When I first experienced the astounding filmmaking of Hirokazu Koreeda I was transformed by his explorations of death and loss in ‘Maborosi’ (1995) and ‘After Life’ (1998). However, in the case of ‘Shoplifters’ (2018), Koreeda has created what I regard as the spiritual sequel to ‘Nobody Knows’ (2004), in which he told story of a young boy who had to care for his siblings when their mother abandoned them. ‘Shoplifters’, in turn, is the story of a family of vagabonds, who found each other after being abandoned by life, left on the margins of society, in which lies, deception, and petty—and sometimes serious—crimes are a normal part of existence. Also, while it may be true that the family you choose is more meaningful than the one into which you were born, those bonds are nevertheless tested when trouble happens and the authorities enter the picture.
In one respect, ‘Shoplifters’ is a part of a long line of films featuring street urchins, con men, small time crooks, and people who straddle the boundaries between good and evil. In the case of Japanese cinema, Kore-eda is a disciple of Yasujirô Ozu and Nagisa Oshima, both of whom brought an air of authenticity to their stories of the ordinary lives of Japan’s underclass. As such, Kore-eda, similar to ‘Nobody Knows’, expresses sympathy for its ensemble of characters, portraying them as a caring, albeit unlawful, family of shoplifters and ne’er-do-wells living together in the grandmother’s apartment. The father and son, played by Lily Frank and Jyo Kairi, respectively, display an easy rapport as they “shop” at a local grocery store, swiping items with a very practiced precision. However, while returning home from one such excursion on a frigid evening, the pair spot a young girl, “Yuri” (Miyu Sasaki), peering sadly through a window. Their conversation suggestions that they have seen this lonely little girl multiple times. After offering her some food, father and son bring Yuri home for a proper meal. After the father and his wife, played by Sakura Andô, attempted to return Yuri home, only to overhear her parents arguing, complete with mother saying that she never wanted Yuri in the first place, the Shibatas, as the family is known, adopt Yuri into their family in an act of compassion that would later be seen much differently when Yuri is reunited with her mother and truth of the Shibatas is revealed. Without giving too much away, ‘Shoplifters’ features a memorable performance by Kirin Kiki (‘The Mystery of Rampo’ and ‘Kamikaze Girls’) as “Hatsue,” the alleged matriarch of the Shibata clan.
From the Book of Revelations to the annals of Science Fiction, the end of the world has been imagined in a plethora of predicaments, most often instigated by war, disease, or alien invasion. In the case of Susanne Bier’s Bird Box (2018), humankind finds itself suddenly afflicted by an epidemic of mass suicides. However, it is not a bout of global depression that is infecting the world’s psyche, but rather a malevolent and unknown force that, when seen, immediately ignites an irresistible urge to kill oneself. How to survive? Blindfolded, “Malorie,” played by Sandra Bullock, with two small children in tow, heads down a remote river in Northern California, near the Oregon border, to where there is allegedly the hope of sanctuary.
As a movie experience, Bird Box is a standard action thriller, in which the hero must navigate a variety of perilous obstacles in order to reach her far-flung destination. In terms of the movie’s premise, namely an apocalyptic wave of suicides caused by a mysterious force, Bird Box owes a debt to M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (2008), in which an airborne contagion wreaks deadly havoc on everyone in its path. In the case of Bird Box’s dangerous force, they are depicted in two horrifying ways. First, as invisible creatures that move with sinister stealth, much like John McTiernan’s Predator (1987). Second, as charcoal drawings created by “Gary,” played by Tom Hollander, an escaped psychopath, which evoke a melding of HR Giger and Takeshi Obata. They are images of pure madness.
