You won't learn anything about Japan, the samurai or the incident known historically as the Akō Incident if you see the 2013 American fantasy action film "47 Ronin." What you will see is a troubling depiction of new wave Orientalism wrapped up the latest addition to the white man saves the world film genre.
To be specific, this is a case of a half-white man saving a vendetta. The half-white person is Kai (Keanu Reeves), the illegitimate only child of a British sailor and a Japanese peasant. He is part of Lord Asano's (Min Tanaka) household, although not a samurai.
Due to a witch's spells and the evil Lord Kira's ambitions, Lord Asano is forced to commit ritual suicide (seppuku). Kai, through his connections with the supernatural world of Tengu, is able to guide the leader of the ronin, Kuranosuke Ōishi to find swords and battle against an evil witch (Rinko Kikuchi) who turns into a silver fox and finally a fire-breathing dragon so that the 47 ronin can complete their act of vengeance against Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano).
This version of the 1701 Akō Incident features a screenplay by Chris Morgan ("Fast & Furious") and Iranian-British screenwriter Hossein Amini ( the 2012 "Snow White and the Huntsman" and 1997 "The Wings of the Dove"). Amini was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing for his "The Wings of a Dove" script, but he won't get much adulation for this effort. While Amini was working with the 1902 Henry James novel of the same name for that 1997 movie, he might have consulted the popular bunraku play "Kanadehon Chūshingura" by Takeda Izumo II.
Apparently executive producer Walter Hamada had a hand in the writing as well, making it his first screen story credit. Hamada is better known as a producer with credits ("The Conjuring," "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Friday the 13th") that in no way would lead someone to believe he could help this script. The supernatural elements mix European and American horror traditions with Japanese in a manner that gives the CGI loose reins, but not in a manner that serves the story or the locale well.
The costumes designs by Penny Rose ("Pirates of the Caribbean") combine East Asian aesthetics as do the hair and makeup design. This is Japan as seen through the eyes of someone who has been watching too many Chinese period dramas and has no concept of the meaning of color or the consequences of natural resources.
Director Carl Rinsch had previously only completed video shorts as a director. How he got greenlighted for such a big budget movie is something that should be investigated; it might enlighten us into the ways of Hollywood as a business.
Certainly some of these attitudes of experimenting and blending traditions and cultures have been seen before and were acceptable to the American public in the 1930s-1950s, but hasn't the world changed since then? One wishes someone had given this budget to Takashi Miike, a man who knows something about horror movies and has recently made a few respectable samurai movies as well.
Wait until this movie comes out on Netflix and even then, you might not be able to stifle a yawn.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Hayao Miyazaki's "The Wind Rises" (Kazetachinu) is unlike his previous features and is more a contemplation on war and circumstances than a perilous adventure.
No one's life is threatened. No girl struggles to make her way and resolve some problem. Here we have an actual person who did struggle with a real problem: Using the most available material in Japan to make fighter airplanes. At the time, German manufacturers made their airplanes out of metal. Japan is a metal poor country. Jiro Horikoshi was able to design the Zero WWII fighter--a zippy little airplane that at first out maneuvered the airplanes flown by the Allies.
Miyazaki imagines the near-sighted boy who dreamed of being a pilot but had to settle for designing airplanes instead. And Miyazaki adds a gentle doomed romance.
Jiro's dreams come alive, bringing him into contact with an Italian count who designed airplanes. If you dream of flying and have loved the imagery of flying that come from Studio Ghibli, you'll enjoy this gentle movie.
Sometimes war leads to innovation and sometimes we don't celebrate the technological innovations of the defeated nations. Horikoshi's innovations did results in deaths, but doesn't have those creepy ethical complications that the German (and Japanese) research (and torture) come with.
If you missed the festival screenings, "The Wind Rises" is playing for one week at the Landmark. Otherwise, it will be back in theaters for a wider release in February.
This dark Korean animated feature, "The Fake," illustrates how easy it is to incite violence. Watching it, I wanted to slap the two main female characters and yell, "Get a grip" or the equivalent in Korean.
Director/writer Yeon Sang-Ho takes us to a town doomed to extinction: A dam will flood the are and all the residents must move, using the compensation money. You get the idea that the brighter bulbs in this neighborhood, left to shine somewhere else. As our protagonist, Min-Chul, we had a boozing, gambling man who beats both his wife and his daughter. His wife's reaction is to beg, cry and pray. His daughter mouths off, but she, too, doesn't really fight back. He's trouble, in an obvious package. You wish his wife and daughter would leave him. The daughter eventually does, but not in a good way and he "rescues" her.
Less obvious is the evil that lurks in the smooth manners and nice suit of the the local church elder, Choi, and even the earnest Father Sung.
Director Yeon said in a post-screening Q&A that he didn't mean to criticize religion so much as he wanted to show how the truth coming from a bad person can be ignored by people while lies of a slick, clean cut person will be accepted. We have seen the minister as a con-man before, but here the Father Sung is being used, the father Min-Chul uses his wife and daughter and Choi uses all of them.
There is an epiphany which seems to support faith and give Min-Chul redemption, but will you really care? This animated feature is for mature audiences because of violent content and sexual situations. "The Fake" might be hard to find outside of film festivals.
Criticwire Question for 28 October 2013 Q: The very public feud between actress Lea Seydoux and her Blue Is the Warmest Color director Abdellatif Kechiche has become as well-known as the film itself. Should critics ignore off-screen information in reviewing a film, or do they have an obligation to deal with it?
I wasn't asked to answer this question although other writers for RogerEbert.com were given the opportunity to write in. Only two women wrote in reply to this controversy (Alissa Wilkinson of Christianity Today and Carrie Rickey of various outlets).
Like Rickey, when I heard about the feud, I immediately thought of Maria Schneider, who decided after her role in "Last Tango in Paris" that she would no longer pose nude. Schneider was bitterly angry about how Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando exploited her.
The two stars of "Blue is the Warmest Color" are angry now and times have changed since the 1970s. If you want a brief history of the controversies surrounding "Blue is the Warmest Color," read the timeline on Vulture.com. When it was released, "Last Tango in Paris" was also controversial.
As it happens, I had finally, watched another controversial film, also made in the 1970s. The Japanese-French production of "Realm of the Senses" (1976) starred Eiko Matsuda as the infamous Abe Sada and Tatsuya Fuji played the lover. This was a sensational case in which a woman killed her lover by choking him during sexual intercourse. Yet she didn't stop there. She cut off his genitals and kept them with her, fleeing the scene after carving script into his body to immortalize their love as if the corpse was a tree. The dead are, remember, usually cremated in Japan, but Japan embraces the ephemeral, something symbolized by the cherry blossoms.
We know what happened to Abe Sada--she became a celebrity of sorts after her release. What happened to Eiko Matsuda? Her career floundered. Tatsuya Fuji remained active within the movie industry.
