Film Review: Tony Takitani [トニー滝谷] (2004: Jun Ichikawa)

With all the buzz about world famous Japanese author Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood being made into a film I decided to finally see Tony Takitani, a short story by the author that received a film adaption some years ago that didn't go on to garner as much buzz, but seems to have been fairly received by film enthusiasts and Murakami fans alike.

I wrote this review after I saw this film in January and posted the review on rateyourmusic.com.
This is just a copy and paste, with a few changes, and an add-on at the end.
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I had heard about this film for a long time and read it as part of "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman", but never got around to seeing it until recently.
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Much of what I am hearing about Norwegian Wood, the latest film adaption of a Murakami story, is that the director just couldn't convey a novel by the likes of Murakami into a film: the task was just too difficult.
Not yet having seen Norwegian Wood, I decided to take a look at Tony Takitani, an adaption of one of the author's short stories.

Tony Takitani chronicles the life of a man by the same name, which, the film makes it heard in the first line, is indeed his real name. The film moves with his life, from the back story of his father as a famous jazz musician, his lonely adolescence, and his job as an illustrator in adulthood. This is when he meets his wife, who has a strange addiction to shopping for clothes. However, as Tony's life comes crumbling down we see how he copes with loss in ways that Murakami's avid readers may be able to relate with the author's characters from other stories.

The film is shot in a beautiful perspective and a dark color scheme that added to the main theme of the film: loneliness. The scene of the Tony's wife shopping only showing her shoes as they walk down the street, changing each time, was my personal favorite. The score was instrumental in creating the vibe for the film and was spot on. This haunting soundtrack by hailed composer Ryuichi 
 Sakamoto was definitely the highlight of the film. 

  
On the downside, the only problems I had were the weak presentation of the father's life at the beginning of the film, portrayed merely by old photographs with narrations. Tony's character was 
 also played by an actor that was well over the age I had envisioned the character to be. I understand casting him was a daunting task, he is at the center and the only non-static character who ages in the film, but I feel like his part would have been more accurate had they at least used multiple actors(in different scenes of time).

Tony Takitani is a short film that covers a short story: but there is a lot to stomach in the mere 1 and 15minutes the film offers. The beautiful cinematography, stunning score, and strong source material led me to give the film a solid four-stars, despite minute short comings. And for all those wallowing in the wake of the supposedly poor adaption of "Norwegian Wood"? You might want to take a look at this film as proof that there is a reasonable way to adapt the author's words into coherent film. 
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As an aside: what is up with the American release getting the absolute worse DVD cover art? I found some posters/covers from releases of the film in a number of other language by searching, and they all look great: 

Here is the poorly done artwork for the American DVD release: 

~Hideki~

Film Review: April Story [四月物語] (1998: Shunji Iwai)

I gotta admit, I'm a sucker for these sincere portraits of young Japanesse with more attention to moving cinematics  accompanied by a moving piano score rather than a traditional Hollywood-esque plot. I just love this stuff, and Shunji Iwai delivered this perfectly in his film "April Story"(His film "Hana and Alice" looks to deliver the same, with a more complex plot).

April Story's plot centers around high school graduate Nireko, who moves from the chilly northern island of Hokkaido to the Tokyo metropolis to begin living alone as a university student. The beautiful first scene is her boarding the train with her family seeing her off on her journey, shot in her perspective. The film follows our protagonist's everyday life, mostly adjusting to living alone, and with time explains her real reasons for coming to the city.

Clocking in at just minutes over an hour, April Story doesn't carry a lot of baggage in the content category. The plot isn't abound with excitement and the simple resolution presented at the end of the film isn't a surprise either. However, the real charm in this film is how Iwai tells his story.  Shot from an outsiders perspective, we are given no insight into Nireko's thoughts until the very end of the film. Through the rest of it, we can only interpret her thoughts through her actions, body language, and sparse utterances; there is no narration or asides done by Nireko to suggest to the audience what exactly she is thinking. The viewer is thus tasked with interpreting her character themselves, leaving many open ended interpretations for Nireko as if she were someone we knew in real life. This tactic made the film's simple plot that much more rewarding. The film is very Japanese, though, so for someone not familiar with the nuances of Japanese culture, some of the actions and speech styles of the character may come off as confusing.

Iwai's clever approach to this short film delivers something truly special. At first glance it may just be a short film about a young girl in love, but there is a lot more, and the film is more about experiencing the content itself than anything else. For those looking for a beautiful portrait of young love with a keen eye to film making, don't miss April Story: it's not a particularly new film but it still hasn't lost it's touch.

~hideki~