Jiro Dreams of Sushi (Tuesday, March 14, 2012) (27)

David Gelb's film Jiro Dreams of Sushi has one of the move evocative names in recent memory. The documentary opens with the eponymous sushi chef talking about his dreams and then we see some of his creations, in a dreamlike slow motion, in wide angle. This film is a dreamscape of rice and fish.

It's a documentary about an 85-year-old three-star Michelin sushi chef in Tokyo who practices his craft in a way that has largely disappeared in our contemporary world, particularly the celebrity chef culture, where fame pushes some to change menus, make concessions on quality or rarely work as one manages one's empire of restaurants, books and TV shows. Jiro is not that chef.

The film looks at lots of different aspects of his restaurant and his view of the world, inasmuch as it relates to his 10-seat sushi restaurant. His main deputy is is eldest son Yoshikazu, who has worked by his side for a few decades now. He is clearly another great sushi chef, but the bar his father has set is so high, he might never be properly respected for his talent. We see how the son goes to the fish market to buy the best product, how they have special relationships with all the vendors, how they have a special kind of rice they serve that has to be prepared a special way. We see how they have a long line of apprentices who work for 10 years under Jiro's (and, to a lesser degree, Yoshikazu's) tutelage, learning the perfect way to slice fish, or massage octopus (40-50 minutes rather than 30 minutes, you naifs!).

Gelb embraced the minimalist beauty of the sushi gestalt by using several Philip Glass works for the score. The only problem with this is that it then begs a lopsided comparison with Morris' The Thin Blue Line and Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi, both of which used original Glass music. Gelb really can't hold a candle to those masters. And here is where the film stops being a revelation and starts being a regurgitation of styles that the director picked up in film class.

Yes, sushi-making is beautiful and Japan has this amazing culture that appreciates craft and slowness and beauty in the midst of urban chaos, but do we really need every shot to be some camera trick or gimmick? Every set-up is at a funny diagonal, there's a ton of slow motion, a lot of wide angles, a lot of double-exposed images bleeding from one thing to another. It's all a bit too complex for such a simple work.

I get that Jiro probably has more in common with a dancer than with a typical chef, but I wish things were just a bit simpler and less stylized.

One interesting moment, when Yoshikazu goes to the fish market and to an auction for tuna (which, by now, has been shown on American TV dozens of times already) we see that the auctioneers in this market have an amazing sing-songy, playful cadence to their calling, less rednecked than American-style livestock auctions and more ethnic music. Sadly, Gelb buries these songs in a pit of recycled symphonic music, so we can't even appreciate what we're seeing and hearing. It would be like he's cooking fatty tuna. Totally unnecessary and borderline reckless.

The film generally loses it's way by trying to turn what should be a tight little short (35 minutes would suffice) into a feature. At one point we follow Jiro to his home town where he visits with some elementary school classmates. This is totally off-topic, especially because Jiro has been, heretofore, very reticent about his family history. This is just a bit too much.

Gelb makes a nice movie, but I would recommend he take some advice from great sushi masters like Jiro and concentrate more on the taste and quality of his dish and less on the volume and quantity of it. Using mostly borrowed, complex style doesn't help the film, and a lot less here would have been much more.

Stars: 3 of 4

Norwegian Wood (Saturday, January 14, 2012) (2)

Haruki Murakami has an interesting style that is very specific and could be difficult to translate to film. Several years ago Japanese filmmaker Jun Ichikawa adapted a short story Tony Takitani to the screen in a beautiful film. Now Vietnamese director Anh Hung Tran has adapted Murakami's Norwegian Wood, one of the most straightforward and least magical of his novels.

The film (and the book) deal with Watanabe, a man looking back at his days in college in the late 1960s. Back then he was best friends with classmates and couple Naoko and Kizuki. After Kizuki's suicide, Naoko and Watanabe become close and ultimately fall in love as well. Right after the first time they have sex, she leaves and checks into a mental hospital in the mountains. This leaves Watanabe loving her, or the idea of her and the magical aura she represents in his mind, though far away from her. He meets another student, Midori, and the two fall in love, though his thoughts frequently wander to Naoko and the past. In his effort to juggle his love for the two women, he risks losing both of them.

An interesting twist to the adaptation of the script (by Tran) and production of the film is that what was a more down-to-earth romantic drama becomes onscreen a pure melodrama, one that Douglas Sirk himself would appreciate. The feelings and actions of Watanabe become bigger-than-life plot points rather than intimate moments. The different women are somewhat faceless, as their emotional and narrative significance to Watanabe becomes more significant. For me, as a viewer who has never totally connected to melodrama, this is a bit difficult, though I really appreciate what Tran has done. I do feel, however, that the Midori character, in particular, becomes a bit slight and the concept of Watanabe being "torn" between two women, one of whom he 'has' one he does not, is more told to us than really shown (he's not really torn at all).

The technical aspects of the film are absolutely stunning. Ping Bin Lee, who also was the cinematographer on several beautiful films by Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Wong Kar-Wai's masterpiece In the Mood for Love, again shoots one of the most gorgeous and crystal-clear films I've seen in awhile. Almost ever shot is filled with bright, saturated colors, even the grimy interiors. There is a lot of play with near-burning and over-exposure, so sunny days become almost blinding in their clarity and whiteness (particularly effective in a film about nostalgia). Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood gives a beautiful, nostalgic and romantic score that fits into the sociopolitical and musical era of the film. He has developed into a very interesting score composer in recent years.