As for Malorie and her riverine quest for a compound that may or may not exist, the survivalist tone of the story is reminiscent of Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend (2007) and maybe Marc Forster’s World War Z (2013). Taken altogether, Bird Box is an entertaining adventure that successfully keeps its adrenaline running until the final, albeit maudlin, scene. As such, it manages to find the humanity in its characters, including “Douglas,” played by John Malkovich, an otherwise obnoxious bankruptcy attorney. In the end, if I have any criticism of the movie it is that, in light of its predecessors, Bird Box could have been a little less Sandra Bullock as “Annie,” in Jan de Bont’s Speed (1994) and a bit more like John Hillcoat’s The Road (2009). In other words, it is sometimes more satisfying to be true to the dark world that one creates.
Insofar as Roma is inspired by someone, Libo Rodriguez, who meant a great deal to the director, Alfonso Cuarón—she was the maid who raised him during his childhood in Mexico City—it is not surprising that the story of “Cleodegaria Gutiérrez,” who is affectionately called “Cleo,” and is played by the incredible Yalitza Aparicio, feels more like an act of veneration than merely a movie. Cuarón obviously wanted to honor the life of this woman in a way that did justice to both her character and her struggle by remembering cinematically her humanity in a world that largely overlooked people like herself. As a Nahua-speaking indigenous person, Cleo is a part of the underclass of “Indios,” the poor, the peasants, whose ancient civilization has been appropriated into the national image of Mexico—such as the eagle and snake emblem of the Mexican flag—yet, whose modern descendants are accorded little more than second class citizenship.
Cleo, who has migrated from her unnamed village, where her people’s land is being seized by the Mexican federal government, works for a doctor and his family in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. The doctor’s family is not only wealthy but also “criollo,” meaning of European descent. In spite of the significant class differences, Cleo is regarded as a part of the family. Even compared to “Adela,” played by Nancy Garcia, who is the other maid in this household, Cleo has a more affectionate relationship with her employers, especially their four children. Having said that, there is no doubt that Cleo, and Adela, not to mention others in the family’s employ, are treated as servants. The mother, for example, “Sofia,” played by Marina de Tavira, does not hesitate to be direct, oftentimes terse, in her directions to her staff. More to the point, Cleo’s interaction with the doctor’s family affirms the normality of the class relations between the petit bourgeoise criollos and their indio servants.
As for the story that Cuarón tells about Cleo, ultimately it is a narrative of hardship and endurance, especially in the lives of women in Mexico. Occurring during the late 1960s—the 1968 Olympics is mentioned—Cleo’s personal ordeals, including a tragedy, are rendered against a backdrop of political upheaval in Mexican history. Not many remember outside of Mexico the massacre that took place on October 2, 1968, when government troops surrounded a mass student protest at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in the Tlatelolco neighborhood, in which dozens were gunned down indiscriminately. The massacre is referenced to in frightening detail during a scene in which Cleo is shopping for a baby crib. She is pregnant, alone, and afraid. Indeed, it is while the shooting occurs and some students run into the furniture store for safety that Cleo sees “Fermín,” played by Jorge Antonio Guerrero, her former boyfriend, who simply glares at her, gun in hand, before disappearing back into the chaos of the streets below. As I watched this scene unfold, I thought about what I had read about this terrible event. More specifically, I thought about Elena Poniatowska’s monumental 1971 book La noche de Tlatelolco, which was translated into Massacre in Mexico by Helen R Lane (1975). More to the point, I thought about the hundreds of testimonies that Poniatowska recorded in the pages of her book. Yet, there was neither any mention of the rights of indigenous people, their land disputes with the Mexican federal government, or, for that matter, of women’s rights. The student movement was mostly a middle-class movement, people who would become like the family that Cleo worked for, and who were fed up with their authoritarian government, led by President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. In light of which, I realized sadly that there was no one protesting on behalf of people like Cleo, be they indios or women. She had to persevere on her own.
