Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....and Spring

A

Directed by Kim Ki Duk

"Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....and Spring," the immensely talented Kim Ki Duk's best known and arguably most accomplished film to date, is a rich and rewarding tale of great symbolic and spiritual depth.

An old monk and his disciple live on a small floating temple in the middle of an isolated lake. This spiritually rigorous environment is suddenly broken when the monk's disciple falls in love with a sick girl from the outside who had been brought to the temple by her mother to convalesce. The young monk's passion soon pushes him to leave his master, a decision he will later regret deeply.

"Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....and Spring," although a simple story, is fantastically rich in both character development and symbolism. I've always felt that Kim was one of the most "literary" filmmakers working today (if that makes any sense at all...) insofar as he seems to approach much of his work in a deliberate and calculated way that gives an immense place to detail, character, and symbolism. "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....and Spring" is likely his most accomplished work as Kim infuses his film with layer upon layer of symbolic meaning, giving his work an incredible amount of depth in a rather short running time. Despite it's heavy Buddhist underpinnings, "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....and Spring" is suffused with a number of universal religious truths, most specifically the emptiness of the material world and the fleeting nature of carnal desires.
Kim's immense talent as a director has often been overshadowed by his choice to focus on shocking or otherwise dicey subject matter so it's nice that he finally released a movie whose subject matter doesn't overshadow Kim's brilliance. Don't get me wrong, some of Kim's more shocking or controversial efforts were also great films but with "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....and Spring" you can sit back and enjoy the full breadth of Kim's talent without the cringe inducing scenes or the occasional pangs of disgust that come with some of his other films.

All About Lily Chou Chou

A+

Directed by Shunji Iwai

Shunji Iwai's horrowing tale of adolescence is a shocking, beautiful, and ultimately believable rumination on isolation, loneliness, and escapism in a digital world.

Yuichi is a 14 year old boy navigating the choppy waters of adolescence with the help of ethereal singer Lily Chou Chou who he spends his time obsessing over with a linkminded band of "Lilyholics" on an internet chatroom. Lily Chou Chou provides Yuichi a measure of escape from his truly hellish school situation where bullying runs rampant, led by the morally bankrupt Hoshino who terrorizes his fellow schoolmates and even runs blackmails some of his female classmates into a forming a prostitution ring. As events at school escalate, Yuichi finds it ever more difficult to keep the gloom of his everyday life from infringing on his sole window of escape, Lily Chou Chou.

"Lily Chou Chou" is unquestionably bleak stuff and gives few glimpses of hope in the otherwise gloomy world that Yuichi and his classmates are trapped in. At the same time, it's a mesmorizing and almost ravisingly beautiful film, Iwai's beautiful visual touches being complemented perfectly by a melancholy score by Takeshi Kobayashi that makes heavy use of Debussy. The gloominess of the script, however, is tempered by Iwai's obvious compassion for his characters and their struggles and his implication that better days are ahead for Yuichi and his friends, no matter how ugly things are at the moment.
Iwai isn't Larry Clarke, meaning he isn't some old hack who thinks high school is a land of rampant drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and generally misanthropy even though he portrays it that way in "Lily Chou Chou." Many of Iwai's other films that deal with high school aged characters (which make up the bulk of his work) seem to show a range of views on adolescence, such as the saccharine sweet "April Story" or the nostlagic and melancholy "Hana and Alice" both of which treat adolescence as a kinder and decidly gentler time than "Lily Chou Chou." My impression is that Iwai recognizes the pain and the joys of adolescences and simply maximizes them in his work in an effort to present a portrayal of youth that, although being realistic to some degree, pushes the envelope and dips into the surreal as well. I still remember high school and I can say that it often seemed like it was both the best and worst of times, a feeling that Iwai connects well with. I've always appreciated Iwai's ability to tinge his optimistic and bright films with a hint of melancholy and his more gloomy and dark pictures with moments of hope, an ability that gives all of his films greater depth.
This is Shunji Iwai's masterpiece, a wonderful, poignant, and beautiful film that demands repeat viewings.