The movie "Realm of the Senses" came out four years after "Last Tango in Paris" (1972). What happened to Maria Schneider? She would later say, "I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn't console me or apologise. Thankfully, there was just one take." Should any actor be made to feel this way? Schneider was only 19 at the time.
It's hard to ignore the implications of another 1970s film, "Manhattan" with the writer/director/star Woody Allen presenting the best relationship in the movie between the twice-divorced, 42-year-old Allen and a 17-year-old Tracy (played by the then 16-year-old Mariel Hemingway).
The Criticwire question only came to my attention when I read the clamorous tweets by Kevin B. Lee. He wrote, "This question relates to whether a critic should be a personal shopper, gossiper, or something else." Lee thought more serious thought should be given to the matter, commenting "The two examples you gave, both essentially about culture workers and mistreatment, begs discussion of exploitation in arts."
As a woman, and someone who previously volunteered at a women's center, I don't think we should ignore the continued plight of women from Eiko Matsuda to Maria Schneider to Natasha Kinski or to Mary-Louise Parker. The movie industry and its powerful directors--inside and outside of Hollywood, including most infamously Roman Polanski, too often take young hopeful women, underage or just recently legal, and exploit them.
In many ways, what they do is little better than the pornography industry and in many instances the difference is blurred--consider the case of John Derek and three of his four wives (Ursula Andress, Linda Evans and Bo Derek). With time and pop icons like Madonna, the line between pornography and pop culture has been further blurred. Is this the kind of liberation feminist wanted or just sexism re-packaged? The question to ask would be: Are young men treated similarly?
I haven't seen the movie in question, "Blue is the Warmest Color." Yet it doesn't surprise me that a lesbian erotically charged film was produced by a man because that is a male fantasy. As an artist, a sometime photographer (my latest project) and student of art history, I know that there is still a resistance in the United States to the male nude, the full frontal male nude and men being photographed as erotic objects (e.g. Robert Mapplethorpe). As a theater critic who used to frequent productions (including the original "Naked Boys Singing") in small theaters around Los Angeles including West Hollywood, I know that male actors aren't afraid of going buff and that in part supports an industry (full body waxing).
As a female student in a photography and film department long ago, I quickly became aware of the mindset of many of my fellow students. Many male students would laugh and not in a kindly way about how they got clips of photos of women posing nude. In one department, there would be informal beer and porn movie parties. In another art department, women would pose nude in a student movie as a way to get credits on their portfolio.
Whatever the intent of movies--student or studio, nude clips become part of a collection, existing outside of the artistic context and reduced to titillating pornography collections online and off. That makes one wonder just how necessary nudity in the movies is at all, particularly in a culture that is so skewed against male nudity.
As critics, and as human beings, I don't think we should ignore the exploitation of men, women and children, particularly in a year when we are celebrating films that explore the exploitation of men based on race: "Daniel Lee's The Butler" and "12 Years a Slave." We should question if a movie that exploits or abuses human beings should be considered art and consumer worthy, just as some people ask if we should buy products made through slave or child labor, or, if you support PETA, products that result in the death or injury of animals.
If female nudity in movie is the result of coercion, bullying and emotional manipulation in the movie industry, then this is something that critics should consider just as critics should consider race and racism. Can a critic ever speak of "Triumph of the Will" without acknowledging the European Holocaust? Can any critic discuss "The Birth of a Nation" without considering the reality of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan?
While the director of "Blue" has ridiculed the complaints of his stars because other people suffer more, that doesn't mean his actions were right.
I have written at length about the current racism in movies toward Asian Americans. Asian Americans are an ethnic minority in the United States while ethnic Asians are a majority in the world (roughly 60 percent of the global population). Women are a bare majority in the U.S. and the world. If we as critics can be critical in the case of certain races, why can't we acknowledge problems, ethical, legal and moral, regarding the treatment of a little over half the human population.
As a disclaimer, I do not know Manohla Dargis, but I am glad she gave the industry something to talk about. As a critic, I don't believe we are personal shoppers or part of the rumor mills, but we should be giving our readers and colleagues something to think about.
As part of the unequal treaties and the 100 years of shame endured by China, European companies came into China and exploited the resources--human and otherwise. One of those companies was Siemens AG under the leadership of John Rabe. Rabe's diaries recorded the atrocities of Nanking and this 2009 German-Chinese-French production, "John Rabe," is based on those diaries, reportedly rediscovered by the late Iris Chang.
The Hamburg, Germany born Rabe entered China in 1908, working for Siemens AG China Corporation in various locations including Peking, Shanghai and finally Nanking. Siemens was founded as Siemens & Halske in 1847 based on a telegraph that didn't need to use Morse code. By 1919, S & H had entered into the production of light bulbs and in the 1920 and 1930s, as Adolf Hitler was rising to power, Siemens was making radios, TV sets and microscopes. The company supported the Nazi Party and eventually built factories in and near the Nazi death camps. Prisoners at the infamous Auschwitz worked at a Siemens factory inside the camp. Camp factories were often run by the SS.
The movie doesn't go into the history of Siemens and the Nazi party, but the allegiance of the company is clear from the Nazi flag it flies.
The movie begins with a phonograph playing European music. We meet John Rabe (Ulrich Tukur) and he speaks in German to his female Chinese telephone operators. The movie cuts between scenes that look like archival footage and richly colored scenes of the foreigners and their life of luxury. News of the Japanese invasion begins in 27 November 1937 when Rabe writes about it with optimism. In a voiceover, Rabe explains, "They say the Japanese razed Shanghai to the ground. I just don't want to believe that." In Nanking, all is quiet although some people are running away in anticipation of the Japanese invasion.
Rabe isn't a particularly likable person. He's been reassigned and is leaving Nanking. As he attempts to move his prized piano, he finds the Chinese workers aren't very helpful, speaking in German, he declares, "these idiots are good for nothing." He has the same opinion of his driver Chang, exclaiming "How can anybody be so dumb?"
Before the invasion, he wasn't against the Japanese invasion, writing "it wouldn't be bad if Japan gained more influence in China" because the Japanese are allies of the Nazi regime. And China isn't his concern any more as John Rabe is getting ready to leave China after 27 years and 142 days. At an elegant ball in his honor, all of Nanking's high society attend. A woman sings a Western sounding ballad about waiting for someone to return. The crowd is mostly non-East Asian.
Not all of the foreigners in Nanking are allies of Germany. American doctor Robert O. Wilson (Steve Buscemi) snidely remarks at Rabe's going away party about a Nazi being honored by a less than honorable Chinese official, "A corrupt Chinese general honors a Nazi." Yet this is balanced by the other foreign guests complaining about almost everything from the way the Chinese serve wine to the Japanese ambassador Fukuda (Togo Igawa) explaining how China should not see Japan as an enemy, "but as an opportunity." After all, "the clever must lead the simple-minded." Sounds like the White Man's Burden has mutated in Japan.
