![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
allekhaJust returned from a vacation! Thankfully, nothing much happened at work while I was gone, except for some good news that will help with initial work on a project we need to submit another grant proposal for. Kitty apparently missed me quite a bit for the first couple of days.
While traveling, I stopped my parents' place, and we watched two movies together. Both Japanese, and I happened to pick two winners this time, as all three of us very much enjoyed both of them.
The first film we watched was Madogiwa no Totto-chan, or Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window. It's an animated adaptation of a book I'm reading (in Japanese), which is autobiographical account of the author's time at an alternative school in WWII-era Japan. Totto-chan gets kicked out of public school shortly after starting first grade; not to diagnose a real person, but she reads a lot like she had ADHD, and the way she acted completely frazzled a teacher expecting her to behave by strict contemporary standards. She instead ends up going to a private school run in a very different, and much more inclusive, manner.
The book is a series of anecdotes and ignores the war for about as long as it can, but in adaptation - while still a succession of vignettes at first - it adds a bit more of a story arc. It also cuts out most of her friends to focus on one named Yasuaki, a boy who had two limbs withered by polio. Their friendship is very sweet - Totto-chan pushes him to try things he never thought he could, and he teaches her to be more empathetic, and in the meantime they learn various other lessons and go on adventures together. I thought these changes worked pretty well, although a bit more a transition between some of the vignettes would have been nice. The facial expressions the kids have are janky at points, but the animation captures Totto's energy very well in how she moves. A lot of care is put into her dress swishing wildly around her as she runs around. Several scenes depict imaginary sequences in a looser style, and those are all visually gorgeous.
While a lot of the anecdotes had to get cut, they kept one in that I suspect means this film is never going to see a US theater, though it did get picked up by Netflix - the kids go swimming at school, and they do so with no swimsuits or any other clothing. The whole point of it in the film - and as more explicitly explained in the book - is for all the kids, including those with physical disabilities like Yasuaki, to experience the joy of swimming and playing with the other kids without feeling like their bodies are any lesser, and Yasuaki gets a whole imagination sequence about feeling free in the water. So it's not exactly easy to cut. (In the book, there is the additional reasoning that boys and girls should understand what each other's bodies should look like in a normal context rather than having to find out in a less healthy way.)
Several scenes are good examples of subtle storytelling for kids, though the film as a whole is absolutely not subtle about its message that war is bad and bowing to authoritarian regimes that want to go to war is bad. For instance, in one scene, Yasuaki's mom picks up his clothes to do laundry, and he apologizes for getting them dirty. She starts to cry out of his sight (because he has never been able to do 'normal' kid activities that get clothes dirty since he had polio). In another scene, Totto-chan is startled to see that the ticket-taker at the train station, a middle-aged man, has been suddenly replaced by a woman, and she looks around for him to no avail (because he's been drafted).
The most striking scene for me was - besides the beautiful imaginary sequences - the one after Yasuaki dies. Totto-chan, torn apart by grief, runs out of the church where his funeral is being held. While running, she ducks through a military parade and through a group of boys playing war with toy rifles and pretend death scenes, which horrifies her, followed by her passing by a side street with disabled veterans and a woman holding a box of cremains. Very much not a subtle scene, there's a heartfelt song and slow motion and everything, but it wordlessly contrasts her grief over her friend's death with the public celebrations of death and warfare and then parallels it with a hidden demonstration of the consequences of those celebrations in a beautiful way.
Kokuho was quite a different experience. It's very long, but I never felt like it was dragging on or lasting forever. I saw it summarized as being about the rivalry between two up-and-coming kabuki actors, which isn't wrong, but it's also largely about how the protagonist, Kikuo, is single-mindedly obsessed with kabuki en route to becoming the titular 'national treasure'.
The thing I loved the most about the movie was how much of a visual feast it is and how well the kabuki scenes are shot. I've seen clips of kabuki before, but they were filmed in a very flat way, so it didn't come across as interesting. The vocal style was still a bit off-putting to me in the film, but the acting part of it came through in a way that made me understand why people would want to watch it. In particular, the actors were very good at portraying not simply the roles they had in the kabuki play, but the way that their characters were working as actors to portray those roles (I hope that makes sense). This is particularly evident in the climactic scene where they revisited the famous suicide lovers play to great tragic effect, but I felt it throughout the movie.
