Category: Film

Japan Society’s annual Japan Cuts Film Festival for 2024 started on July 10th and is running through this Sunday, July 21st.

My thoughts on films from 2015’s festival can be read starting here, 2016’s starting here, 2017’s starting here, 2018’s starting here, and 2019’s starting here.

This screening ended up being a special one for me. Due to the pandemic and personal limitations this was my first time at Japan Cuts since 2019. In addition, while I had planned to see several films Great Absence ended up being the only one I was able to attend. It was nice to be back, even for a single film, and I lucked into an excellent one for my only viewing.

Great Absence is a gradually unfolding tale of an actor and his wife brought abruptly back into the middle of his estranged father’s life due to the latter’s rapidly worsening dementia. Hanging ominously over the visit is the puzzling absence of the father’s wife of twenty years.

The movie is intentionally disjointed and deliberately paced. With growing puzzlement and unease the viewer gets small glimpses of interwoven past and present, with new perspectives often re-contextualizing what’s come before.

The shifting ambiguity mostly works, and there are some incredibly powerful moments that are open to some interpretation in ways that add a lot of depth. A key scene seemed to have a second, fascinating nearly opposite possible interpretation from what I think we were supposed to take from it.

While there are a couple of aspects I really would have liked to see fleshed out a touch more by the end, for the most part this is an exceptionally well written drama where the explanations received and the things left open work together particularly well.

The movie doesn’t try to tell the viewer what to feel, but instead presents imperfect people in difficult situations frankly and lets the viewers take it in as they will. But the fragile nature of a story subject to some of the same type of fluid reality dementia brings occasionally turns it all on its head. Combined with an appropriately subtle score and beautiful cinematography it all elicits strong emotions across the spectrum as the film marches on in a gradual but unrelenting way.

This deeply affecting story hinged on the actors’ portrayals of complex emotions simmering beneath the surface and wouldn’t have worked with lesser performances.

Actor Tatsuya Fuji was in attendance and received Japan Society’s first Lifetime Achievement Award before the screening. The previous night his co-star Mirai Moriyama received the annual Cut Above Award for outstanding achievement in film (presented before a screening of Shadow of Fire). All four key roles, including those of Fuji, Moriyama, the third lead Hideko Hara, and supporting actress Yoko Maki, were played to perfection.

Great Absence is a subtly powerful film that I highly recommend.

After the film there was a Q&A with Fuji and director Kei Chika-ura. Important central concepts of Great Absence were taken from Chika-ura’s own experiences, and it was fascinating to hear about the various conditions that brought the film together. Fuji talked at length about his extensive career, his approach to acting, and the curious story of his only other trip to New York nearly fifty years ago. All in all it was an excellent session and a wonderful post script to the movie.

This showing was Great Absence’s New York premiere, and it will be playing from today at the Angelika Film Center. Fuji and Chika-ura will be attending and having Q&A’s after both tonight and tomorrow’s 7pm showings (July 19 & 20, 2024). I encourage anyone in the area to check it out.

Japan Society’s annual Japan Cuts Film Festival for 2019 ran from July 19th to July 28th. This year I previously saw Samurai Shifters, Dance With Me, and Killing.

Also see my thoughts on films from prior years’ festivals (list and links at the end of this article).

My final film for this year’s festival was a fascinating documentary following the journey of blind musician Hideyuki Kato’s efforts to direct a short film (a science fiction story told using several disparate techniques called Ghost Vision).

At 2 hours and 25 minutes, Night Cruising admittedly feels its length in parts. It presents a bit of a conundrum: while I feel like it could have and perhaps should have been a touch shorter I can’t really point to anything to be left out. The short film in question is “shown” twice (once at the beginning and again towards the end) for important reasons and the creation of each section of the film is highlighted in between. Rounding out the documentary is personal perspective on Kato’s journey, which is of course is most important of all. So everything’s appropriate and in some sense needed, but none the less it does feel a bit of an endurance effort at times.

That said, this is a engrossing film overall. Among all the many points of interest along Kato’s captivating journey, the most fascinating section is where he learns about color via an ingenious method of explanation of the color wheel and gradation through a physical model he can feel and color patches containing braille-like identifiers. It’s these numerous insights into the process of a blind director creating art in a visual medium that make Night Cruising something special.

As alluded to above, one of most intriguing things about the “movie within the movie” Ghost Vision is the variety of techniques used. Each of the six sections is done in a different way, from models to live action to anime, etc. To be honest I’m not sure it 100% comes together, but it’s mostly there, it’s really creative and interesting both as a project and in the story and themes of Kato’s vision, and is definitely an impressive achievement.

An curious byproduct of the unique nature of the documentary and its subject is that in at least one section watching it as an international viewer alters the intended experience. The documentary opens with a presentation of Kato’s film as he himself would experience it – sound only with the audience looking at a blank screen. It’s a bold and meaningful choice and even more striking in retrospect when the full short is shared later. But for an audience that does not understand Japanese, translation is of course needed and provided. I found myself wishing I could understand what was said though, so that the stark subtitles against the black screen weren’t there. For me, even as someone who watches subtitled movies all the time without distraction, it was distracting here. It’s a small and unavoidable thing but particularly when discussing a documentary which is largely about sensory perception I thought this consequence of presentation worth discussing.

