#676: Early Summer

Directed by: YASUJIRO OZU
1951, TSPDT Rank #416

Throughout his career, but especially in his postwar films, Yasujiro Ozu tended to mine similar themes from one film to the next. Like his previous film, Late Spring, Early Summer is about a young single woman (Setsuko Hara in a practically identical role) whose family wants her to get married before it's too late. However, while the plot initially seems simple and even banal, the film becomes increasingly expansive as it progresses. In comparison, Late Spring is much more confined - a father-daughter story - whereas this film takes the woman's extended family and social circle into consideration. This gives the film an almost sweeping quality, along with a number of great comic scenes along the way which highlight Ozu's unique sense of humor.



The sublime beauty and balance of Ozu's compositions is also stunning throughout. There seem to be entire worlds contained within the ordered confines of the film's simple interior settings, and when Ozu shifts his view to the outside world for a moment, the effect is breathtaking. His timing and pacing are, as always, impeccable in this film. The feeling of intimately knowing a few people within a vast, awe-inspiring world creeps up on you just like Hara's realization that she loves her childhood friend. The last few sequences are particularly powerful, a view of a family in all their imperfections sharing one last fleeting moment before their lives change irrevocably. It was his ability to evoke such powerful and universal emotions that made Ozu one of the great cinematic masters.

#675: Sawdust and Tinsel

Directed by: INGMAR BERGMAN
1953, TSPDT Rank #962

Life is a carnival, or so they say. Many of the great European directors born before World War II seem to have been heavily influenced by seeing traveling circuses or carnivals pass through their towns, and in Sawdust and Tinsel, Ingmar Bergman made this influence clear. However, unlike people like Fellini, who used the circus as a metaphor for the rollicking energy and myriad idiosyncracies of everyday life, Bergman's view is predictably more misanthropic.



The film follows the breakdown of a relationship between an old, surly circus owner (Åke Grönberg) and a young, beautiful carnival performer (Harriet Andersson), as they experience boredom with circus life and each other. Like many of Bergman's early films, the basic storyline is pure melodrama, but it is used as a springboard for more lofty concerns, particularly the unending drudgery which seems to envelop people in all walks of life. The circus is portrayed as a group of people whose members regularly make fools of themselves in front of uncaring audiences, while living an undignified and unending life on the road. Infidelity is the final straw for a number of film's characters, who find it impossible to cope after losing the one sure thing in their lives.



Bergman paints a bleak picture all right, especially with the help of master cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who took over from Bergman's regular collaborator Gunnar Fischer on this film, and would go on to provide the cinematographer for virtually all of Bergman's films from the 1960s onward. The film's look is so different from Bergman's previous film, the Fischer-shot Summer with Monika, that it's hard to believe that the two films were made by the same director, much less in the same year. But while Nykvist may have been the perfect choice to pursue the look that Bergman was after (one that is alternately grotesque, dreamlike, and stark), Sawdust and Tinsel doesn't pack the same dramatic punch that Summer with Monika did. In that film, Bergman was focused on achieving lyrical realism, whereas with this film, he took a sharp turn towards a more abstract and psychological approach. As a result, Sawdust and Tinsel could easily be described as the start of Bergman's mature period - the decade in which he would make his most acclaimed work and become a figurehead of the international art house cinema movement.

#674: Nostalghia

Directed by: ANDREI TARKOVSKY
1983, TSPDT Rank #365

I saw Nostalghia for the first time at an all-night Tarkovsky marathon at a Tokyo cinema (along with Solaris and Mirror). I had seen the first two films before (you can find my post on these films here), so having only Japanese subtitles for these was not a problem, but for Nostalghia, often described as one of Tarkovsky's most opaque films to begin with, I initially missed a lot of nuance and subtext as a result of my limited understanding of the dialogue. However, what I got from it is this: a Russian poet goes to Italy but is quickly overcome by nostalgia for his home country and the urge to sacrifice himself for the greater good of mankind (or maybe for merely personal reasons). Along the way, Tarkovsky ties melds this story with themes of faith, family, cultural philosophy and dream-like imagery to form a powerful, hypnotic whole.