And of course, there's lots of beautiful scenes of traditional clothing if you're interested in that like I am. I also liked the many scenes where we see the actors putting on their stage makeup, as it often felt pretty visceral (it reminded me of how it felt when I wore that kind of makeup a few times).
I did feel the time skip near the end was a bit jarring, and after mulling the film over, the treatment of two things bothered me. First, for a film that has all of this:
...it has basically nothing whatsoever to say about gender, sexuality, or even this particular theater tradition. Just felt a bit strange to completely miss out on that in this particular story.
Second, in one of the most memorable scenes, Kikuo's daughter calls him out at the end of the film for crawling over people in order to make his ascension, before admitting that his acting still stirred her heart despite how much she hates him for it. But... I can't think of any good examples of him doing this to men. Even his rival is defeated in the first half of the story because Kikuo is more dedicated to studying the art instead of going out to party. Women, on the other hand, appear to prop up his story and then mostly vanish as soon as they've served their use to him:
Male characters also exist to be in the dramatic background of Kikuo's story, but they aren't transparently thrown away like the women are.
While I still enjoyed it quite a lot - have I mentioned how stunning the theater scene are? and while Kikuo is an unpleasant person, I found him a good protagonist - but for a three hour movie, it could have easily fit in a better treatment of women as characters, even if nobody involved wanted to touch the gender angle.
While traveling, I stopped my parents' place, and we watched two movies together. Both Japanese, and I happened to pick two winners this time, as all three of us very much enjoyed both of them.
The first film we watched was Madogiwa no Totto-chan, or Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window. It's an animated adaptation of a book I'm reading (in Japanese), which is autobiographical account of the author's time at an alternative school in WWII-era Japan. Totto-chan gets kicked out of public school shortly after starting first grade; not to diagnose a real person, but she reads a lot like she had ADHD, and the way she acted completely frazzled a teacher expecting her to behave by strict contemporary standards. She instead ends up going to a private school run in a very different, and much more inclusive, manner.
The book is a series of anecdotes and ignores the war for about as long as it can, but in adaptation - while still a succession of vignettes at first - it adds a bit more of a story arc. It also cuts out most of her friends to focus on one named Yasuaki, a boy who had two limbs withered by polio. Their friendship is very sweet - Totto-chan pushes him to try things he never thought he could, and he teaches her to be more empathetic, and in the meantime they learn various other lessons and go on adventures together. I thought these changes worked pretty well, although a bit more a transition between some of the vignettes would have been nice. The facial expressions the kids have are janky at points, but the animation captures Totto's energy very well in how she moves. A lot of care is put into her dress swishing wildly around her as she runs around. Several scenes depict imaginary sequences in a looser style, and those are all visually gorgeous.
While a lot of the anecdotes had to get cut, they kept one in that I suspect means this film is never going to see a US theater, though it did get picked up by Netflix - the kids go swimming at school, and they do so with no swimsuits or any other clothing. The whole point of it in the film - and as more explicitly explained in the book - is for all the kids, including those with physical disabilities like Yasuaki, to experience the joy of swimming and playing with the other kids without feeling like their bodies are any lesser, and Yasuaki gets a whole imagination sequence about feeling free in the water. So it's not exactly easy to cut. (In the book, there is the additional reasoning that boys and girls should understand what each other's bodies should look like in a normal context rather than having to find out in a less healthy way.)
Several scenes are good examples of subtle storytelling for kids, though the film as a whole is absolutely not subtle about its message that war is bad and bowing to authoritarian regimes that want to go to war is bad. For instance, in one scene, Yasuaki's mom picks up his clothes to do laundry, and he apologizes for getting them dirty. She starts to cry out of his sight (because he has never been able to do 'normal' kid activities that get clothes dirty since he had polio). In another scene, Totto-chan is startled to see that the ticket-taker at the train station, a middle-aged man, has been suddenly replaced by a woman, and she looks around for him to no avail (because he's been drafted).
