Kiyoshi Kurosawa

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feihong
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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#151 Post by feihong » Mon Jun 07, 2021 5:22 pm

The Japanese blu-ray is top-tier in terms of quality, but it doesn't have English subs. There are English subs, which are timed to it, and which are findable with a quick google search.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#152 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Jul 05, 2021 7:43 pm

Supposedly Kino Lorber acquired rights to Wife of a Spy -- but I find no hint as to when (and how) this might actually get distributed. Has anyone heard anything?

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#153 Post by dadaistnun » Tue Jul 27, 2021 8:35 am

Michael -- To the Ends of the Earth is streaming on Criterion Channel beginning August 16!

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#154 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Jul 27, 2021 2:35 pm

dadaistnun -- Great news! Thanks for the tip!

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#155 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Aug 20, 2021 10:25 pm

Wife of a Spy is currently screening virtually as part of the Japan Society of New York's Japan Cuts Festival. A few films are being screened "live" (and most of these are not available online), but WoaS luckily is available.

https://film.japansociety.org/page/japan-cuts-2021/

I thought this looked pretty decent visually in this presentation (on our TV). Crowd scenes were barebones to be sure -- but no KK film has ever gotten the sort of budget that would permit spectacular crowd scenes and the like. My reaction is pretty much in line with TWBB's. I simply don't see the flaws feihong cites. As to Satoko's behavior towards the end.
SpoilerShow
I did not feel Satoko "descended into madness" at all -- nor that she felt she had been "betrayed".
I think her "bravo" for her husband's stunt was utterly heartfelt. He set things up to ensure he could get the real info out of Japan, while exposing her to the least possible risk. He did to her what she had done with regard to Fumio (and she knew this) -- deliberately offering up a "victim" in order to throw off the authorities and "protect the mission". Was she "happy" about this? Not likely. But did she appreciate it -- and ultimately accepted its necessity. She, like her husband and Fumio, fully embraced the notion that they had to be willing to sacrifice all, if necessary. I felt that her behavior, when with Dr. Nozaki, clearly showed she had fully understanding of what was going on -- and was playing out her allotted role. The hint that she may have been able to rejoin her allegedly deceased husband in America a couple years after the war suggests that their relationship was not at all destroyed by the trick he played on her and (more importantly) the authorities.

Earlier, I was quite shocked by Satoko's ruthless betrayal of Fumio -- but I almost got a sense that she may have somehow discussed this with him. In any event, what happened then showed she herself understood just how devious and "treacherous" their actions might need to be from that point on. Once she had watched the damning film footage, she seems to have had no (enduring) qualms about the course she needed to take -- despite momentary episodes of doubt/fear.
I was surprised at how straightforward this was. Yes, it was suspenseful and tricky -- but was pretty much devoid of the surrealist (or similar) touches found in almost everything else I've seen by KK. However, this did not bother me in the least in this case. I found KK's mostly quite understated treatment of the story both suitable and effective. To a large extent, this was a showcase for Yuu Aoi -- and she totally delivered.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#156 Post by L.A. » Thu Sep 02, 2021 3:32 pm

Coming to DVD and Blu-ray November 16th from Kino Lorber!

Wife of a Spy
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring Yu Aoi and Issey Takahashi

Master filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure, Tokyo Sonata) won the Silver Lion (Best Director) at the Venice Film Festival for this riveting, gorgeously crafted, old-school Hitchcockian thriller shot in stunning 8K. The year is 1940 in Kobe, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. Local merchant and amateur filmmaker Yusaku (Issey Takahashi, Kill Bill) senses that things are headed in an unsettling direction. Following a trip to Manchuria, he becomes determined to bring to light the things he witnessed there, and secretly filmed. Meanwhile, his wife Satoko (Yû Aoi) receives a visit from her childhood friend, now a military policeman. He warns her about Yusaku’s seditious ways and reveals that a woman her husband brought back from his trip has died. Satoko confronts Yusaku, but when she discovers his true intentions, she is torn between loyalty to her husband, the life they have built, and the country they call home.

