I've been meaning to write a bit more about two of the three films we saw last weekend but, again, am only managing some proper blogging time on Sunday evening. In case you're wondering what the third one was, it was Woody Allen's latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was deeply disappointing. Note to self: always pay attention to the second half of those key sentences in reviews. Similar views abound: 'Allen's most impressive work - from the last decade', 'A true return to form - compared with his other recent films' (or something to that effect). I should have known, as I should have thought more carefully about what these comparisons were made with: Match Point, Scoop, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, Anything Else - against this list, The 40-Year-Old Virgin could seem positively profound.
Okay, back to the topic. Tokyo Sonata (by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, hitherto chiefly known for a string of horror films) and Revolutionary Road (by Sam Mendes, which I already wrote a little about last week) couldn't have been more different in style, plot and tone, but for me, both conveyed an important and timely message: looking around us (or, perhaps, in the mirror), the modern metropolitans and suburbia are full of people whose identity are largely - or in the case of Tokyo Sonata's protagonist, entirely - formed through their jobs. Once that's taken away, either by accident or by design, they'll be at a loss as to what to do with their lives at all. Their so-called hobbies have either been eroded by, or subsumed to, the job itself; their social connections are built within the work context (unemployment can be an infectious disease that your friends want to avoid catching); they get up and, not knowing what to do, sometimes resort to the solution of 'mock-living' their previously cocooned, repetitive work-life (there are some really funny moments in Tokyo Sonata depicting this. Funny, that is, until the illusion is tragically cut short).
I often marvel at the fact that, working in the arts, I have the good fortune to be surrounded by people who are genuinely passionate about what they do for a living, in contrast with millions of others in the city whose chief drive in the context of work would include things like security and material gain. At a time when so many jobs are being lost daily - in arts as well as elsewhere - the need to take a moment to ask ourselves some of those fundamental questions seems more pressing than ever. The Noughties version of 'Who am I? Where do I come from? What am I doing here?' could well be 'Who am I? Why am I doing what I do? Is it mostly what I do, known as my job, that defines me as a person to people whom I call my friends and family? If that's the case, isn't it rather worrying, no matter if there's a recession on or not?'
I suppose a lot of people go through their lives without having figured out - or perhaps even thought about - what they really want from life or who they really want to be. A job is easily the most visible kind of identity, and naturally becomes the most expedient kind too. But perhaps we could all use a little bit of reckoning, of recognising that the function of a day job is precisely what we hate to think it is: something to pay the bills with. If you happen to really love what you do, so much the better; but it really doesn't equal who you are - the answer to that surely consists of experiences, qualities and skills that may well not get an airing during a lifetime's working hours. No matter how grand your job title, how impressive your professional achievements or how over-sized your pay package might be, strip these all away and are you - you the person - still there? If not, what's the point of keeping the bills paid anyway?
Showing posts with label Japanese cinema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japanese cinema. Show all posts
Sunday, 15 February 2009
Thursday, 5 February 2009
East Asian cinema
I've got several films on my 'to watch' list for the coming weekend (goodness knows how much more the undone pile of laundry will grow): Revolutionary Road, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Milk, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (I'm really convinced that Brad Pitt is totally capable of great acting, especially when he's directed by David Fincher). But for those of you who're London-based at least, may I urge you to see something that's opening for (so-called) general release tomorrow in the capital - I think it's actually only on at 3 cinemas, but one of them is Cineworld Shaftesbury Avenue, which is handy enough.
I saw 'The Good, The Bad and the Wierd' (no prize for guessing which older film inspired this one) at the London Film Festival last year. For me this was the official arrival of the Korean blockbuster on the map. A lot of people already fell in love with the Park Chan Woo revenge trilogy, or the stylish horrors such as Two Sisters, or the historical epic-with-a-twist that was The King and the Clown. Nothing would prepare you for this. Its swashbuckling, breathtaking two hours will pass by quickly.