The most striking scene for me was - besides the beautiful imaginary sequences - the one after Yasuaki dies. Totto-chan, torn apart by grief, runs out of the church where his funeral is being held. While running, she ducks through a military parade and through a group of boys playing war with toy rifles and pretend death scenes, which horrifies her, followed by her passing by a side street with disabled veterans and a woman holding a box of cremains. Very much not a subtle scene, there's a heartfelt song and slow motion and everything, but it wordlessly contrasts her grief over her friend's death with the public celebrations of death and warfare and then parallels it with a hidden demonstration of the consequences of those celebrations in a beautiful way.
Kokuho was quite a different experience. It's very long, but I never felt like it was dragging on or lasting forever. I saw it summarized as being about the rivalry between two up-and-coming kabuki actors, which isn't wrong, but it's also largely about how the protagonist, Kikuo, is single-mindedly obsessed with kabuki en route to becoming the titular 'national treasure'.
The thing I loved the most about the movie was how much of a visual feast it is and how well the kabuki scenes are shot. I've seen clips of kabuki before, but they were filmed in a very flat way, so it didn't come across as interesting. The vocal style was still a bit off-putting to me in the film, but the acting part of it came through in a way that made me understand why people would want to watch it. In particular, the actors were very good at portraying not simply the roles they had in the kabuki play, but the way that their characters were working as actors to portray those roles (I hope that makes sense). This is particularly evident in the climactic scene where they revisited the famous suicide lovers play to great tragic effect, but I felt it throughout the movie.
And of course, there's lots of beautiful scenes of traditional clothing if you're interested in that like I am. I also liked the many scenes where we see the actors putting on their stage makeup, as it often felt pretty visceral (it reminded me of how it felt when I wore that kind of makeup a few times).
I did feel the time skip near the end was a bit jarring, and after mulling the film over, the treatment of two things bothered me. First, for a film that has all of this:
- Kikuo and his rival/friend primarily playing crossdressing roles as women
- in a male-only theater space
- they acting a pair of lovers in their most dramatic scene together
- in one scene, Kikuo wears a purple scarf that was once highly eroticized as a symbol of young male actors who doubled as prostitutes
- at his lowest point, Kikuo is mistaken by a woman by someone unfamiliar with kabuki conventions and gets beaten quite badly once they realize he's a man
...it has basically nothing whatsoever to say about gender, sexuality, or even this particular theater tradition. Just felt a bit strange to completely miss out on that in this particular story.
Second, in one of the most memorable scenes, Kikuo's daughter calls him out at the end of the film for crawling over people in order to make his ascension, before admitting that his acting still stirred her heart despite how much she hates him for it. But... I can't think of any good examples of him doing this to men. Even his rival is defeated in the first half of the story because Kikuo is more dedicated to studying the art instead of going out to party. Women, on the other hand, appear to prop up his story and then mostly vanish as soon as they've served their use to him:
- He has a girlfriend early on who rejects his marriage proposal in a scene written so indirectly that I was guessing at what she was trying to say (apparently I was not the only one confused by this), which I believe was her already recognizing that kabuki >>> everything else in life for him and that his rival is more sociable. After she runs off with the rival, she returns to the background but is completely irrelevant to the story.
- Girlfriend 2, with whom he has a daughter. He refuses to acknowledge his daughter in public at one point, and he stops communicating with her and her mother when their daughter is still young.
- Girlfriend 3, who is much younger and idolizes him. He seduces her in a failed attempt to get closer to her influential father. She leaves her family for him to have a very unhappy road trip together making a little money as traveling entertainers. As soon as he manages a return to the respectable kabuki world, she disappears from the story. Not a word about whether she felt like the adventure was worth it or if her family accepted her again.
Male characters also exist to be in the dramatic background of Kikuo's story, but they aren't transparently thrown away like the women are.
While I still enjoyed it quite a lot - have I mentioned how stunning the theater scene are? and while Kikuo is an unpleasant person, I found him a good protagonist - but for a three hour movie, it could have easily fit in a better treatment of women as characters, even if nobody involved wanted to touch the gender angle.