Special features:
*The Making of Wife of a Spy
*Optional English subtitles
*Trailer

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#157 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 29, 2022 9:13 pm

I'm making my way through as many of my KK blindspots as I can get my digital hands on, including a lot of his earlier stuff, which has been disappointing overall thus far. Still, here are three worthwhile films to comment on, in ascending order of preference:

The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl (aka Bumpkin Soup): I didn't like this, but it gets points for being so difficult to pigeonhole. I'm not even sure what it is, or more directly, what it's trying to do... It's a bizarre quasi-'youth musical' with non-dance "numbers," but also maybe a satire on a sociopolitical Godardian exercise? KK is touching on quite a few topics, only with half-measures and through the aesthetic wardrobe of Godard's ironically playful austerity during the peripheral years of his ultrapolitical period; a no-budget C-grade Porcile anti-musical, if you will. It's an interesting failure- the kind of film where a professor gives us lectures on the concept of "shame" that have disappointingly little substance related to his thesis on subjective cultural overlap, one which he seemingly immediately rejects as these arguments fizzle into the same low-grade energy applied to the execution of clearly enthusiastically-brewed schematic ideas neatly-placed with lethargy onto the screen.

Yakuza Taxi takes a silly premise where a yakuza gang saves an innocent taxi company that then become indebted to them, and presents the consequences of said deal as a silly romp, with some interesting scenarios, worthwhile social dynamics, and a sustained soothing 'junk-food TV' vibe without becoming apathetic to thwart our simmering involvement. This was far better than it had any right to be, and I admired KK's dedication to the premise and his keen interest in his characters and their various episodes- particularly an incident where one of the hired drivers reacts to a customer trying to engage in some perverted deeds without acknowledging the driver's humanity-as-objective-existence to hilarious lengths!

Sweet Home: Campy B-horror transfigured into indulgent amusement park ride from Movie Heaven. KK takes the haunted house subgenre, combines it with the action-adventure eye of wonder, and and meshes them to the beat of semi-grounded/non-'seizure-by-edit'-inducing Hausu theatrics. The possibilities of cinema surrounding the supernatural enigmas present in this corporeal fantasy follow the aesthetic elasticity of Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, and the forward momentum of the narrative through endlessly inventive setpieces in and around the central location was nothing short of exhilarating. I found myself totally bowled over at my own reflexive journey with these characters, traversing the full range of KK's regurgitated spectrum of moods. I laughed out loud, and sat earnestly bug-eyed with a racing heart, at both aspects that were intentionally hammy and sincerely terrifying. KK is engaging with that fine line enough to invite some nuance to humor, but his strong filmmaking skills also demand a serious appreciation for the avenues this travels to find homes in sincere artistic inspirations at conveying thrills (with some super cool visuals- the shadow of the giant hand being an early favorite) and fatuous madcap antics with equal measure, and all the spaces in between that encompass a cinematic 'comfort food' sense of adventure. The eclectic score is awesome too. I loved this movie, and hope fans of the aforementioned gonzo-cult films seek it out. There is zero reason to go to a haunted house ride ever again when you can just watch this on Halloween, and there are enough zany stages this burns through in 90 minutes where I doubt I'll ever memorize every gag. Think Dead Alive where creatively grisly zombie deaths are escape rooms.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#158 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Mar 29, 2022 9:52 pm

Interesting report, TWBB -- never seen any of these early KK films.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#159 Post by ChunkyLover » Tue Mar 29, 2022 11:07 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 9:13 pm
Sweet Home: Campy B-horror transfigured into indulgent amusement park ride from Movie Heaven. KK takes the haunted house subgenre, combines it with the action-adventure eye of wonder, and and meshes them to the beat of semi-grounded/non-'seizure-by-edit'-inducing Hausu theatrics. The possibilities of cinema surrounding the supernatural enigmas present in this corporeal fantasy follow the aesthetic elasticity of Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, and the forward momentum of the narrative through endlessly inventive setpieces in and around the central location was nothing short of exhilarating. I found myself totally bowled over at my own reflexive journey with these characters, traversing the full range of KK's regurgitated spectrum of moods. I laughed out loud, and sat earnestly bug-eyed with a racing heart, at both aspects that were intentionally hammy and sincerely terrifying. KK is engaging with that fine line enough to invite some nuance to humor, but his strong filmmaking skills also demand a serious appreciation for the avenues this travels to find homes in sincere artistic inspirations at conveying thrills (with some super cool visuals- the shadow of the giant hand being an early favorite) and fatuous madcap antics with equal measure, and all the spaces in between that encompass a cinematic 'comfort food' sense of adventure. The eclectic score is awesome too. I loved this movie, and hope fans of the aforementioned gonzo-cult films seek it out. There is zero reason to go to a haunted house ride ever again when you can just watch this on Halloween, and there are enough zany stages this burns through in 90 minutes where I doubt I'll ever memorize every gag. Think Dead Alive where creatively grisly zombie deaths are escape rooms.
I still need to see "Sweet Home" if not just for the "Resident Evil" connection/inspiration.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#160 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 29, 2022 11:39 pm