The party clearly shows the separation of the privileged foreigners from the normal native Chinese population and even their distain for the Chinese whose hospitality they exploit. Yet things are going to change because this is late in the year 1937. After the Chinese official intones, "All Chinese must be sad today" because John Rabe "has done more for China than one could have expected from a foreigner," Rabe gets up to address all the guests, but he never gets a chance to finish his speech.
The Japanese are entering Nanking with bombs and even the foreigners aren't sheltered from the bombs. When Rabe and others including Wilson (a real person) form the International Safety Zone Committee, the American Minnie Vautrin is replaced by a fictional French woman named Valerie Dupres (Anne Consigny). The "safety zone" isn't entirely safe.
Rabe is forced to act and throughout Rabe finds his decisions questioned--not only by a more staunchly Nazi German, but also by other Germans such as Dr. Rosen (Daniel Bruhl) who have felt the dark shadows of the European Holocaust. Rabe might be the "good German" but he wasn't saintly. Likewise, the Chinese and the Japanese aren't all saints against the sinners.
The film was controversial in Japan because the Prince Yasuhiko Asaka (Teruyuki Kagawa), who was commander of the Japanese forces in China, is shown as having a decisive role in the Nanking Massacre. The film did not receive a theatrical release in Japan. While that might be a political problem with the film, the other is point of view. The movie is from a Rabe's point of view, a foreigner's viewpoint of Chinese history without a counterbalance of, say, the chauffeur's experience (Ming Li) or that off a Chinese doctor. Too often, expositions substitute for visual character development, but even this isn't too tiresome as the movie attempts to show the enormity of the Nanking Massacre.
The movie, which was nominated for seven German Film Awards, won for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Production Design and Best Costume Design. In German, Chinese, Japanese and English with English subtitles, the movie is available on Netflix for streaming.
My original review of "The Flowers of War" received a lot of negative attention. My views haven't changed, not even with so many commenters pulling the race card.
Director Zhang Yimou is known for movies that have the theme of Chinese people facing hardship such as his 1994 "To Live." That doesn't mean he hasn't directed action movies. His wuxia movies include the 2002 "Hero" and the 2004 "House of Flying Daggers." Like these movies "The Flowers of War" has a rich use of color.
"The Flowers of War" was based on a best-selling novel by Geling Yan "13 Flowers of Nanjing." One wonders if Geling Yan wasn't pandering to a Western audience with the choice of 13 because in Chinese and Japanese 13 is not an unlucky number. The bad luck vibes come from a European Judeo-Chrsitan tradition. I haven't read the novel, but this 2011 movie was the Chinese entry for the 84th Academy Awards but did not make the shortlist. It also was nominated for the 69th Golden Globe Awards, but not for Best Motion Picture. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film but lost to a movie from Iran, "A Separation." It was nominated for a Best Film Award at the sixth annual Asian Film Awards, but lost to "A Separation." Ni Ni did win an award as Best Newcomer. The movie won an award for Best Sound Editing at the Golden Reel Awards.
Set on 13 December 1937, "The Flowers of War" takes on a mystical air with children running through the fog with an air of desperation. The narrator is a young girl, Shu (Zhang Xinyi), and she and her classmates are running back to the sanctuary of a Christian church, the Winchester Cathedral. The pursuers are the lustful Japanese army and the flight of the girls and one boy is aided by the remnants of the Nanjing Army led by Major Li (Tong Dawai).
Bale's character, John Miller, is also heading toward the cathedral. He's a mortician and the cathedral's priest has died. John meets up with the girls and they reach the cathedral which has a large compound encircled by high solid walls and a wood gate. With the priest dead, his body blown away by a bomb, and the cook, runaway with the food, the children are alone--a dozen girls and a one orphan boy, George Chen (Huang Tianyuan). You can see where this is heading?
John is not a good man, yet. He is a mercenary at heart and his scenes with the young girls comes across as a bit creepy. John isn't the only opportunist searching for sanctuary. A group of high-class prostitutes also force their way into the compound. They are glamorous, beautifully coiffed and made-up as if they were just taking an evening stroll through the bombed and burned city, stepping elegantly over the corpses.
John is delighted with these ladies of questionable virtue and takes a particular interest in the haughtiest, and the formerly most sought after whore, the aloof and beautiful Yu Mo (Ni Ni).
John is searching for money. The ladies are hoping he'll be able to use his Western face to get them out of Nanjing. They take over the basement. John remains upstairs in the late father's room, getting drunk. When the Japanese break in and attempt to rape the students, he at first cowers in an armoire, but eventually John emerges, dressed as a priest and attempts to bluff his way past the Japanese. The Japanese aren't quite convinced, but the noble Major Li picks a few soldiers off and the soldiers retreat to capture the sniper.
The character development of the adults is shaky. John's English dialogue seems unnatural and even after the initial creepiness of John's money-grubbing, grasping character wears off, there's still something queasy about the juxtaposition between the nostalgic sensuousness of the inner sanctum of the women's world of lingerie and laughter in the basement and the death and grittiness of war. The situation will tug at your heartstrings, but still the transformation from drunken mercenary to conscientious "father" isn't convincing.
The girls are temporarily "safe" when a good (a stiff Atsuro Watanabe) Japanese officer assures Father John that order has come to Nanjing and the Colonel posts soldiers to "protect" the girls--keeping them in. Yet under orders, the colonel "invites" the girls and not their guardian to a party where it seems assured they will be raped and then killed.
Using his mortician skills John helps replace the girls with the courtesans who nobly sacrifice themselves, but they are one person short. The young boy volunteers to pretend to be a girl. There are 13 flowers. John and the girls make their escape into an uncertain future because Chinese viewers will know the Christians weren't particularly welcome under the communists.
"The Flowers of War" is a propaganda movie coming out in a time when most of the world has moved past the simplistic characterizations of the enemy as evil and the other side as saintly. Chinese soldiers and Japanese soldiers both committed atrocities during the war and pre-World War II China was subjected to humiliation by Western nations for decades. In 1937, consider the condition and legal status of the African American man in the Deep South and the native Africans in South Africa and you'll be able to put things in better perspective. The 1930s and 1940s was a time when inhumanity toward other men and women based on race was considered reasonable. Were the Japanese expected to be any different?
In reading history, I find that the Americans atrocities are often somewhat mitigated by accounts of Japanese torture and war crimes. I've also read, in English, similar explanations for Korean and Chinese transgressions. I seldom read that about Japanese soldiers even thought there are accounts of Chinese atrocities against Chinese and Japanese prior to Nanking, recorded by Swiss businessman Tom Simmen. What happened in Shanghai preceded Nanking and it seems that the Chinese weren't above torture and this is something that should be remembered when historically evaluating what happened in Nanking.
I was watching the third episode of the second season of Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories." In this 23-minute episode now available on Netflix, "A boy uses an ancient Chinese spell to switch bodies with his sick grandfather so the old man can relive his former glories on the baseball field."
Now my Mandarin Chinese is rusty, and I can't even be sure if the ancient Chinese spell is supposed to be in Mandarin, but both actors recite it devoid of tones. With four tones in Mandarin Chinese that means there are so many possibilities.