At this point, it is important to observe that in spite of the layers of discrimination that Cleo encounters on a day-to-day basis, Cuarón is consistently respectful of her struggle. Despite her flaws, such as not returning home upon hearing that her mother’s land has been seized or choosing a boyish fool like Fermín for her lover, Cuarón is never judgmental or condescending toward Cleo or the community she represents. If anything, Roma reveals that hardship in Mexican society is not limited to the poor, but goes all the way up the social ladder, including Sofia, whose story of misery parallels Cleo’s. On this level, the relationship between Cleo and Sofia, if Cuarón condemns anything explicitly in his film it is the way that Mexican society, especially its machismo culture, berates women. Consequently, when Roma explores the coinciding lives of Cleo and Sofia, the film becomes a compliment to Y Tu Mamá También (2001), in which another woman’s tragic life unfurls in subtle yet dramatic tones, complete with a life-changing journey to the ocean. With this in mind, I am reluctant to join the chorus of critics who have faulted Roma for not being more aware of Cleo’s indigenous culture, either in terms of the villages that Mexico’s indigenous peoples inhabit or the urban subculture they maintain allover North America (including the immigrant community that certain US politicians love to demonize). I am also reticent about criticizing Cuarón for not being more ideological or didactic about the colonization, racism, and globalization that created Cleo’s world in the first place. On the contrary, Cleo’s story is all the more profound for the way it shows how historical and intergenerational trauma, not to mention political and economic exploitation, come to dominate the lives of their victims without any banners, slogans, or lectures attached. One often has to go through much before one accesses the perspective that enables one to understand what has really happened and why.
As I watched Cleo’s epic tale unfold with each black and white scene, I thought about the many women in my life—I grew up poor and with very few advantages—whose generous yet vibrant spirits shaped me into what I am today, and how my memories of them have been nurtured by age and experience. Cuarón and I are of the same generation, and like him many of my memories were captured in countless black and white photos, which influenced the way that I remember people and events. At the same time, this is not to say that the people I remember from long ago are without life and vitality. Aesthetically, Roma’s cinematography evokes the photographs of Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Graciela Iturbide. As such, Cuarón’s black and white images illustrate the mythology, the oral tradition, the Creation Story of the world that Cleo inhabits. For me, that is what Roma accomplishes when it recreates the world-building power of word and image. In this sense, Cleo is a culture hero, like the icons portrayed in retablos, which express an adulation for the lives of saints. However, Cleo—Is she Catholic? Probably. Who knows?—does not affirm the teachings of the Church, but rather of the generations of migrants who have endured the travails of an indigenous world that has survived the Spanish Conquest, the Mexican Revolution, NAFTA, and now the threat of Donald Trump.
In the end, if I have any criticism of Roma it is that it was a bitter reminder of how infrequently stories like Cleo’s have been told, be it in film or novel. Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes’s El indio (1935) comes to mind, as does Carlos Fuentes’s La región más transparente (1958). In terms of film, only Gregory Nava’s El norte (1983) arises for immediate comparison. Mt paltry list, however, does not mean that this is all that there is about this type of story, namely the indigenous class struggle. It only indicates how irregularly such stories appear in film and literature. On the other hand, there is a significant number of movies and novels about the Mexican, sometimes Central American, immigrant experience, not necessarily indigenous, such as Tony Richardson’s The Border (1982), Alejandro G Iñárritu’s Babel (2006), Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre (2009), and Jonás Cuaròn’s Desierto (2015). With respect to literature, aside from the titles mentioned above, there is Gloria E Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), Victor Villaseñor’s Rain of Gold (1991), and Ron Arias’s The Wetback and Other Stories (2016), to name but a few. In the case of the indigenous experience, more than a subgenre of film and literature, the lives and stories of the peoples and nations of the Western Hemisphere constitute an expansive chronicle of communities whose roots go millennia beyond the arrival of the European settlers during the late 15th century. As such, there is a connection to land, language, and kinship that informs the modern effects of globalization and transborder migration. Cleo’s story, if anything, is a story of how even when the Mexica homeland appears to be buried underneath layers and layers of colonial history and society, the indigenous claim to this place interjects itself into the contemporary lives of the people around them, reminding them of who really owns the land and how their days in this place may be numbered after all. While there are undoubtedly many ways of telling Cleo’s story, including from the point of view of an indigenous writer and director—which we will hopefully see sometime soon—Cuarón’s Roma and Aparicio’s “Cleo” nevertheless transformed me. More specifically, as an indigenous person myself, I genuinely felt inspired to learn more about this world and the astounding diversity of indigenous stories and experiences that it holds.