Other less interesting KKs I've seen recently include Seventh Code, an on-the-run 'wrong (wo)man' pic stripped down to the bare necessities of anti-aesthetic realism. It works at times, but such fluid non-setpiece-driven action requires a consistent devotion to the acuity of the bareknuckled adrenaline rush sensation, and so KK's arrhythmic energy in pauses around banal tertiary characters kills any buzz the timber sparks ignite. Retribution was an ineffective supernatural detective thriller sandwiched between the enigmatic depths of Cure and Creepy, unfortunately defaulting into a boring, tangible externalization of collective responsibility surrounding a specific superfluous incident. There are a few promising scenes that go nowhere, and so this becomes a far less interesting failure than it could've been. Beautiful New Bay Area Project is just a flat-out bomb though, destroying any promise the ominous opening postures at, with a tailspinning devolution into contrived stalker inanity. The Guard from the Underground was a fairly better if still fruitless endeavor into the crime thriller. KK shows a candid interest in the slow-burn mechanics of genre and is building skills before our eyes with increased control over the tempo in engaging narrative propulsion, transforming his sharp attention to details into a widespread curiosity for the viewer.. kinda like the disease in Cure? Only this dog's script has no bite, and there's no pitch to satisfy the windup. The pink film, Kandagawa Pervert Wars wasn't my bag either, but I don't have familiarity with that subgenre/era of Japanese film movement to comment beyond that.

I did finally watch Journey to the Shore, and it was expectedly terrific. Lots to say about that one, but I'd rather just feel it for now. I was quite moved by the optimism coating the perspective of the husband's 'teachings' in the last act, and the midpoint piano moment following the confession of a sister's regret. I also recall loving Tokyo Sonata, so I'm fully endorsing KK in this mode of pure sensitivity without the skeleton of prickly genres.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#161 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Mar 29, 2022 11:57 pm

Have you seen Before We Vanish? I like that almost as much as Journey to the Shore (which I suspect will always be my favorite KK film).

I remember rather liking Sakebi (really means "scream" or "shriek") -- at least as something to get creeped out by.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#162 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Mar 30, 2022 1:03 am

I haven’t yet, I have digital copies of some of KK’s more popular 21st century R1 DVD releases including that one, but decided to put holds on physical copies at the lib instead and they’re still en route. I should get to it sometime in the next week or two.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#163 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Wed Mar 30, 2022 12:49 pm

Should be said that Kurosawa doesn't regard Sweet Home as his film, at least not in the form it's currently available—he fell out with Itami over what was apparently Kurosawa's darker approach (which was present in the original script, but Itami thought it would somehow work itself out), and Itami took over the last half of the shooting as well as all the post-production, ostensibly because Kurosawa couldn't handle the special effects work involved. Weirdly the original theatrical release used an edit closer to Kurosawa's intentions, but all the home video releases use the Itami cut, which Kurosawa unsuccessfully sued to block. Part of the fallout was that Kurosawa's reputation as a "difficult" director (established during the fracas with Nikkatsu over The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl) grew even more, hence all the subsequent years toiling in the TV and direct-to-video salt mines. The upshot is that even all these years later there's still some early Kurosawa to discover, and I believe Men of Rage (mentioned in this thread back on page three) recently popped up online in an unsubtitled version.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#164 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Mar 30, 2022 1:19 pm

That’s very interesting! I noticed Itami’s name in the opening credits and definitely felt his more playfully silly fingerprints at odds with KK’s devout aim at sustaining an evocative dark tone, but for me that established a favorably blurry line of unpredictability in audience-inflicted mood lability that served this constantly-surprising phantasmagorical adventure tale well. I can see why KK would disown it, as his commitment to the horror setpieces are occasionally undercut with campy light touches, but such a mess seems appropriate for this narrative’s absurd and knowingly-contrived central conceit anyways. I do think that you can sense KK’s involvement strongly during several scenes- there’s a suffocating, yet deliberately paced and subtly chilling momentum to several setpieces that- regardless of who edited them in post- are hard to erase the established dread in both setup and execution, even if they are perhaps remnants of what could-have-been.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#165 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Mar 31, 2022 1:26 am

