Well once again though I had commented that I was watching a lot of american movies lately right now I’ll be writing about a couple of japanese ones. They were at least the american versions of these films. These movies are dramatically different from each other having in common only their country of origin, language, and death.

First up I watched the movie “Reincarnation” 輪廻 (rinne) which is probably most notable for being directed by Shimizu Takashi the guy who did Ju-on/The Grudge. I personally have not seen those movies and have no interest in doing so but I had previously seen a movie of his called Marebito which was a joint work with well known surreal anime writer Konaka Chiaki (aka Chiaki Kon). That work was not great by the way and neither is this one. Both are somewhat surreal but I thought that movie was at least interesting. For some reason the story of this movie seemed really familiar to me but I can’t quite place it. I guess the idea of going back to a mass murder scene for whatever reason (in this case for research to film a movie about the event) is just a common enough plot element that everything else seemed familiar as well. The problem I have with this movie is that it’s like it’s trying to tell too many different stories at once and ends out not succeeding at making any of them very clear. I will laud the work for its “technical” aspects, the soundtrack by Kawai Kenji who can probably only do music for dark series but at least he’s the best at it stands out, the camera work is pretty good, the film quality seemed to be what it should be, the sets were great (especially the set of the set), and even a lot of the acting is pretty good for this kind of movie. In my opinion the two most difficult roles are ones where your life is on the line or where you’re playing an actor acting. I didn’t recognize any of the actors in the film but I’m not an expert on that in the first place and I particularly have little knowledge of japanese actors, voice actors on the other hand I at least recognize. Speaking of which I thought I recognized the artist who did the ending song that ran during the credits but I’m having a hard time now figuring that out. Oh well. Anyway the plot of the movie is whatever, I think that there are too many asian horror movies that have creepy girls or creepy dolls so to have both is just annoying. It’s almost become a bad stereotype ever since Ringu. I mean really. Of course the whole point of watching a horror movie is to be startled, scared, surprised, or whatever it is that happens to you and so other qualities are really secondary. And so saying I only “jumped” once in the movie that I recall so it even failed at being scary! I like Kawai Kenji but his music really doesn’t justify watching a movie so I can’t recommend this film unless you’ve never seen any other horror movies before and so can’t realize how uninspired the whole thing is. The work does have a certain japanese feel that’s hard to explain any other way but again while that’s worth a note it’s not really worth a view.

I have also watched the movie “wakeful nights”　寝ずの番 (nezu no ban) which is a comedy, about a wake. I wouldn’t have thought it would work but it worked pretty well, apparently it was even the first movie by the director so that’s something. Conversely unlike with the above movie I thought I recognized quite a few of the actors in the film but I can’t place any of them immediately though I’m sure I’ve seen the male lead in other films. As to the plot, an aged rakugo (a type of traditional japanese comedy that has grown obscure) master dies and after a pun that sets the tone for the rest of the movie his close family and disciples spend the night telling stories about him. Now if the point of a horror movie is to scare you the point of a comedy is at least to amuse you if not make you laugh. I rarely laugh but I was amused. Let me say that the language and charm of the original japanese is absolutely impossible to translate in its entirety but the fine folks at AnimEigo (best known for localizing older anime series and releasing them in series or season box sets that they put up for pre-order sometimes years before production starts) made a valiant effort to put out something that makes sense and is still fairly funny if not as appreciable. Personally I like works like this that display older japanese traditions which, frankly, have become extreme luxuries (as opposed to luxuries that have become less scarce with time like western theatre, opera, and symphony orchestra) out of little reason beyond increasing scarcity. Other than Rakugo such examples would be things like Noh, Kabuki, Geisha, Bunraku, even the games Shogi, Go and Mahjong (which of course are chinese), or the way of bushido/samurai. I’m not very knowledgeable about Rakugo (which is basically comedic story telling done by a single person (I suspect that only men perform)) but as far as I know there wasn’t actually a lot of it in its traditional form in the movie though the spirit of it certainly came across. I suppose you could call the very “japaneseness” of the film a flaw as far as enjoyment by non-japanese goes but other than that the only thing that really bothered me was how certain scenes seemed pointlessly stretched out. In particular there was one that started out with traditional japanese music and then all of a sudden was playing an old western piece I recognized but can not name. Mozart is probably a safe bet and is probably wrong. It also struck me as extremely odd that “don’t worry be happy” was used in the movie, twice, even if it was done by a japanese a capella group rather than the original version by a black guy (nothing is less japanese than black guys, sorry black guys but it’s true). So the scoring was jarringly off in a few points for my tastes is what I’m trying to say. Something that strikes me as a little weird now that I think of it though I didn’t notice while watching the movie is how no children appeared in the movie at all. Maybe the japanese funeral process is a little different from what I’m used to but generally when people die and families get together that means kids are SOMEWHERE nearby. Or maybe because of all the dirty language someone thought it would be better if there were no kids around? Who knows. But it was just something that would give you the impression no one had any kids if you weren’t paying attention (early on its mentioned that someone had just given birth and later there’s also a flashback scene where someone is pregnant… that might have been a deleted scene though I couldn’t tell you why it wasn’t straight in there). In any case I think the movie is worth checking out since even though it’s extremely japanese it’s also universal. After all, everyone dies right? I almost felt like the movie had some deeper meanings but whether it’s symbolic of the traditional japanese arts dying out or continuing in spite of the masters dying or something else entirely I’m not sure. And whether intentional or not, I think that it’s a good thing to laugh at a funeral.

To step out of that for a minute, my whole life whenever someone died it was always bleak and miserable. Similarly funerals were this way. But then I occasioned to go to a funeral just a couple of years ago that was like a celebration of a life rather than the mourning of a death. I absolutely had no idea how to react to that and went about the event in somewhat of a state of shock. I frankly didn’t even care that much that this person was dead but the funeral threw me so much by being absolutely unlike anything I’d been involved in before I ended out seeming like the most bereaved one there. Actually that was not a great funeral. But between weeping that someone is gone and laughing about the things you went to the choice seems clear to me.

As a side note AnimEigo always makes a stink about not selling their products outside of North America so some of their stuff can be hard to get a hold of. But if you want to buy then you can find someone who wants to sell. And if you know a good shop that carries imports for rent…