This film is rather different from the book, but it does follow a similar narrative journey. Much of the political tension that's in the book is eliminated here and forced into the background. Still, there is no mistake that this is a film based on a Murakami novel. It retains his pop culture connections, his cerebral/psychological interest and tone and his appreciation for the beauty not only in nature but also in banal and dirty things.

Stars: 3 of 4

Summer Wars (2010) (Sunday, January 9, 2011) (173)

Summer Wars is a good, but not great, anime movie about how the wold is in danger because of social media networks. In the film, there is a computer system called Oz (subtle) that seems to control everyone. It's like Facebook on crack. Everything you do is documented there and government stuff is run through there as well. Everyone in the world has an animated avatar that lives in Oz and interacts inside that world.

One day, Kenji, a dorky computer nerd who is a student but works for Oz doing some sort of policing, is asked by his female friend Natsuki to accompany her to her grandmother's house to pretend to be her fiance. Natsuki has a big family and her brother is apparently some legendary Oz gamer. While the whole family is there, Natsuki's uncle, Wabisuke, returns after years of living in America (boo!). It seems he left the family a long time ago after selling some of their land in a terrible deal. The family is not happy about his arrival.

But they don't have a chance to worry about him because as this is happening, Oz is taken over by some mysterious villain avatar called Love Machine (it's ironic) that eats code and other avatars and tries to take over the world via Oz. Kenji, Natsuki, her brother and the family have to get on their computers to fight Love Machine, lest he bomb Japan.

There is a very nice look to the animation here and lots of the shots of Oz are totally inspired by the art work of Takashi Murakami. I like this a lot. I also like that Kenji is a reluctant hero and that it's dorks and geeks who save the world, rather than supermen and strong guys. This is a nice change, though, I'm sure it's more common than I know in anime.

I think there is a bit too much that happens here, and the movie plays a bit too long for me. It's drags a lot in the third act and sorta loses its way a bit. The subplot of Wabisuke is nice for the family story, but feels like a hat on a hat when it comes to this program that's going to destroy the world. I get the idea that families need to stick together and that only together can we conquer tough things, but the story would have essentially be there without this character.

This is a fun movie, but nothing brilliant. It has some lovely visual elements in it and I liked the animation a lot.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

The Sun (Sunday, November 22, 2009) (168)

The title of this film refers to the fact that in Japanese mythology, the Emperor is considered a descendant of the sun. In the years before World War II, this concept was taken literally - he was the sun and a god on earth. This film tells the story of Emperor Hirohito in the final days of the war as he comes to terms with his own mortality and the fact that he is not a deity on earth, but just a man like any other. The film is about his psychological journey moving from a position of extreme pride and confidence to a point of striking humility and humanity.

It is set after the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were dropped, but before the terms of the surrender were finalized. He is living in a rural house with a bunker in the basement. His daily routine is rather mundane as he goes to meetings with his war council, does scientific experiments (which is apparently his passion) and speaks to his butler and other servants. They limit is contact to the outside world as a way of protecting him from the outside reality.

Interestingly, the film is directed by Russian Aleksandr Sokurov and not a Japanese filmmaker (he is also the director of photography). The style of the film is wonderful, beginning in the bunker, where there is a powerful sense of isolation and claustrophobia. As the emperor is slowly allowed to go above ground and ultimately outside, the atmosphere is misty and gray, not clear and beautiful. The physical power of the bunker and its formal heaviness is a very strong symbol for the Emperor's status. As his mental process proceeds, until he ultimately proclaims his non-God status, the architecture moves to a more standard wood, glass and light screens - a very beautiful approach.

It is hard to watch this film and not think of Oliver Hirschbiegel's recent Downfall, about Adolph Hitler in his bunker in the final days of the war. Aside from the fact that the atmosphere is very much alike, the psychological structure of the film is very similar as well. Both films show a once great men (at least great in power and status) dealing with his own flawed judgement and the fact that he lost on the biggest scale imaginable. Both men are surrounded by yes-men who continue to tell them what they want to hear (that they are in fact winning the war despite the reality outside of their bunkers) and hide important truths from them.

But another important corollary that I see is Robert Altman's Secret Honor (one of the smallest films of Altman's career and one of this most interesting), about Richard Nixon in his later years (in the 1980s) frantically and obsessively going over his history and shouting about how he is truly not a crook. Hirohito, in this film, sits in stark contrast to Nixon, as he is dignified and comes to his important conclusion without the histrionics and entirely on his own. He is the sanest man in the bunker (which Hitler might also be in Downfall), while Nixon is the craziest man his office. All three films deal beautifully with men working out and coming to terms with their legacy at the end of their runs. Hirohito easily is the most elegant with this struggle.

Issei Ogata plays Hirohito beautifully as a smart man with a child-like interest in the things that surround him and a loving normalness rarely seen in royalty (in film at any rate). He deserves acclaim and awards for this performance. (As I look at his recent film credits, I notice that at least two of them are also wonderful - Edward Yang's Yi Yi from 2000 and Jun Ichikawa's Tony Takitani from 2004, both of which were on my best of the respective year lists. Clearly Ogata knows how to pick his roles well and does magnificently well when he gets a part!)

The most glaring negative to this film are the fact that a few actors playing American military men are pretty bad. I think many of them are Russian actors with dubbed-in voices. However it is done, it's rather cringe-worthy when they're onscreen speaking.

This is a much more simple and approachable film that other recent works by Sukurov, namely Aleksandra and Russian Ark. Both of those films were visually stunning, but left me a bit cold with story and content. This film is visually interesting, but also fascinating as a narrative and a mental journey. It is certainly the best of the Sukurov films I've seen and is well worth watching.

Stars: 3.5 of 4