Foreboding

This is very much KK at work in his familiar sandbox, albeit shifting his attitude towards an enthusiasm for unbridled playfulness, like a hyperactive kid picking up every toy representing a favorite theme or idea. The foreboding score dominates the picture, but the ambiance is cheekily satirical. The premise is a simple one: Alien comes to Earth, poses as doctor, uses various humans as "guides" to steal "concepts" from individuals' minds to help him/it weaponize/learn more about our 'humanity', and meets a woman who has special psychic powers herself and immediately detects his alien presence. KK has fun with the idea of 'logically'-minded aliens collecting “concepts” against emotion-dominant humans' drives. There remains a sense of dread born from human impotence to bridge intangible foreign processes that is well-woven into the script and directorial-set tone. Etsuko, our heroine, is genuinely at odds with many variables- from micro-stimuli in how to contend with a corporeal yet alien figure who does not communicate along emotional channels, to comprehensive and enigmatic implications of this visitor- such as temporal barriers to the ‘end of the world’ posited as 'reasonable to assume' early on in a nonchalant exchange with a girlfriend that’s both morbidly provocative and wryly lighthearted comedy. Along with her emotions, Etsuko's physiological responses are effectively externalized into the form, KK self-reflexively utilizing his mastery over medium aesthetics to create a dissonance between this human being- who has endless senses worth exploring- and the alien, who conversely has a seemingly one-note method of engagement, in unexpected irony.

Sure, Makabe has some psychic powers and monstrously physical strength, but there is a transparent sense of what’s lacking and a strange identification of familiar human traits within him, including a clear and amusingly thin representation of addictive behavior. I love when Makabe requests usurping the strongest human drive of “Fear” against all experiential rationality based firmly on the cheapest stereotype of the power-hungry villain, also reflecting the insanity of the disease of addiction! This concrete normality, cementing the alien in discernible form, eliminates KK's often abstract emblems for signifying psychological horror from powerlessness, thus keeping this a predominantly sci-fi affair. Usually KK uses the supernatural intrusion on our familiar reality to deplete our existential utility, and sober us to nebulous disturbances in our capability to contend with the infinite uncontrollable and invisible energies around us, but here he simultaneously celebrates what it means to be human by extending the complexities to Etsuko. Or is Etsuko, a human with enhanced ‘psychic’ abilities to sense the energy in Makabe, a playfully reversed version of Cure’s psychospiritual humans- only here geared towards connection, empathy, and contained control over their powers?

Anyways, this is first and foremost a comedy.. I think. KK is satirical toying with our cultures' ideas of aliens’ foreign presence, inverting the expectations of an overpowering, mind-controlling being’s terrifying force into a vehicle that uses witless terminology like “humanly human” and “special human” to differentiate types of people. He taunts Japanese culture specifically with intentionally on-the-nose bits (like a commanding officer formally apologizing to the alien murderer’s complaint of being “so loud”) that work marvelously when the director has this much control over his risky choices, effectively blending every mood in his oeuvre under one quarantined atmosphere.

However, despite these repeated returns to light jabs, there are mirrored disquieting energies dominating sections of this piece. The relentless and excitable badgering “Is that the fear of death you're feeling?!” toward a man being killed who is screaming in fear is a chilling juxtaposition, and KK holds this note for an unbearable length, though it’s bookended with another comic gag of a slapstick knockout. That's just the way this film goes. And yet the notion of accessing and robbing concepts from our own schemas and memories with permanence is horrifying - as several of us touched on in relation to Upstream Color a few years back.

Beyond tonal diversity and psychic horror/sci-fi genre-twisting, KK is attending to broader themes of his on a more intimate level, such as the incongruity between the futility to avoid disconnection and the magnetism towards connection. One midpoint scene finds a “guide” admitting he chooses people to be killed by the alien based on his emotionally-driven assumptions that a certain behavior of the potential-target must indicate they dislike him. Such rationalization demonstrates that sense of overwhelming disconnect, and also a disturbing ease at dehumanizing another and deeming them a worth sacrifice, due to the antisocial aura deterministically disrupting affinity between people on a societal level. The film ultimately descends into a slasher finish, where the alien diagnoses the human race in the most brazenly fatalistic and horrific terms:
SpoilerShow
As it dies, and senses genuine Fear in a manner that is anticathartic and impossible to evade, he posits that the idea of humans seeking coexistence (a deliberately ambiguous meaning here for 'with alien life' or more generally with one another on Earth) is because we "live on the fear of death," and this is our fate to lean into in pain forever, impossible to achieve.
KK has spent the majority of his career resting in the elliptical margins of these concepts and letting us feel them, but to so blatantly and unapologetically declare what he's been thinking, and what we've been feeling, through the vessel of an enigmatic alien, is a genius move into checkmate after a long and lustrous career resisting the temptation. I loved this movie, for all the conflict it contained on every level of filmmaking style, skeletal makeup and interpersonal spirit within, managing to concoct all of this into a relatively even-feeling final product. Like Doppleganger, KK is pulling out the dangling threads of clever comedy from his core serious interests until it formulates the bulk of the picture's weight, but this is on a whole other scale, and all the more impressive for it.