The spell is: Yijing Meijing Laotsi I will be you and You will be me.
What would have been funnier is if the boy or the grandfather mispronounced the spell and things began to go so very wrong.
I think there was something to that effect (without the magic) in the of TV series "Family Affair."
Otherwise, the "Amazing Stories" suggests that Chinese is very simple for Americans (or anyone) to master (Shades of Rudyard Kipling's "Kim"?).
If just the thought of the larval form of the order or Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) make you a bit queasy, then you might want to skip this 2010 Japanese film now available on Netflix. Directed by Joji Wakamatsu the movie is based on Edogawa Rampo's 1929 anti-war oddly erotic short story "The Catepillar" (芋虫Imomushi).
Not everyone was gungho and ready to rape and pillage in order to have Asia for the Asians as if Asian imperialism in Asia was better than European (or American) imperialism there. That's a bit of delusion equal to the white man's burden.
Edogawa Rampo is the nom de plume of Tarō Hirai (平井 太郎 1894-1965). Rampo was a great admirer of Edgar Allen Poe hence the name. This tale, like many others written by him, is characterized by eroticism, grotesquerie and the nonsensical. This particular story was censored in 1939 which was two yars after the beginning of the second Sino-Japanese War. Censors were perhaps troubled that the storyline would detract from the war effort.
"Caterpillar" is not a bug, but a human who is reduced to nothing more than a human larva. Without arms or legs, deaf and mute with a face that is horribly scarred, he cannot communicate, he cannot eat, bathe or dress himself. He, Lt. Kurokawa (Keigo Kasuya) was not a good man during the war, having committed rape and murder and these memories come back to haunt him. Yet he still wants sex and his wife (Shinobu Terajima), though repelled by his form and greedy lust, feels duty bound to service him.
Yet eventually Kurokawa finds sex with his wife reminds him of his war crimes and he begins to find his current situation unbearable. Love of country and patriotism become empty words for both Kurokawa and his wife.
The late Wakamatsu is perhaps best known for producing Nagisa Oshima's "In the Realm of the Senses" and this movie is in keeping with his pink film legacy. Wakamatsu died in October of 2012 and "Caterpillar" is his penultimate film.
"Caterpillar" is an uncomfortable mix of erotic scenes of the attractive naked Terajima and the frightful flashbacks of the war and Kurokawa's currently pitiful state. "Caterpillar" is not a pro-war movie but it also isn't quite erotica. "Caterpillar" can be streamed on Netflix.
The director of the 2006 "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" and the 2009 "Summer Wars," Mamoru Hosoda, has teamed up again with writer Satoko Okudera ("Summer Wars") for a gentle, lyrical look at a different kind of werewolf in "Wolf Children."
The original Japanese title is "Okami kodomo no Ame to Yuki" (『おおかみこどもの雨と雪』) meaning "The Wolf Children Rain and Snow." Here the wolves aren't so much a threat to humans as the humans are a threat to humans and the movie is a celebration of nature. This is a more lyrical movie than "The Girl" but like that movie as well as "Summer Wars," "Wolf Children" looks at the problems faced by young teens.
Okudera wrote the screenplay for "The Girl" based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's original novel. Hosoda wrote the story for "Summer Wars" with Okudera writing the screenplay. Together, Hosoda and Okudera adapted Hosoda's story for the screenplay of "Wolf Children."
The movie is told from the perspective of the daughter, Yuki. Their father was a mysterious figure that their mother, Hana (meaning flower) met while she was a college student. They fall in love, but he reveals to Hana that he is a wolfman, a descendant of the now extinct Japanese wolf. Hana and her Wolfman become a family having two children: Yuki who was born on a snowy day and Ame who was born on a rainy day. Because Hana is afraid that the babies may be born as wolf cubs or transform in front of the eyes of the hospital staff, the babies are born at home.
On one rainy day, the father disappears, only to be found dead in the form of a wolf. Hana must care for her children alone. With two kids who during times of great excitement transform into wolf cubs, Hana decides to move to a remote country area where her nearest neighbors can't be seen. Although Yuki begins as the wild one, she yearns to belong to the human world and insists on starting school. At school, Yuki only has one mishap, turning into a wolf when she is pursued by a boy who wonders why she is trying to avoid her. The boy, Souhei, is a new transfer student and someone senses something different about Yuki.
Yuki and Sohei eventually become friends.
Ame finds his own education in the forests. His teacher is an old fox and despite his sister's urging, Ame finds no interest in the human school learning. Being both children of the natural and human world, the children must make choices as they are on the edge of adulthood.
Besides the obvious references to nature (Rain, Winter and Flower), to the Japanese, the kanji used for Souhei hints at nature, referencing both a flower (wisteria is fuji) and meadows (sou is grass and hei means peaceful or flat). There's also a play on the Japanese phrase ameotoko (which literally means rain man), a phrase used to label someone who brings rain.
Historically, the last known Honshu wolf died in 1905 in Nara prefecture. Japanese wolves were relatively small--only 12 inches at the shoulder. According to Japanese folklore, the Honshu wolf was supposed to be the guardian of the mountains. The Japanese fox still exists in the wild and in Japanese folklore are shapeshifters. While foxes in Japanese folklore are often portrayed as tricksters, they are seen as something more noble here "Wolf Children."
The werewolves in "Wolf Children" aren't frightening, but merely misunderstood and like all children need to learn how to control their wild impulses. The full moon doesn't force their transformation, because they have control of their emotions. In that respect, this movie seems to be a subtle portrayal of humans learning to live within a loving more positive culture found in the countryside and an allegory of humans learning to live with nature.
"Wolf Children" was nominated for a 2012 Asia Pacific Screen Award and won a 2013 Japanese Academy Award for Best Animation Film. It also won a Mainichi Film Concours Award, the Audience Award and the Films from the South Award at the Oslo Films from the South Festival as well as a Orient Express Award for Best Animated Feature Film from the Sitges-Catalonian International Film Festival.
"Wolf Children" is dubbed in English. Currently, "Wolf Children" is scheduled for a limited run and is screening only at the Laemmle Town Center (in Encino) until 3 October 2013.
Watching "Pacific Rim," I could help but think of the Rock-em Sock-em robots. I know that the movie is targeting a male audience and I'm not a guy. I also know that the writers are trying something new, but that still doesn't make it good, particularly when you consider the
tradition of the creatures called kaiju and Godzilla.
Godzilla is a kaiju, but not the only kaiju. To be specific, Godzilla is a daikaiju. My trusty Japanese-English Kenkyūsha dictionary defines a kaiju as "monstrous beast" but we can edit that down to monster. Monsters come in all sizes and forms as all Lady Gaga followers know and that is true even for Japan where pocket monsters came from (Pokkemon).