When I watched the film later, with English subtitles, I was able to catch many of the deeper resonances suggested by the dialogue and, with considerable irony, the idea that art is inherently untranslatable. Eugenia, Andrei's traveling companion, translator and foil in the film, suggests that music is an exception to this. Many of the readers of this might also feel, like I do, that film is another artistic medium with the potential to "abolish the frontiers" between countries and languages. I think that my experience at a one-screen repertory theater hidden in a narrow Tokyo alley is a perfect example of this. Without the aid of my native language, I was able to watch films presented in foreign languages that I understood little to nothing of and come away with a greatly enhanced appreciation of their director and his uniquely poetic visuals and themes.

#673: Branded to Kill

Directed by: SEIJUN SUZUKI
1967, TSPDT Rank #821

Seijun Suzuki spent the most of the '60s making low-budget yakuza films and erotic thrillers for the Nikkatsu studio, the foremost producer of Japanese B-movies at the time. As the decade went on, his films became progressively more experimental, with less focus on plot coherency and more on stylistic flights of fancy, as Suzuki seemingly became increasingly bored with his material. Suzuki always insisted that his movies were made solely with entertainment, not art, in mind, but critics looking back at his work in recent decades usually conclude otherwise, due to Suzuki's meticulous approach to developing a unique visual style for each of his films.



But while each of Suzuki's films are distinctive in their own way, Branded To Kill is possibly his most famous, as it is the film that got him fired from Nikkatsu and blacklisted from the Japanese film industry for ten years after he decided to sue his former studio. Filmed in black and white, ostensibly an attempt by Nikkatsu to reign in Suzuki's wild use of color, Branded To Kill starts out as a film about intrigue in the world of assassins, but soon becomes a bizarre examination of the masculine urge for power and the intertwining nature of sex and violence. Suzuki follows Japan's No. 3 assassin (Jô Shishido) into a downward spiral of madness and identity crisis, as his desire to become No. 1 consumes him.




Much has been made of the main character's rice fetish (which Suzuki said was conceived as a way to make the character more quintessentially "Japanese") and the incoherent plot turns, but at its core, this is an early example of a psychological thriller. Pacing and storytelling were not talents of Suzuki's, but Branded to Kill is still a fascinating and exhilarating watch, even if it's uneven at times. However, for those interested in Suzuki's other work, I recommend Gate of Flesh and Fighting Elegy over this one. I suppose it's fitting that Branded to Kill would be my No. 3 Suzuki film.

#672: 2046

Directed by: WONG KAR-WAI
2004, TSPDT Rank #875

Many great directors have continually recycled the same themes over the course of their careers, but few have made films like 2046, which is essentially a pastiche of Wong Kar-Wai's past work made by Wong himself. The two of his films referenced most heavily here are Days of Being Wild and In the Mood For Love. Many of the main characters and visual tropes from these two films resurface in this film, although it is as if they are being viewed through a new lens. This is partly due to the film's strange science fiction sequences, which are scattered throughout the film at intervals, but that is not the only reason. More important is the way that characters and themes from Wong's previous films are recontextualized, altering the way that they are remembered and expanding upon the ideas proposed in those earlier movies.



Wong also tackled a difficult concept in 2046 - following a writer's creative process and the connection of their work to their personal life. A few films, like Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation, have managed to do so in a way that is vivid and exciting, but most of the time this is a concept which misses the mark. Wong does some very interesting things with it though, building the film's narrative around the concept of a man trying to forget his one true love, the one that got away, while writing a science-fiction story as an allegory for his own struggle. The two main characters from In the Mood for Love are reprised here - the writer, Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and his lost love, Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) - but neither appear exactly as they did in that film. Instead, the characters are reinvented, each are occasionally replaced by surrogates (played by Takuya Kimura and Gong Li, respectively), and Mr. Chow's story expands to include casual relationships with a number of different women (played Zhang Ziyi, Carina Lau and Faye Wong).

If this sounds complicated, that's because it is. But for most of the film, Wong's winding, fractured approach works quite well. It isn't until the final section of the film, when he begins indulging in turgid repetition and attempts at profound poetic statements that the film's precarious sense of balance begins to fall apart. As with most of Wong's work, 2046 is most notable for taking chances and going places that most other films don't go. However, with this quality comes a lack of restraint and structure, which ultimately causes 2046 to collapse under its own weight. But before this happens, the film manages to be an effective summary of Wong Kar-Wai's career as well as a daring exploration of new territory.