Ghost Vision was a wonderfully ambitious project of personal growth and determination for Kato, and following along via the efforts of Night Cruising’s director Makoto Sasaki was certainly worthwhile.

My prior years’ Japan Cuts thoughts:

2015: Make Up Room, Strayer’s Chronicle, & 100 Yen Love, The Voice of Water, The Light Shine Only There, & Sanchu Uprising: Voices at Dawn, and the experimental spotlight.

2016: Bitter Honey & Lowlife Love, Nagasaki: Memories of My Son & Bakuman, The Shell Collector & Being Good, and Flying Colors, Kako: My Sullen Past, & Emi-Abi

2017: Mumon: The Land of Stealth, Tokyo Idols & The Tokyo Night Sky is Always the Densest Shade of Blue, Over the Fence, and In This Corner of the World

2018: Ramen Shop & Night is Short, Walk On Girl, and Mori: The Artist’s Habitat & Hanagatami.

Japan Society’s annual Japan Cuts Film Festival for 2019 started on July 19th and is running through today, July 28th. My thoughts on films from 2015’s festival can be read starting here, 2016’s starting here, 2017’s starting here, and last year’s starting here.

“If you can’t kill, your sword is useless.”

This year’s centerpiece was my second film of the festival and interestingly both were samurai films. That’s entirely the end of the similarities however, as where Samurai Shifters is a full blown comedy Killing is a incredibly harsh yet thoughtful expression of fear and frustration with the state of the world told through the lens of a historical period.

Killing is tense, unsettling, and violent. This is completely intentional on the part of director (and one of the lead actors) Shinya Tsukamoto, who didn’t want the fights to be things of beauty but instead realistic, uncomfortable experiences that made his film leave a strong impression on its viewers. He certainly succeeded, as the impact of the movie lingers long after its end. In fact I found the effects actually strengthened after the viewing, with things coming into focus more as I pondered what was presented.

During the movie I was increasingly enthralled by the choices Tsukamoto and his actors made and the way everything unfolded, but the frantic, headache inducing cutting of the fights, extremely graphic violence (made more stark by the frequent matter of fact nature of its delivery), and other aspects made it hard to process as I was watching. These aren’t criticisms per se though, as again it was all an intentional part of what Tsukamoto wanted the film to be and instrumental in achieving the right atmosphere and feeling. The more I think about this after the fact the more I come to grips with it and the more impressed I am.

Tsukamoto was in attendance, and received this year’s Cut Above Award for Outstanding Performance in Film before the screening. His Q&A after the movie was an excellent. The provided insightful look into what he hoped to accomplish and convey with the film was fascinating and added layers of context to help unravel all the themes and implications swirling around beneath the surface.

The approach taken makes it tough to generally recommend Killing, as there’s a lot in this film that will be too much for many viewers. But that’s the entire point, and there’s meaning to every artistic choice made supporting a stunning emotional core to the film. There’s an escalating madness lurking inside Killing that both arises naturally and seems to have no true reason behind it, and that achievement alone makes this challenging, compelling drama well worth the effort.

Japan Society’s annual Japan Cuts Film Festival for 2019 started on July 19th and is running through July 28th.

My thoughts on films from 2015’s festival can be read starting here, 2016’s starting here, 2017’s starting here, and last year’s starting here.

That feeling when hard work and a stroke of luck is about to pay off with a possible promotion and you have to chase a hypnotist across the country to reverse a suggestion that makes you break into song and dance at the slightly hint of music.

I wasn’t able to make it to this year’s opening screening, so was really pleased to have an encore was added that gave me a chance to see one of this Japan Cuts 2019’s most anticipated films.

Dance With Me’s silly premise and willingness to poke fun at the very genre it encapsulates is its greatest strength. It’s at its best when it fully embraces its concept and subverts genre expectations, with absurd surprises are every corner and main character Shizuka is joyfully dancing across the screen despite herself.

In contrast it does lull a bit the couple times it instead falls into the very genre trappings it tries so hard to subvert, and the story framework doesn’t quite support the weight of the film when time for thought to settle is allowed. There are tiny disconnects between the themes the filmmakers seem to be trying to let creep in and the actual zany happenings of Shizuka’s adventure at the exact points everything needs to come together into a cohesive whole.

But there isn’t anything wrong per se in a movie like this with the background setup existing solely to give rise to the entertaining, madcap weirdness that is the whole point of the film. The detail needed to properly explain my small criticisms above might give the impression that they are bigger issues than they actually are. In fact it’s just a little bit of background noise that keeps this “only” in the realm of being excellent instead of the masterpiece it seemed on the edge of becoming.

The movie is hilarious overall with strong acting surrounding and supporting an excellent, anchoring performance by Ayaka Miyoshi (as Shizuka). There were several genuinely captivating twists as Shizuka’s journey kept escalating into higher and higher levels of wonderful ridiculousness.

Dance With Me has a joy to it that’s infectious, always simmering beneath the surface waiting for the right times to burst out. I found it impossible not to smile during this movie, and really enjoyed it overall even if it was best to turn my brain off just a little at times. Highly recommended.