Godzilla doesn't make an appearance in "Pacific Rim," but you can feel his hot atomic breath in its every frame. We could call it Godzilla envy or licensing envy. Without a claim to the kaiju of fame, the writers decide to create their own kaiju. These kaiju are gigantic and we're not sure how they are fed, but they could have Tokyo for lunch with a few buses as appetizers. They have that anthropomorphic form of a man walking in a monster suit, but they move with surprising grace underwater. The animation is of a high level as you'd expect from the director Guillermo del Toro who gave us such wondrous creatures in "Pan's Labyrinth."
So the story, written by Del Toro and Travis Beacham goes like this. Sometime this year, 2013, our cities come under attack by kaiju. These are extraterrestrial beings who usually take the lone-wolf approach to attack. They are based under the Pacific Ocean, arriving through a interdimensional portal. The nations of the Pacific Rim come together to construct the humanoid war machines called Jaegers that require two humans to control inside the detachable head. Despite the coolness of Samsung and Sony cellphones and tablets, Honda's ASIMO and the Toyota Prius, the East Asians aren't really that involved in this production. Why else would these supposedly sophisticated machines get a German name?
Jaeger is a German word and I confess that I never saw the need for studying German. There is still time, indeed, but this movie won't convince you to get out and get more serious than toasting to Octoberfest. Of course, I don't drink so that puts a bit of a damper on the whole we are German for a month thing in the U.S. But the like-em or leave-em sentiments about Germany are of little consequence for "Pacific Rim" because the Germans and German don't have much to do with this film. That makes some sense because Germany is not a Pacific Rim nation.
What makes less sense is that Japan, the country that supplies us with the term for the alien enemies, only supplies the movie with its female possible love interest. If you're still at the girls got cooties stage of development, then don't worry. The ick-factor of romance, and even the ick-factor of a Madame Butterfly romance is totally absent from this film.
What isn't absent is the concept of White Man's Burden (that's a Rudyard Kipling reference). Yes, white men save the world and its not the reds although I did debate whether the Star Trek TOS red-shirt plan was in effect.
First we must find our white hero. One of the first Jaegers is the Gipsy Danger manned by brothers Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) and Yancy Beckett (Diego Klattenhoff). These guys are hot shots who don't necessarily listen to their commander. In their last mission, their Jaeger is decapitated and Yancy is killed. Raleigh is able to make it back to Alaska, but retires. The year is 2020.
Even in the realm of science, the Pacific Rim countries didn't produce much research on the kaiju. The leading kaiju scientists are these colorful comedians: Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) and Dr. Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman). They work alone because they must be underfunded and the script writers know little to nothing about how a science lab works--they don't know that lead scientists have their own drones--slaves working for the betterment of science or a chance at getting their own lab or at an academic level, poor grad students who might not be getting paid. So we have these two white guys on the wrong side of eccentric.
By 2025, the Pacific Rim governments have decided to scrap the Jaeger program in favor of building the Great Wall of the Pacific Rim. How that will work for Japan, Hawaii, the Philippines and New Zealand is never adequate explained, but perhaps those island nations have just been written off as casualties of war. What would be Great about a Great Wall is imagine the future tourists. Raleigh is one of the men working on the Great Wall of Alaska and he's contacted by the commander of the remaining Jaegers, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba).
There just happen to be four Jaegers left, including the seriously outdated Gipsy Danger. Just the number should have given the Chinese and Japanese reason to pray for good luck. If you are replacing your cellphone every two years or trying to keep your computer up-to-date, you know that five years of technology in means that the Gipsy Danger is almost an antique. So the Gipsy Danger is going to be a support team for the much newer Jaegers.
The primo Jaeger, Striker Eureka, is piloted by a father-son team from Australia: Herc Hansen (Max Martini) and Chuck Hansen (Robert Kazinsky). The father respected Raleigh. The son thinks Raleigh is a danger to them all. Raleigh must also search for a new co-pilot who must be able to drift--share minds in a non-Vulcan mind-meld--together way.
Instead of using something scientific like the Mensan favorite--the Keirsey Temperament personality sorter (ENTJ or INTJ), the Jaeger program uses individual combat which incorporates sticks like kendo and rolling around on matts like some East Asian martial arts. A handful of East Asian guys are easily beaten by our construction worker Raleigh, but the East Asian woman, Mako is his true match.
On a real life level, this might be a product of white male anxiety. Consider the Olympic record of the white American male at the Olympics in judo and the more recent addition of taekwando.
Judo was first included in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Japan leads the world in gold medals with 36 (18 silver and 18 bronze); France has 12 gold (8 silver and 24 bronze). South Korea has 11 (8, 24) and China has 8 (3, 9). The U.S. isn't in the top ten with only one gold medal (3, 7). The American gold medalist was Kayla Harrison at the London Games. The men winning silver were Kevin Asano (1988) , Jason Morris (1992) and Robert Berland (1984). West German and the United Kingdom have one gold medalist each. Canada has none.
Taekwando has been an Olympic event since 2000. South Korea has 10 golds, China has five and the U.S. has two (like Taipei, Mexico and Iran) won by Steven López in 2000 and 2004 (bronze in 2008).
So maybe, white guys are either delusional or have that Olympic inferiority complex to contend with. In either case, considering how the Jaegers move, the whole combat style test makes no sense.
While the kaiju in the water have fluid movement and zip around like a seal after a sashimi dinner, the vehicles of kaiju destruction Jaegers trudge around like Godzilla on land and are even more plodding in the water. For the drivers of these machines to enter, the head must come off and the crew must screw it back on after the head is lowered in place. Nothing about these machines is quick or efficient which is why the kaiju should win.
Now if your two drivers are essentially meant to jog in place in synchronization while pushing buttons, the ideal training would be synchronized jogging or synchronized marathon running.
If your machine works on the concept of the rock-em sock-em robots than maybe studying Muhammed
Ali and learning the fundamentals of boxing would be more practical and logical. Logic is definitely not a problem for this film...after all, the script writers have already posited that scientists are brilliant idiots who can explain but not do.
Our brilliant idiots want to mind-meld or "drift" with the brain of a kaiju and in order to do so more than once, they need to deal with a man in charge of the black market of kaiju parts in Hong Kong. Even in Hong Kong, even after the return of Hong Kong to the mainland Chinese from British rule, the Hong Kong black market is ruled by a white guy, Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman) who has a bunch of East Asian flunkies to help him sell kaiju parts. I guess the tongs have been rendered powerless in China.
Hannibal Chau gets his name from his favorite historical figure and his favorite Szechuan restaurant. Woo-hoo. Chinese food keeps up its rep, but Chinese aren't clever enough to do more than cook, even in China. Chau helps our mad scientists and the scientists get intelligence from the kaiju which helps our Jaeger team.
There is a Jaeger manned by Chinese Wei triplets (Charles Luu, Lance Luu and Mark Luu ) but they are just like politically correct filler. The Russian team of Aleksis and Sasha Kaidanovsky (Robert Maillet and Heather Doerksen) get more screen time but both the Chinese and the Russian Jaegers are soon eliminated which brings up the TOS Star Trek red-shirt debate. The Aussie Jaeger will have a good go at it (with an injured Herc replaced by Stacker) but you know that Raleigh with the help of Mako and Mako helped by Raleigh will triumph.
