made film, it has layers and layers of meaning to it that give it great depth.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The King review
I watched The King because I am love with Gael Garcia Bernal. He is, in my opinion, the most delicious-looking man in the world. I want to devour him, and I want him to devour me. Obviously I knew nothing about the film prior to watching (apart from the all-important fact that GGB was in it) because when he started speaking English my jaw dropped to the floor. This was the first time I had heard him speak English. I learnt later that this movie was in fact his first English-speaking role. Honestly, him speaking English took away some of his allure. It must be his swarthy Spanish-speaking ‘otherness’ that I am attracted to.
Nevertheless, he soon took his shirt off and voila, allure back intact. Frailty thy name is women indeed. Or, frailty they name is Emma, at the very least.
GGB plays a young (late teens? Early 20s?) man who just got out of the marines after having served for 3 years. Here we see the predictable prostitute scene of course, cos ya know, men who have been in the armed services NEED to have sex once they are on a break, it’s programmed into them you see – they are big strong men who need to penetrate women to maintain that big strong manliness. Groan.
Once that scene is out of the way (shame on whoever directed it for your lack of originality, by the way), GGB makes his way to his father’s hometown. His ‘father’, David, is a man he has in fact never met. His mother was David’s old flame (a prostitute? I wasn’t clear on this). Since then, David has become an evangelistic Christian, married and had 2 teenaged children. He has also become the pastor of a church. Anyway, disasters of biblical proportions follow, including GGB seducing his 16-yr old half-sister. It could have been a really good movie if the characters had a little more depth. GGB was initially presented as a bit of an enigma but it soon became clear that he was mentally deranged. Yet, this was not explored at all. In fact, I think GGB might have felt a little short-changed in his first English-speaking role—he barely said anything!!!!!!!! Perhaps a little more dialogue would have helped the main characters come to life a bit more.
Nevertheless, he soon took his shirt off and voila, allure back intact. Frailty thy name is women indeed. Or, frailty they name is Emma, at the very least.
GGB plays a young (late teens? Early 20s?) man who just got out of the marines after having served for 3 years. Here we see the predictable prostitute scene of course, cos ya know, men who have been in the armed services NEED to have sex once they are on a break, it’s programmed into them you see – they are big strong men who need to penetrate women to maintain that big strong manliness. Groan.
Once that scene is out of the way (shame on whoever directed it for your lack of originality, by the way), GGB makes his way to his father’s hometown. His ‘father’, David, is a man he has in fact never met. His mother was David’s old flame (a prostitute? I wasn’t clear on this). Since then, David has become an evangelistic Christian, married and had 2 teenaged children. He has also become the pastor of a church. Anyway, disasters of biblical proportions follow, including GGB seducing his 16-yr old half-sister. It could have been a really good movie if the characters had a little more depth. GGB was initially presented as a bit of an enigma but it soon became clear that he was mentally deranged. Yet, this was not explored at all. In fact, I think GGB might have felt a little short-changed in his first English-speaking role—he barely said anything!!!!!!!! Perhaps a little more dialogue would have helped the main characters come to life a bit more.
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