Bright Future

A-

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Kurosawa's first major non-horror efforts proves that the prolific and oftentimes brilliant Japanese director is as versatile as he is talented.

Friends Mamoru and Yuji work together at a small manufacturing plant by day and by night, pretty much take it easy. Yuji has an interest in "music appreciation" and Mamoru, the more eccentric of the two, is trying to adapt a poisonous saltwater jellyfish to freshwater by slowly replacing the seawater in its tank on a daily basis. Seemingly out of nowhere, Mamoru viciously kills their boss and his wife, landing him in on death row. Mamoru's estranged father pops back into the picture and starts a tentative friendship with Yuji.

"Bright Future," although aesthetically similar to much of Kurosawa's other work, lacks the tightly wound narrative focus of films like "Cure" or "Séance" which is not necessarily a bad thing. The loosy goosy (aura) that surrounds Kurosawa's movie is disorienting and constantly surprising without being impossible to follow. Many of the hallmarks of Kuroswa's films nonetheless remain such as the society's often crushing impact on the individual or individual obsession with some eccentric project, in this case Mamoru's efforts to adapt his jellyfish to freshwater.

As a tale of Japan's disaffected youth, "Bright Future" might lack the emotional depth of visceral punch of films like "All about Lily Chou Chou" but it is no less on point, providing an interesting portrayal of urban ennui as opposed to the in your face tales of bullying, violence, and sexual promiscuity shown in the latter. The final scene, a brilliant long shot of a group of teens walking along an avenue in matching outfits of blue jeans and Che Guevera shirts, is indicative of Kurosawa's handling of the issue, his approach significantly more playful and sly than that of other filmmakers interested in the subject.

Kurosawa has always been a master of sound editing but the visual aspect of his films is equally brilliant and, in my opinion at least, chronically underrated. Kurosawa infuses his film with an aesthetic that is at once ominous and unsettling, an unfamiliar vision of the everyday that infuses his films with a sense of melancholic foreboding.

The acting is excellent, the usual in a Kurosawa film, with the always solid Tadanobu Asano taking a convincing turn as the enigmatic Mamoru opposite a solid Joe Odagiri as Yuji.

Taste of Tea

B+

Directed by Katsuhito Ishii

Japanese director Katsuhito Ishii, the notoriously weird mind behind such confusing and oddball creations as "Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl" and "Funky Forest: The First Contact" tones down the weirdness for long enough to make the very satisfying "Taste of Tea," a magic realist exploration of family dynamics in rural Japan.

The Haruno family live in a small bungalow in rural Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo. The family is headed by patriarch Nabuo, a quiet salaryman, and his wife Yoshiko, a housewife trying to start a career as an animator. Their son Hajime is a daydreamer, stricken with an infatuation for the school's beautiful new arrival, Aoi. Hajime's younger sister, Sachiko, believes that she is being followed by a gigantic version of herself. Their grandfather, Akira, also lives with the family and spends his days drawing and serving as a model for Yoshiko's animation. The Haruno's uncle, Ayano, also lives with the family, though were never really given any indication that he's doing anything productive with his life.

The plot of "Taste of Tea" is far from elaborate or focused, Ishii contenting himself to drop viewers off at the Haruno's home, let them mill around for a awhile before picking them up again. Despite this, the film is far from pointless or simply anecdotal. Indeed, Ishii deals with each character's particular ambitions or fears but in the end his film in a way that leaves them feeling fleshed out and three dimensional, leaving vieweres with a full picture of all the members of the Haruno household. Although dysfunctional families get plenty of play in the movies, functional families often don't and when they do, it's usually in the form of a crude, ham fisted "Cheaper by the Dozen" caricature. The family in "Taste of Tea" is happy, warm, and loving but never comes off as unreal or Brady Bunch-esque.
At 153 minutes, Ishii's film is probably a half hour too long and he would have done well to part with some of the film's more drawn out scenes. That said, this isn't a film that was meant to be rigidly paced or edited and its languid pace and willingness to drift wherever it pleases give it an element of undeniable charm.