The solution involves detonating a nuclear weapon at the underwater portal. Did the writers forget that is how the most famous kaiju was created? This is perhaps the most striking consideration for kaiju fans. The original Godzilla movie was seen as a protest against nuclear testing in the Bikini islands, coming out the same year that the crew members of the tuna fishing ship Lucky Dragon 5 were exposed to radiation. Daigo Fukuryū Maru (第五福竜丸) was not in the zone where the U.S. have designated as a test zone. The Castle Bravo thermonuclear device was twice as powerful as the scientific data had predicted. On March 1, 1954, the wind carried ash and radiation to where the ship was stationed and of the 23 fishermen, 11 died of radiation poisoning. The Daigo Fukuryū Maru is currently on display in Tokyo. The 1954 incident was a catalyst for the Japanese anti-nuclear movement.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has brought renewed public interest in the trawler and Fukushima brings up another concern--tsunami. Would a nuclear detonation cause a tsunami that would effect those insignificant islands such as Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines who were likely not protected by a wall? I don't believe that the Latin American countries on the Pacific Rim are represented at all.
No commentary on the whitewashing would be complete without mentioning that the Chinese American technician who is supposed to be the brain behind the Jaegers is played by Clifton Collins Jr. The Los Angeles-born Collins who plays Tendo Choi is of German and Mexican descent. Does he pass for you as Chinese?
I suppose that the Japanese were probably battling their own kaiju such as Godzilla and couldn't take a time out for these new kaiju. The absence of Japan and Honda's ASIMO technology might explain why the Jaeger are as heavy-footed as the 1905s Godzilla and not as quiet as ASIMO. I suppose every Godzilla film needs a Raymond Burr to explain things and help save the Japanese. I suppose a lot of things haven't changed since the 1950s when Godzilla first came out.
I do wonder if the kaiju are too busy monologuing to have a full force attack on the people above ground. But I also wonder who fabulous a Chow Yun-Fat or Tony Leung might have been as Hannibal Chau. So many actors could have been Tendo Choi. You think there must be some actors in the Pacific Rim that could have made the time and been up to the relatively undemanding acting levels required here.
Even if you forgive the white man saves the world theme and the whitewashing, the Jaegers are too slow and clunky (but make a great action figure toy) to claim victory over the kaiju. "Pacific Rim" lacks logic within its own universe and the acting is as plodding as the rock-em sock-em robots. Will the kaiju mutate and come back as Godzilla's lesser known irradiated cousins? Only time will tell since this movie has been highly successful worldwide. I'm waiting for Mattel to produce the rock-em sock-em robots Pacific Rim Jaeger edition. A good idea that someone should jump on before Christmas (although "Pacific Rim" hasn't been doing well in Japan).
Sometimes the kind of movies we see depend upon our expectations: We get to see whatever serves the stereotypes we have. If you've been thinking that Korea just has those K-pop idol vehicles, soft romantic chick flicks that are far from chic and the whore and gore stuff, then you've missed the real genre flipping fun that is the 2008 "The Good, the Bad, the Weird." The movie is currently available for instant streaming on Netflix.
This guksu gunslinging Western is all that the movie "Wild Wild West" should have been. Directed and written by Kim Ji-woon (with Choi Jae-won), "The Good, the Bad, the Weird," is an homage to the 1966 Sergio Leone Italian spaghetti Western, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."
"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" starred Clint Eastwood as "The Good" with Lee Van Cleef as "The Bad" and Eli Wallach as "The Ugly." That movie was set during the American Civil War (1986-1865), but the characters aren't really involved in the war. A bandit, Tuco Ramirez (Wallach), is captured by a bounty hunter, the unnamed "Blondie" (Eastwood). Blondie turns Tuco in, but saves him from behind hanged after he collects the reward money. This unlikely partnership breaks down with Blondie deserting Tuco in the desert. Tuco hunts Blondie down and then forces him to march across the desert. During this journey, Tuco finds a carriage with the dying Bill Carson who is babbling about Confederate gold buried in a graveyard. Tuco leaves to get water, but returns to find Carson dead, but Blondie has heard Carson's secret.
Dressed as Confederate soldiers, Tuco and Blondie are captured by Union soldiers and put in a POW camp. Angel Eyes (Van Cleef) knows about the gold and tortures Tuco to get the information. Angel Eyes then forms a partnership with Blondie. Like social quicksand, the partnerships shift and change as the three men go after the gold until their famous Mexican standoff.
Leone was criticized for the film's violence, but by exaggerating the violence Leone pushed the film toward a cartoonish reality and brought a "tongue-in-cheek" satire to the Western genre.
Kim Ji-woon transports the action to the 1930s, so we have better weapons and the confusion of the Japanese invading China (Manchuria) and Korea. Yet the Japanese Imperial Army are minor players in this story which insinuates that the best fighters weren't in the army...they were bandits. Kim gives us gorgeous blue skies with picturesque clouds and wide open spaces of the frontier of Korea and China. As another nod to Leone's movie, the musical score swells with dramatic movement mixing Spanish and Asian influences. Ennio Morricone fans won't be disappointed although the heavy musical tie-in isn't consistent throughout.
The Bad (Lee Byung-hun) is hired to steal back a treasure map from a Japanese official. We know from history that the Japanese army are the bad guys so we should be okay with this double cross. Dressed in black, The Bad is the one with fashion sense, forced to glower through locks of hair that obscure a third of his face.
The Weird (Song Kang-ho) brings comic relief and crosses paths with The Bad during a train robbery. The Bad has come to reclaim the treasure map, but The Weird takes off with it. The Good (Jung Woo-sung), a bounty hunter in a long tan dress coat, also turns up, seeking the bounty of The Bad's head. The Weird also has a price on his head, becoming a bonus.
The Weird flees with The Good and The Bad is in hot pursuit. Joining them is the Japanese Army; the map is vital to saving the Japanese empire. Along they way to the treasure, with the advances in weaponry in the 1930s versus the 1860s, opportunities for bigger, better, badder booms and blasts abound. There will be a Mexican standoff and they will find the treasure, but not everyone will have a happy ending.
This guksu gunplay movie is great fun, with a graphic flair aided by CGI. Kim's movie isn't a slavish homage to the Leone films. It has more intensely choreographed fights scenes and a wicked humor accompanied by a firm fashion sense. "The Good, The Bad and The Weird" screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 (out of competition). The movie was given a limited release in 2010.
Jung Woo-sung (The Good) won a Best Supporting Actor award at the 2009 Asian Film Awards. Kim Ji-Woon took Best Director at the 2008 Sitges Film Festival and the 2008 Blue Dragon Film Awards. The film also received awards for cinematography (Lee Mogae). In Korea, Mandarin and Japanese with English subtitles.
An ice queen dressed in white with a severe set of bangs, a magician who has returned to China after the fall of the Qing Dynasty mixing Western and Eastern magical skills and a big bully who remains fascinated with prestidigitation come together for this amusing period piece, "The Great Magician," currently streaming on Netflix.