I guess I'm naturally drawn to good films coming out of East Asia, but for someone who does get to see a lot of European arthouse films as well I can confidently say that the best of Chinese, Japanese and Korean auteurs are churning out more good work now than ever. Distributors over here need to be more intelligent about reaching out to the right audience for them (which are sizeable, in my experience) rather than the odd special features at the NFT. I'm very much looking forward to 'Tokyo Sonata' at the ICA on Saturday (see what I meant about the laundry?), and anything by Hirokazu 'Nobody Knows' Kore-Eda is essential viewing for me. Barbican's Korean Film Festival - which looks like an annual event now, thank heavens - is always eye-opening, and all 4 films we saw there last year were first-rate (let me know if you'd like more details). On the Chinese front, I've got a feeling there are more younger directors encouraged by the runaway success of Crazy Stone (a low-budget, Tarantino-comes-to-Sichuan heist movie), and hopefully we'll get to see more works that dig deep into the contemporary national psyche while touching upon some universal humanity.
I saw 'The Good, The Bad and the Wierd' (no prize for guessing which older film inspired this one) at the London Film Festival last year. For me this was the official arrival of the Korean blockbuster on the map. A lot of people already fell in love with the Park Chan Woo revenge trilogy, or the stylish horrors such as Two Sisters, or the historical epic-with-a-twist that was The King and the Clown. Nothing would prepare you for this. Its swashbuckling, breathtaking two hours will pass by quickly.
I guess I'm naturally drawn to good films coming out of East Asia, but for someone who does get to see a lot of European arthouse films as well I can confidently say that the best of Chinese, Japanese and Korean auteurs are churning out more good work now than ever. Distributors over here need to be more intelligent about reaching out to the right audience for them (which are sizeable, in my experience) rather than the odd special features at the NFT. I'm very much looking forward to 'Tokyo Sonata' at the ICA on Saturday (see what I meant about the laundry?), and anything by Hirokazu 'Nobody Knows' Kore-Eda is essential viewing for me. Barbican's Korean Film Festival - which looks like an annual event now, thank heavens - is always eye-opening, and all 4 films we saw there last year were first-rate (let me know if you'd like more details). On the Chinese front, I've got a feeling there are more younger directors encouraged by the runaway success of Crazy Stone (a low-budget, Tarantino-comes-to-Sichuan heist movie), and hopefully we'll get to see more works that dig deep into the contemporary national psyche while touching upon some universal humanity.
Saturday, 31 January 2009
Statistics of the past week
ONE each of disapponting and good theatre trips that bookended the working week. 'Private Lives' (Noel Coward) in a new production at Hampstead theatre on Monday - the only merit of the evening ended up being the venue itself. We'd not been there before but was hugely impressed by the building. The auditorium was almost a mini version of the fabulous new opear house in Copenhagen: lots of Scandinavian-style wood panels and good view/sound from every seat The cast and crew should be praised for their effort, which unfortunately was wasted on an underserving play. Coward's best moments, for me, are the farcical scenes involving multiple characters (I'm especially thinking of some of the most hilarious moments from Present Laughter) - which are the few truly funny moments in this play about an ex-couple bumping into each other on their respective (collective?) honeymoon with their new spouses. His two-person exchanges, be they smouldering or fiery moments, are not effective in any way. Pity. On Friday the ferociously topical 'Roaring Trade' (Soho Theatre, about - you guessed - a bunch of traders at an investment bank) played to a roaring full house. It reminded me of the (equally popular) store-floor-set production of Oxford Street we saw at Royal Court Upstairs last year, in that neither tried to be didactic about any grand theme or profound theme, but instead depicted a specific corner of life with totally convincing vitality from everyone involved.
TWO Japanese films at Barbican's 'After Tezuka' season, brilliantly curated by the resident expert Helen McCarthy. She's one of those people whose intrinsic enthusiasm for the object of her studies (which is an almost degrading term - Japanimation is clearly the air she breathes) is so totally infectious, her way of presenting the subject so succinct yet erudite, witty yet serious, that I would have happily gone along for the pre-screening talks alone. Of course the films themselves weren't half bad either: Dororo (which is actually a live action feature film) serves up all the best ingredients of a proper blockbuster, only with heaps more class and style than the regular Hollywood fare could ever dream of; Akira, being a 20-year-old manga animation, blends dizzying visual kaleidoscope, multi-layered narrative convolusion and metaphysical themes (Darwin, Nietsche, Foucault, Freud, you name it) all in one breath in such sweeping manner, that I stepped out of the dark screening room feeling physically drained.