I considered writing up a side-by-side comparison with its sister film, Before We Vanish, but I had enough to dissect without doing so- I'm sure once I view that film, there will be a wealth of context to glean from their similarities and differences. Also, I watched the truncated film version, but read that this was a miniseries that may or may not have been actualized... does anybody know- and if so, where to find it? It doesn't even seem to be available on back channels.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#166 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Mar 31, 2022 9:34 am

No English-subbed (official) release of Foreboding is there?

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#167 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:03 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Thu Mar 31, 2022 1:26 am
Also, I watched the truncated film version, but read that this was a miniseries that may or may not have been actualized... does anybody know- and if so, where to find it? It doesn't even seem to be available on back channels.
The miniseries is easy to find under its romanized title Yocho: Sanpo suru shinryakusha. AFAIK none of it has been fansubbed, but I'm not sure it's all that different from the film version—contrary to Wikipedia's claim of a 200-minute runtime (5 episodes at 40 minutes each), the actual runtime is only 147 minutes (4 episodes at 28 minutes and a 35-minute finale), which is still a notable difference but definitely not as significant as an entire additional hour.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#168 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Mar 31, 2022 1:25 pm

Thanks, that’s helpful! Glad to know I’m not missing a significant chunk of material too. Michael, I don’t believe it’s received a commercially subbed release, which is unfortunate and a bit confusing considering it’s a very interesting and accessible KK film, and the outlier amongst his recent work that all have at least R1 DVD releases. I’d think they could just lump it in with Before We Vanish -since I believe they’re inspired by the same source material?

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#169 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Mar 31, 2022 2:39 pm

So -- I found this online -- without subs -- but the Ep. 5 there is also only 28 minutes long (and seems to leave one at what looks/sounds like a cliffhanger).

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#170 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Thu Mar 31, 2022 3:28 pm

If you're using the site I think you're using, they have the episode order reversed.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#171 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Mar 31, 2022 3:50 pm

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:
Thu Mar 31, 2022 3:28 pm
If you're using the site I think you're using, they have the episode order reversed.
Blows kiss...

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#172 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Apr 01, 2022 7:40 pm

I've watched too many run-of-the-mill or uninteresting KKs to feel comfortable writing up everything, but overall I'm finding myself either completely indifferent or enthusiastically compelled by his work. Most of what I don't like are the earlier or mid-career stuff, including most TV projects- though even in something like the first The Revenge film, there's something impressive about a startling climax that finishes as abruptly as it does, or in Séance where a certain violent act in a hotel room erupts out of left field and the flame exits so swiftly that I feel traumatized by the lack of hand-holding in film grammar, igniting a visceral and appropriate response to the subtext of the horrors KK is exhibiting onscreen. Barren Illusions is like KK making a Ming-liang Tsai film about his preferred themes of disconnection pitched on an intimate level, with literally-transparent characters coming in and out. It's not really my thing, but I can understand what inspired the director to make the project and how it related to exploring his concerns in an artistically novel way compared to his other work.

I think I liked Real more than most people, but it wasn't spectacular either. I largely agree with what a previous poster in this thread said regarding the somewhat ambiguous implications of the reveal and how this fits with our impulse to bury uncomfortable aspects of our 'self' and focus outward as a source of assistance for others, believing we're being helpful but also, underneath, engaging in self-serving, protective behavior against our own triggers. I enjoyed the knowingly-campy sci-fi setup, the elaborate and creative set designs inspired by dream imagery, Inception-cueing narrative devices, and the horror elements that were quite agitating when they sprung to life amidst a seemingly-softer piece of exposition. I guess in a dream space, anything goes! KK knows this and capitalizes on it effectively, though I still didn't love the last act, and the whole thing didn't work much for me beyond my admiration for a seasoned artist externalizing his imagination via this genre skeleton. It's thematically thinner that it should be, which feels lazy, but other aspects are unquestionably effortful declarations of pizzazz. It's kind of fitting for an artist who loves irony so much to make a film aimed at visualizing Freudian signifiers for deeper connotations via a physical manifestation of subconsciouses, only for the final product to bask in a clear prioritization of the superficial aspects.