To put this in a historical perspective, the Qing Dynasty began in 1644 and was the last imperioal dynasty for China. China's power was undermined by wars with European nations and those infamous unequal treaties that Western nations such as the U.K, the U.S., France, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Prussia, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Belgium and the Netherlands. The first of the unequal treaties for China was the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing with the British Empire. The 1901 Boxer Protocol would add an Asian nation to this exclusive club and the U.K. would add the 1914 Smila Accord and a year later the Empire of Japan would have the Twenty-One Demands and then the 1933 Tanggu Truce.
Japan's first unequal treaties would be signed in 1854 with the U.S. (Convention of Kanagawa) and the U.K. (Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty). Japan would be first in line for an eneuql treaty with Korea (Japan-Korea Treaty of 1876). The U.S. and the Qing Dynasty would also impose an unequal treaty in 1882. Japan and China would be the only Asian nations to impose unequal treaties.
The Qing Dynasty ended with the ouster of the Empress Dowager Longyu and the last emperor Puyi. Puyi would be briefly restored to the throne in 1917 by the Chinese warlord Zhang Xun, but that would last less than a month. Puyi would be expelled from the Forbidden City in 1924. In 1932, he'd become the ruler of Manchuria under the support of the Imperial Japanese Army.
The 2011 movie "The Great Magician" (大魔术师; traditional Chinese: 大魔術師) takes place during that time of chaos between the fall of the Qing Dynasty when the Western nations had imposed the unequal treaties and China was reduced to squabbling warlords attempting to enlarge their own fiefdoms. There is a looming Japanese presence (Kenya Sawada), but the invasion hasn't yet been fully realized
If you're wondering how the warlords got their hordes, according to Derek Yee, Chun Tin-nam and Lau Ho-leung's script, a little fear and a bit of magic never hurt. Liu Kun Shan (Wu Gang) performs a frightening bit of magic that convinces a large group of men to join the forces of warlord Lei Bully (Lau Ching-wan). Bully has several wives, six to be exact, and hopes to add a seventh.
Wife seven, Liu Yin (Zhou Xun) resists Bully who has threatened her father. Her fiancé had disappeared during his journey to Europe. Yet now he has returned as a magician, Chang Hsien (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) who is working with revolutionaries who want to use the magic show to kidnap Bully.
This production is richly realized with detailed backgrounds and costumes. There is no real enemy and neither Bully or Chang Hsien are political animals. Both entranced by the pale and unyielding Liu Yin, they are bound together in a comedic triangle.
Director Derek Lee, gives us both magic that crosses over into fantasy (with just enough CGI) and a light-hearted rivalry that ends with a question mark and hopefully more adventures to follow. The movie won a 2013 Hong Kong Film Award for Best Costume and Make up Design (Jessie Dai and Chung Man Yee). In Mandarin with English subtitles, "The Great Magician" is available on Netflix for instant streaming.
The 2009 Chinese historical drama has a poetic English name, "City of Life and Death," but a repetitive Chinese name "Nanking! Nanking!" (or "Nanjing! Nanjing!") Either way, this movie which was written and directed by Lu Chuan attempts to shed light on the gray areas of war by looking at the lives of several people in the city of Nanjing when it fell to the Japanese Imperial Forces in 1937.
Filmed in black and white, the city of Nanjing has just been captured by the Japanese Imperial Army. We learn before the movie really begins at the camera shows us old postcards with dire short messages. From there, we are introduced to a Japanese soldier, Kadokawa Masao (Nakaisumi Hideo), who has been lying on his back looking at the sun. He joins other soldiers in a foxhole before a burning city. Tanks are moving toward the city's walls as the men wait.
Another postcard tells us that the Chinese National Revolutionary Army is in chaos. We are in the city and soldiers line up. Along with them are the city residents. Chinese soldiers want to leave the city, but their fellow Chinese soldiers attempt to prevent them from exiting. Here we meet Lieutenant Lu Jianxiong (Liu Ye) and Shunzi (Zhao Yisui) who attempt to convince some of their comrades to stay and defend the city. With the black and white format, it's not easy to differentiate the two sides and the horror of the bloodshed, burned bodies and mutilation is muted. We don't see the beauty of flight as in the strangely dream-like desperation of the girls at the beginning of "Flowers of War," and instead we see dust and confusion in the ruins of a city.
Much of the aftermath is from Kadokawa's perspective. He watches men being killed on the streets, women being led away. He sees corpses--some whole but not untouched as the naked woman and some mutilated. Heads hang like macabre celebratory decorations from the ruins. And yet those still living stand like a grain field. Leaving Kadokawa, we see things from an overhead view. From some vantage points, the people fill the streets in a seemingly unending fields of humanity. It is at this point we understand just how few men are in this victorious army. As the Japanese mow down people running into the sea, use them for bayonet practice, bury them alive or burn alive in a building set on fire, the military necessity of the actions is hinted at. What if, each Chinese person had been willing to sacrifice for the greater good?
With the men and soldiers defeated, the international witnesses who remain in Nanking such as John Rabe (John Paisley), Minnie Vautrin (Beverly Peckous) and Durdin (Sam Voutas) set up a safety area where people seek refuge, food, water. By safe, that's a matter of relativity and some of the people there include wounded soldiers. Japanese soldiers periodically intrude; they harass and assault the refugees, especially the women. The daughter of Rabe's secretary, Tang Tianxiang (Fan Wei) is thrown out the window to her death and his sister-in-law is raped (Yao Di). The Japanese demand 100 comfort women.
The camera shake, quick cuts and at times blurred motion produces a feeling of chaos. A whole range of human feeling is portrayed and unlike "Flowers of War" the rapes do not have a voyeuristic quality. The so-called good Nazi, John Rabe is shown protesting the brutality and regretfully finally leaving China, unable to take all the Chinese people he had known and worked with.
Not all the Japanese soldiers feel the weight of their horrific actions. Yet we see how the attitudes of the soldiers toward the Chinese women also carries over to their own women or perhaps it is the other way around. Kadokawa slowly becomes desensitized to the violence but recognizing the same dull resignation in the eyes of a Japanese woman that he has seen in the Chinese breaks the protective shell he has built.
"Life is more difficult than death," Kadokawa tells another Japanese soldier after he has allowed to Chinese prisoners to escape. In the end, photographs tell us the fate of each character by their name and their lifespan.
Although this film has been criticized for its sympathetic portrayal of a Japanese soldier in Kadokawa, the film gives a more balanced view of the Rape of Nanking and clearly shows the brutality of war and the heavy price both sides pay.
"City of Life and Death" is currently available on Netflix for instant streaming.
There are so many things one wants to say, but cultural norms dictate we don't. With Asian Americans, as both a minority and the "victims" of cultures that value humility, we seem to have even more things that we cannot say...except, perhaps, if one has Asperger's Syndrome. Our main character in "White Frog" is Asian American with Asperger's. He goes from being a double A to a triple A, but that doesn't mean this movie deserves an A plus.