Watched Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), a documentary about the oldest known painted images. They were found in Chauvet, which is in Southern France, and have been dated some 25-33,000 years old. This place radiates with beauty. An exceptionally sacred area. Belying the myth of the “caveman,” the images left behind by these ancient artists are evidence of a spiritually sophisticated culture, which likely possessed a complex oral and ceremonial tradition, in which the great animals depicted on these cave walls were immensely powerful and revered beings.
When I recently found a pocketbook edition of Ken Follet’s Eye of the Needle, I was reminded of Richard Marquand’s 1981 film, starring Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan. The story is an intimate one, involving a Nazi spy trying to escape with info about the Allied invasion at Normandy, but who gets swept up in the life of a lonely woman and her family off the coast of Scotland. At the same, the film evokes the epic sweep of one of David Lean’s grander endeavors. Richard Attenborough’s work also comes to mind. Obviously, I liked this movie.
Spent my evening watching Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Doppelgänger (2003). It’s about an inventor (Kôji Yokusho) suffering from an acute creative block, who encounters his double. What results is a scientific breakthrough, the price of which is murder, not to mention the inventor’s sanity. The story is a dark comedy, which is a complete departure from the kind of films on which Kurosawa built his reputation, namely ‘Cure’ and ‘Pulse’. At the same time, Doppelgänger clearly exhibits Kurosawa’s fascination with the paranormal.
Like most adaptations from novel to film, Gen Takahashi’s Goth (2008) is more of an interpretation of Otsuichi’s 2003 award-winning story than a literal representation. Rather, I should have said stories, as the original novel was more of an anthology of morbid tales than a single narrative, in spite of the recurring presence of its two main characters, namely “Yoru Morino” (played by Rin Takanashi) and “Itsuki Kamiyama” (played by Kanata Hongô).
As such, whereas Otsuichi’s novel recalls a number of gruesome murders that occurred throughout the area in which Morino and Kamiyama live and go to school, replete with the sordid details and an exploration of the killers’ minds, Takahashi’s film focuses more on the relationship between the two main characters. However, by “relationship” I do not mean anything the least bit romantic. On the contrary, Morino and Kamiyama are drawn together by their mutual fascination with the horrific aftermaths of killings, a perverse “hobby” that ineluctably leads them onto the trail of a serial killer.
Even more compelling, though, than solving these crimes is solving the mystery of Morino. She is the antithesis of the cute and exuberantly cheerful Japanese school girl. She is consistently sullen, yet alluringly beautiful in her Black Lolita-style school uniform. As for her relationship with Kamiyama, as mentioned above, it is not romantic, nor is it much of a friendship. Probably the best way to describe their union is that it is commiserating—they understand each other’s attraction to death. Consequently, because Kamiyama understands Morino in a way that others before him did not, he becomes the conduit between Morino and her darkest secret. Indeed, as the story proceeds, even after the serial killer’s identity is revealed, Kamiyama continues to lead the viewer further into what’s hidden behind Morino’s black, melancholy eyes.
What’s worse than murder or betrayal? In Sion Sono’s 2005 film Strange Circus the ultimate taboo is violated, disclosing more than the demons dwelling within the heart of a middle-aged man as he preys for his daughter. As we follow the emotional turmoil of “Mitsuko Ozawa” (Masumi Miyazaki/Rie Kuwana/Mai Takahashi) and her mother “Sayuri” (Masumi Miyazaki), who are both forced to endure the sexual torment of father and husband “Gozo Ozawa” (Hiroshi Oguchi), a poignant critique of polite society emerges, in particular for the way in which it forces victims of abuse to hide in the shadows with their suffering.
