Film Review: Fish Story [フィッシュストーリー] (2009: Yoshihiro Nakamura)

Japanese poster

You know what's sad? I want to like Fish Story but I just can't.

Everyone knows that for every 4-star stamp on a DVD cover there are at least 5 negative ones if you look up the film online.  After seeing the movie I thought I couldn't be wrong this time either but I was. There is a wealth of praise going on for this film even online.

Fish Story spans about half a century, from the 60's all the way up to predicted end of the world in 2012.  Vignettes in the film center on a song by the unsuccessful Japanese pre-cursors to punk Gekirin: a song called "Fish Story". As the film unfolds, we learn how these short pieces will eventually come together to explain how this song will save the world from the apocalypse: from the recording of the song in the 60s, strange rumors about the controversial record in the 80s, a cult predicting the end in the late 00s, and finally, a couple of folks in a record shop watching the comet dropping to earth in 2012.

This all sounded great to me as I read the description: in fact, even now the basis of the film still sounds like a very well thought out, entertaining plot. It'd be nice to read the novel this film is adapted from someday. But Fish story just gets everything else wrong.

Firstly, the acting was very lukewarm. Half the time it just wasn't very good, the rest was acceptable. None of the characters could be taken seriously with the cheesy acting and at the peaks of emotional tension the story fell flat. If the film was supposed to be a comedy I barely got any laughs out of it and if it was supposed to be serious I really couldn't feel moved by the characters like a good film does. There were moments where each short story started to grow on me: even with the stale acting I could understand the pains of the band as they were duped out of a record that was ahead of their time and the character in the beginning of the film who is pushed around by his friends is easy to relate to, but perhaps the pieces of the film ended way too prematurely for the characters to become developed and for the audience to feel any kind of emotional attachment to them.

Ok, so I might be a music snob but it was utterly disappointing to see Gekirin in action. Their performance was solid but the actors just could not come off as convincing punk rockers. They looked like jokes that were trying way too hard to fit the part. What was more disappointing was that in the Special Features, the actors came back together to play the song some time after the release and even then they looked more like a band than when they were in the film.

Yup, that definitely looks like the epitome of punk.

My last hope in the film was the ending. Maybe, just maybe, the director would tie it all together in a coherent way that would leave me to put the pieces together and eventually say to myself "oh! I get it" and walk away feeling that even if the film was mediocre, at least he did a great ending.
But after the world is saved you sit there feeling more confused, for a few seconds you try to reason with yourself and remember how everything is supposed to come together...and a segment comes up for just a few minutes that recaps all the events that we are supposed to know, fills in a few missing pieces and clearly illustrates how the film worked step by step.
I felt completely offended that the director thought it would be a good idea to serve us the ending on a silver platter with an instruction manual as if to say "I'm too lazy to write an ending you can piece together yourself AND you are probably not going to get anyways, so let me map it out for you..."

All I could think was that a good director would absolutely not have needed those extra five minutes to explain his film. If it was great, it would have explained itself fine in the ending.

★★☆☆☆

~hideki~

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.
*

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.
-
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. 
 *
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~