Yes, it is wonderful that the movie shows Asian Americans as an average family dealing with average issues, and it's nice to see Asian Americans playing Asian Americans, but there are just too many issues to deal with. Besides Asberger's, there's how three family members deal with death, community involvement (save the community center), in the closet gay youths and faith against tolerance. I don't mean to say that those who are truly faithful aren't tolerant or that people without religious faith are necessarily intolerant.
Fans of BD Wong and Harry Shum Jr. will be disappointed. We don't see either of those men nearly enough. Shum plays the "perfect" son Chaz of Oliver (Wong) and Irene Young (Joan Chen). Nick is the kid with Asperger's. His parents do all the right things. They provide him with therapy (Amy Hill as Dr. King).
Written by mother and daughter duo Fabienne and Ellie Wen, you wonder if there are just too many cooks in the kitchen and not enough critical conversations. One doesn't for a moment doubt that all involved have the best intentions, but with so many different issues, none of them receive enough attention to give this movie direction. Quentin Lee directs.
The 2011 Chinese movie "The Flowers of War" (金陵十三釵) is a historical war drama directed by Zhang Yimou. In my original essay, "'The Flowers of War' has overpowering scent of nationalism" (also published on Examiner.com) I panned the movie saying:
Have no doubt. Director Zhang Yimou's "The Flowers of War" is a propaganda movie where the Chinese are all heroic and the Japanese invaders are all despicable. We've seen this kind of war movie before, but haven't audiences matured beyond the black and white stark morality?
The LA Times reviewer wrote "Zhang Yimou’s 19th feature is decidedly backward-looking: A lavish period weepie set against the atrocities of the Nanking Massacre, “Flowers” abounds with well-worn movie archetypes and slathers on schmaltz." and then added:
But however terrible and real the threat of rape, the clumsy screenplay turns every Japanese soldier into a rampaging maniac, some of them screaming exultantly upon discovering virgins. The exception is commander Hasegawa (Atsuro Watabe), a soft-spoken man who appreciates music. The genteel colonel isn’t, however, above arranging for the convent girls to be delivered into the hands of his superiors, setting in motion a contrived series of climactic events that are nonetheless affecting because of their elemental power.
The Hollywood Reporter reviewer agreed writing, “If Warner Bros. had made a film with this plot back in 1942, it would have made effective anti-Japanese propaganda and probably absorbing drama in the bargain. Today it just plays like hokum.”
"The Flowers of War" was based on the novel "13 Flowers of Nanjing" by Geling Yan. The movie was the official Chinese selection for the Best Foreign-Language Film for the 84th Academy Awards and it didn't make the short list. It was, however, nominated for the Golden Globe Awards.
The story begins in 1937 as the Japanese Imperial Army marches into Nanjing and begins the massacre. Girls run back to their school, a Roman Catholic cathedral. An American mortician, John Miller (Christian Bale) joins them, but he's there to ready the priest for burial. In time, Miller and the girls are joined by prostitutes who hide in a cellar.
A Japanese officer (Atsuro Watabe) places guards outside the gates and assures the school girls will be protected. Yet he is overruled later when his commanding officers send an invitation to the school girls to come and sing at a victory celebration. The prostitutes and the only boy in the mission agree to disguise themselves as school girls and sacrifice themselves: They are the 13 flowers .
Miller leaves with the girls hidden in a truck, supposedly to freedom. That might seem like a happy ending, but we know that Christians and people with Western education weren't treated kindly under the Communist rule that followed the end of World War II. It's something like having the real-life Maria von Trapp and the Trapp Family singers escape into France or the story of the M.S. St. Louis. My last review attempted to give readers a historical perspective but mostly bought out comments by hysterical pro-Chinese respondents. I then did research and found, not surprisingly, that other critics found the movie problematic for the same reasons, however, those people weren't identified as Japanese and I've found that sometimes being critical of a Korean movie or person or a Chinese movie or person can bring out the biases. I don't think that I'm prejudiced so much as the writers revealed their prejudices.
The movie was based on a novel by Geling Yan, "13 Flowers of Nanjing," (金陵十三釵) or Gold Tomb (Mausoleum) 13 Hairpins or 13 Girls of Jinling. Consider that Google Translate gives Mausoleum of War for 陵十三釵. I can't comment on the book because I haven't read it. The screenplay is by Liu Heng. The movie was the top grossing Chinese film in 2011. While director Zhang Yimou has stated that the movie is about love and sacrifice, there's an uneasy undercurrent of sexism. Outside, where danger lurks, the world is cast in muted tones. Yet cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding makes the inner sanctuary where the prostitutes hide a place of saturated colors and glamour. The institute of prostitution under the Chinese is seen as less brutal than the rampage of the Japanese, setting up the old concept of war time rape as a crime against the property. As Susan Brownmiller wrote in her book "Against Our Will," the rape of women during war is used to demoralize the sons, fathers, brothers and husbands who are unable to protect their women. Rape as an offense against property becomes part of the rewards of war. In "The Flowers of War," we don't see the pimps or madames that have left these prostitutes unprotected. The focus is on a saintly Chinese soldier who attempts to protect the Chinese women and makes the ultimate sacrifice. Yet while we hear about American soldiers taking revenge for the torture of their comrades by the Japanese, we rarely hear that might be the case with the Japanese soldiers in Nanking. R.J. Rummel wrote that Chinese peasants had as much to fear from the Nationalist Chinese soldiers. Swiss national Tom Simmen photographed Chinese soldiers near Shanghai in 1937 as they tortured and executed both Japanese prisoners of war and suspected collaborating Chinese. The movie fails to evaluate a system of sexual slavery that trafficked women from Japan and China to places as far as the United States. According to the National Women's History Museum, most of the Chinese female prostitutes who found their way to San Francisco were kidnapped, lured with false promises or purchased by brokers for sale. There were teenage girls and even babies and the average life span in the trade was only four years. Because we don't see the ferocity of Chinese pimps but do see the beauty and strength of the 12 Chinese prostitutes in "The Flowers of War" an uncomfortable comparison is made between the benefits and bounty of the Chinese system of prostitution as opposed to the wartime enslavement by alien enemies in the guise of the Japanese. We're left to wonder if the American mortician John Miller wasn't enticed to China by the fleshy cheap adventures made available under British colonialism where exotic women were acceptably enslaved--the original yellow fever fanned by stories like Madame Butterfly. There were people who could be called saints during World War II, but as a whole, men at war aren't saints. World War II was a brutal war where women were raped by the Axis powers and by the Allied forces. There are many instances of Allied forces deliberately killing Japanese prisoners. Even on home ground, moral ambiguity existed and in today's movies and TV serials we see such examples in TV series like "Foyle's War" or "Detective De Luca." "The Flowers of War" is a step backward story wise and it is troubling that China should put that movie forward as its entry into the Academy Awards.
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