Gozo is the principal at Mitsuko’s school, where he’s regarded as a respectable figure. At home, though, he’s a monster who subjects his wife and daughter to his heinous sexual desires. What results as the abuse continues is that Sayuri begins taking out her shame, anger, and jealousy on Mitsuko. Out of this cruel chaos “Taeko” (Masumi Miyazaki) emerges, an emotionally unstable and wheelchair-bound novelist who writes erotica about “Mitsuko” and lives in a baroquely decorated house, complete with a secret room, where the truth of Mitsuko dwells.
Because of the popularity of her work, Taeko has a number of assistants, among whom a new face has joined in her employ, “Yûji Tamiya” (Issei Ishida), who identifies himself as a “great fan” of Taeko’s work, and who eventually takes on the assignment of discovering the story behind Taeko’s handicap and the inspiration for Mitsuko. In addition to being another chapter in Sono’s exploration of the darker aspects of the human psyche, as occurred in Suicide Club (2001), or the hidden needs of the marginalized, as seen in Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005), Strange Circus unleashes a damning criticism of the patriarchy that still pervades Japanese society, which disempowers women, and normalizes male abuses of gender inequity. And in the case of Mitsuko there’s nothing more disturbing and traumatic than to see the face of the man who’s supposed to protect her turn into an expression of lust.
Inspired by Mark McShane’s 1961 novel Séance on a Wet Afternoon, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, director of Cure (1997) and Pulse (2002), among other classic dark cinema features, ventures into the realm of made-for-television movies. As such, it may be easy for J-Horror aficionados to overlook this little gem in Kurosawa’s oeuvre. Kurosawa’s previous works for television, a series of Yakuza stories, have not distinguished themselves. To put it simply, the kind of death and horror that Kurosawa would soon display in Pulse is de-emphasized for the sake of a more general television audience. Nevertheless, Kurosawa does not curtail his talent for telling a story that is driven by well-rounded characters, complete with the inner-turmoil and failings that are often a part of life, and which compel his characters to given in to their fears.
“Sato Koji” (Yakusho Koji) and “Sato Junco” (Fubuki Jun) are an ostensibly ordinary couple living in a country house. Seemingly happy, Koji works as a sound technician for an unnamed company while his wife Junco stays at home. However, Junco is not exactly a typical housewife. She has a gift for contacting the dead—she is a medium. It is also a power that has attracted the attention of a psychology graduate student “Hayasaka” (Kusanagi Tsuyoshi) who is interested in studying her psychic abilities. From the perspective of science, Junco’s capacity for communicating with the deceased is something that ought to be validated through research. On the other hand, from Junco’s point-of-view, her connection with the spirit world is both a gift and a curse, which becomes evident when she takes a job as a waitress at a local restaurant and her proclivity for seeing ghosts becomes an issue. In between Junco and Hayasaka is Koji, who obviously knows the burden that his wife carries and does his best to be supportive.
Fate soon appears in the form of an anonymous little girl (Isobe Shiori) who is kidnapped by a deranged former policeman, only to escape unknowingly into the hands of Koji, who happens to be out on an assignment at Mt Fuji, where he is recording wind blowing through the trees. At first shocked at finding the kidnapped girl on their property, Koji and Junco initially decide to call the authorities. However, Junco has sudden doubts about how things will look, given that this child is the victim of a much-publicized kidnapping. Consequently, instead of calling for help, Junco comes up with a plan for what she thinks will spare them any accusations from the police. Junco will feign using her psychic ability to “help” the police locate this girl. In fact, because of Junco’s relation to Hayasaka, she has already been introduced to a detective (Kitarô) as a possible resource for finding this little girl. In light of which, Junco will use the trust she has earned from Hayasaka and convince him that, whereas before she could not be of help, now she can, a ploy that will also inspire a desire for fame in Junco’s heart.