#671: Happy Together

Directed by: WONG KAR-WAI
1997, TSPDT Rank #343

By the time he got to Happy Together, his sixth feature film, Wong Kar-Wai had the mystical epic Ashes of Time, the internationally successful Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, its darkly comic companion piece, behind him. Viewed alongside these other films, Happy Together seems to have been Wong's attempt to reset his stylistic agenda and move away from these previous works. Although it continued his collaboration with virtuoso cinematographer Christopher Doyle, the film's look is initially rough and unpolished, even amateur at times - especially compared to the visual grandeur of Wong and Doyle's previous collaborations. But as the film unfolds, this grimy visual style gives way to a psychological intensity that had not been so nakedly present in any of Wong's previous films - even Days of Being Wild. The story, with Wong's typically loose touch, follows two men (played by Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung) who cycle through variations on their mutually destructive relationship over the course of an extended trip to Argentina. The feelings here are raw and intimate, and also instantly relatable.



Like Days of Being Wild, Happy Together features one haunting central image which exists outside of the characters and represents something larger than them. The image in Days of Being Wild was that of a thick, overpowering jungle in the Philippines - lush green in color and symbolic of the characters' imprisonment by their respective desires. In that film, this crucial image is shown in an extended shot following the opening sequence, and again in the final section of the film. In Happy Together, the same technique is used, but this time the image is a distorted vision of the Iguazu waterfall on the border between Argentina and Brazil, the lovers' original destination upon their arrival in the country. For the characters, it is a dream kept alive by a lamp with the waterfall's image, which Tony Leung's character keeps in his Buenos Aires apartment.

The image of the falls, shown once early in the film and in another extended shot at the end of the film, takes the viewer away from the central storyline and magnifies the scope of the characters' feelings. This technique creates a meditative atmosphere in which the story and themes expressed in the film become symbolic and universal. In this way, the falls are a classic Wong Kar-Wai image. Simultaneously beautiful and terrifying, this image is perfect for a film about a torrential relationship which destroys both participants while simultaneously providing them with the companionship they crave in each other's absence.

#670: Days of Being Wild

Directed by: WONG KAR-WAI
1990, TSPDT Rank #373

Days of Being Wild begins in an arresting fashion, showing a series of encounters between a brash young man (Leslie Cheung) and a shy young woman (Maggie Cheung) at the deserted shop counter where the woman works in early 1960s Hong Kong. As with much of the film, these scenes seem to occur in a theatrical dream world where the real world rarely seeps in. The man, York, unloads his rage towards his adoptive aunt and the mother he never knew by seducing women with his rough charm and then degrading and dismissing them once he has them on the hook. A number of other characters gradually enter the picture, although the feeling of confinement and emptiness persists.

As a result, Hong Kong is shown in a completely different light from its usual cinematic image. Despite a few brief outbursts of violence (also in confined settings), there is little kinetic energy, no bustling street life - just a subdued landscape populated by characters invested in their own solitary emotional angst. Although it's sometimes difficult to become invested in the emotions of these flawed and insecure characters, the film was the first collaboration between Wong and master cinematographer Christopher Doyle (who also worked on later Wong films like Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love), and as such it is always visually stunning. The color palette is lush and cool, while the textures convey a general atmosphere of grimy and stifling humidity. There's also a feeling of the characters existing on a lone outpost at the edge of the world, which is amplified in the final section of the film, as York and ex-policeman Andy Lau as embark on a doomed train ride through the Philippines' tropical jungle that feels like a journey to nowhere.



THE ENDING (spoilers)

While the majority of the film is fairly straightforward despite the strange theatrical atmosphere and  lack of closure or resolution between the characters, the ending section provides a template for Wong's later experimentation with time and narrative structure. Glimpses of the two women seduced by York earlier in the film (Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau) are interspersed with shots of a clock and a ringing phone. But the two male characters are suddenly replaced by a third, a well-dressed man played by Tony Leung (who would later star with Maggie Cheung in In the Mood for Love), shown in dressing for a night out in a cramped apartment. This scene plays out in one long dramatic long take, and the musical theme seems to connect this unknown character to York and Lau, suggesting some type of connection between the three - maybe even some type of transfiguration.

This unexpected and mysterious ending is reminiscent of the sudden gear-shift at the end of In the Mood for Love, which casts everything that came before in a new light. Here the intended meaning is less clear, but the effect is no less beguiling. In any case, while Days of Being Wild is not as satisfying as Chungking Express or In the Mood for Love as a whole, Wong and Doyle's visual mastery was already on full display in this early work, and many of Wong's later themes and narrative devices can be traced back to this film (which has been said to form an informal trilogy with In the Mood for Love and 2046, Wong and Doyle's last collaboration to date).