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#173 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Apr 01, 2022 8:22 pm

Envious that you can manage to findd a watch all this stuff, TWBB. ;-)

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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#174 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Apr 02, 2022 12:49 am

Well, aside from the Suit Yourself or Shoot Yourself six-film series (which are available on backchannels subbed, but I haven't been able to get them all yet), I only have one unseen English-subbed KK film left: To the Ends of the Earth, which does have a U.S. release!

As does Before We Vanish, which was engrossing, hysterical, and poignant, though not nearly as tonally scattered as its clear companion film, Foreboding. Here the comedy is more dynamically driven and unfiltered, and even the dark humor is less bitter overall given the aliens’ genuine charm and endearing personas. It also helps that there is a crew to play off of each other, so the comic bits resemble classic buddy or trio ensembles of mishmashed characters forced in close quarters, including human and alien trying to get along in a strangely accepted if uncomfortable (also played for laughs) manner, compared to the horror of contrast and hopelessly unbreachable barriers to communication in Foreboding.

Even the violence in Before We Vanish is left lighter and unambiguously comical (a slapstick bit of a cartoonishly-agile body-flying hit and run; an alien shooting repeatedly through a car windshield at point blank range, the camera lingering far past the limits of sincerity becoming a deliberate gag of antisocial behavior in the literal sense). It’s still grim content, but rests in a comfortable space of layered tones rather than erratic shifts sandwiching unflinching horrors. And yet there’s more philosophically impactful material fleshed out regarding the aliens’ teachability and growth, rather than impenetrable enigmas who damn the planet once experiencing our inner intangible feelings. Perhaps it’s because this film focuses on the concept of love, while Foreboding focuses on fear, the two polarities that simplistic self-help literature understandably pit against one another as the drivers of all action and movement either toward or away from spiritual development.

So they’re sister films where this is allowed to be the brighter bulb, and while Foreboding is in many ways more of an intelligent mess, concocting mood swings that are far riskier and shouldn’t work but do, Before We Vanish is ultimately the better and more engaging film, in part by carrying multiple worthy narratives that themselves engage in knotty evolutions of earned romance, drama, comedy, and existential payoffs for each fully-formed character. In a sense, the film reminds me of what Desplechin did with Kings and Queen across two parallel narratives, attempting to forge two different moods and genres, which ultimately both developed against any singular timbre and bled into each other organically. Since Before We Vanish and Foreboding demand to be compared (the narrative courses are like offbeat or opposing mirror images, complete with an army general having a silly half-meek, half-domineering intervention with the aliens at around the same act's arc!), it's worth meditating on how they end. Before We Vanish clearly has the more optimistic ending (and I'd go so far as to say it is optimistic) in part because it resolves itself in certainty rather than Foreboding’s move to boldly spell out the futility of finding any such resolution within ourselves or between each other!

Before We Vanish is rich and deep, but it's also playing into the beats and tropes and window dressings of a capital-M Movie, so of course it's going to give us the ending we want. I think it's a neat trick that KK then went ahead and made Foreboding, taking the same source and making a much more depressing and alienating film from the same juice (it's certainly not a "remake" of this film, as feihong suggested upthread). This reflexive oeuvre-spanning gag seems like a very KK thing to do, and I'm curious about the creative process that went into this, the timeline of him making each, what aspects of the source were used for which, and if one was more personally-composed than the other. All I know is that I'm glad I watched them in reverse order, as I'm unsure I would have appreciated Before We Vanish's choices working to become an antidote to this enigmatic hell without Foreboding's fun frenzy in disguise while cultivating a roundabout arrival at despair.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

#175 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Apr 02, 2022 9:12 am

I would say the end of Before We Vanish is "life affirming" -- regardless of whether the conclusion of the story (unseen and unknown, because it will take place after the film has ended). I think that like Journey to the Shore, I have watched this three times -- and liked it more with each viewing. I definitely love KK's work in this "kind-hearted" vein. (Tokyo Sonata struck me as ultimately much colder -- these 2 films are more like Bright Future and Doppelganger -- but even richer and more powerful).

Sadly the US release of To the Ends of the Earth is DVD-only. I broke down and bought it -- but really wish it had been a Blu-ray (on general principles).

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