Eventually, tragedy occurs and the once ordinary couple of Koji and Junco find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, the forces of which are becoming much more than either of them can control. One of the more memorable scenes is a conversion between Koji and the Shinto priest (Aikawa Shô) that he has asked to purify his home. Upon completing the purification ritual, Koji asks the priest what he should do, now that his house has been purified. The priest, after hesitating at the question, counsels Koji and his wife, who is not present, to be honest and live ordinary, which are two things that the couple has ceased to do. Two other noteworthy scenes are a symbolic encounter between Koji and his doppelganger, along with a nod to Nakata Hideo’s Ringu involving the little girl. Speaking of nods to other films, in the clip provided below, Kurosawa references a character that he will later develop in Retribution (2006). Lastly, for anyone familiar with Bryan Forbes 1964 adaptation of McShane’s novel, one will quickly notice that the two films have very little in common. Forbes’ version is noted as being more faithful to the book, while Kurosawa’s film is more faithful to the world he created in Cure and further developed in Pulse, which themselves are respectful of the Japanese ghost story tradition.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse (2001) is an important part of a wave of dark films that began appearing during the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, which collectively set Japanese Horror (or J-Horror) apart in world cinema. The trend began with Kurosawa’s earlier film Cure (1997), then continued with Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998), Sion Sono’s Suicide Club (2001), and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On (2002). J-Horror is distinct from the kind of shock films created during the same period by the likes of Kinji Fukusaka (Battle Royale, 2000) and Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, 2001). Unlike the latter two films, which rely on extreme violence, J-Horror depends mostly on the paranormal for inspiration.
In one respect, Kurosawa’s Pulse (titled Kairo, “Chaos,” in Japan) is a modern example of the Japanese tradition of ghost stories or Kaidan-shū, which go all the way back to the earliest stages of the Edo Period (17th century). In terms of cinema, Pulse is preceded by such superlative films as Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953) and Kaneto Shindô’s Onibaba (1964). In another respect, Pulse is reflective of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century, which is affected less by westernized notions of the millennium and more by its own “Lost Decade” or Ushinawareta Jūnen. In the case of the parallel stories of “Michi Kudo” (Kumiko Asô) and “Ryosuke Kawashima” (Haruhiko Katô) they are confronted with a shadowy world of lonely spirits, who have found a portal into this world through the internet. Indeed, what appears at first to be isolated events turns into a global crisis.
What is most startling about the world of the dead that is occupying various computer screens is that each case is the result of a suicide, whose ghostly aftermath leaves them in a “forbidden room” from which they plead for help. Most terrifying of all is the fact that the world of the dead is beginning to infect and transform the world of the living. Once exposed to the forces contained in the forbidden room, victims soon lose their will to live, either killing themselves or just as often turning into blackened silhouettes painted into the walls and floors where they were last seen alive. In spite of efforts to warn people away from the forbidden rooms by sealing the doors with red tape, the attractive force of that world continues to lure people into it, even causing one unnamed woman to plummet to her death in one of the more disturbing, not to mention memorable, scenes in cinematic history.
The effectiveness of Kurosawa’s film is that it refrains from either becoming preachy about the ills of society or explaining too much about what is happening. In fact, very little is explained at all beyond the speculation of some of the characters, all of whom are ultimately at a loss about what to do. For Michi and Ryosuke, all they can do is worry about their friends, be they “Toshio Yabe” (Masatoshi Matsuo) and “Junko Sasano” (Kurume Arisaka) for Michi or “Harue Karasawa” (Koyuki) for Ryosuke, trying however they can to save them from a force that is overtaking all of existence—like a web of darkness.
First Person Singular 