THREE performers in the totally undefinable site-specific performance 'The Memory of W.T. Stead', in the most unexpected - and unpredictable - space that is the Steinway showrooms on Marylebone Lane. There were two hour-long performances each on three consecutive evenings, with seven invitees/audiences at each, for a specific reason. It's the sort of things that happen a lot more in downtown Manhattan (and probably far too much), but not nearly enough in London (which has both the venue possibilities and the potential audience to offer - someone smart will soon put two and two together, no doubt). We're seated in the eerily surreal ground-floor showroom, each between a pair of Steinways. They become performers already in this silence and semi darkness. Then someone appears, equipping us each with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and all-concealing eyemasks. With the murmurred instructions, reminiscences, echoes and fantasies through the headphones (pre-recorded and live) we enter a mysterious world with our invisible guides. There's a sombre-looking piano tuner in the far corner of the room. Or is he there? How did he get there? Are we really in a perfectly real, perfectly tangible building moments away from the bustling Oxford Street, or have we somehow fallen into a (David) Lynchian world of intrigues? The performers (Swedish dance duo Lundahl & Seitl, British pianist Cassie Yukawa) explored every inch of the available space, both in the tuning workshops and in our consciousness, and made perfect judgement of the elasticity of their materials. We emerged out of the building, a bit stumbling in our steps trying to find our way towards the tube station. It would have been more reassurling to have the directions whispered to us through the headphones.
FOUR pianists heard in contrasting circumstances. On Tuesday, Cassie Yukawa's performance of Bach's Fugue in A minor (BWV 543, arranged by Liszt) was the deeply personal yet powerful climax of the performance installation 'The Memory of W.T.Stead' (see above) - all the more striking as she conjured the entire piece out of almost total darkness, literally. On Thursday, Simon Crawford Phillips and Philip Moore's piano duo recital at LSO St Lukes offered two 20th-century classics by two Russians who were both master composer-pianists themselves - Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Knowing both well as iconic cornerstones of the orchestral repertoire of the last hundred years, hearing them in this version, side by side, was a revelation, with the shining winter sun as backdrop. On Saturday, Nikolai Demidenko gave an effortlessly exhilarating reading of Shostakovich's second piano concerto with Philharmonia Orchestra and Tugan Sokhiev. I felt all the more fortunate for having heard the rehearsal the previous afternoon in the intimacy of Henry Wood Hall - as the only 'audience' up in the gallery, I was washed over by the opening strings of the second movement, and then the piano solo, as played by this London-resident Russian, made me realise for the first time how Shostakovich did the impossible: the cross between Mozart and Rachmaninoff.
(No.) FIVE of Tchaikovsky's immortal symphonic output, with Philharmonia Orchestra under an increasingly impressive Tugan Sokhiev. One of those pieces that I know inside out (not least because I had to do a three-hour presentation about it during my academic days, now happily in the past) and frankly had got a bit sick of (reason: see previous brackets). And he gave such a fresh reading, including some remarkably daring but effective tempi and - all too rare in Tchaikovsky interpretations - meticulous precision, that it shed interesting new light on the piece for me. In a week when an older and (for now) much more famous Russian compatriot is giving a string of headlining concerts across town at the Barbican, with his own two home bands from London and St Petersburg, it pays real tribute to Sokhiev's star quality that his two Philharmonia concerts filled Festival Hall. Yes, the programms offered some big blockbuster items (second half of Saturday's concert was Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony), but London's audience wouldn't really be so generous with their ovation afterwards if the performances hadn't been so genuinely outstanding. I expect his star to rise much higher still in years to come. On top of everything else, he's so nice in person that it's impossible to envy his posession of youth, talent and good looks.
SIX more cultural events I'll have been to by this time next week. If you prefer to read about something else, let me know.
TWELVE: the number of times a certain friend told me he went to see 'Push' (the lauded collaboration last year between maverick British choreographer Russell Maliphant and iconic Parisian ballerina Silvie Guillem), because he liked it so much. And you thought I was a culture vulture of the mad kind?!
TWO Japanese films at Barbican's 'After Tezuka' season, brilliantly curated by the resident expert Helen McCarthy. She's one of those people whose intrinsic enthusiasm for the object of her studies (which is an almost degrading term - Japanimation is clearly the air she breathes) is so totally infectious, her way of presenting the subject so succinct yet erudite, witty yet serious, that I would have happily gone along for the pre-screening talks alone. Of course the films themselves weren't half bad either: Dororo (which is actually a live action feature film) serves up all the best ingredients of a proper blockbuster, only with heaps more class and style than the regular Hollywood fare could ever dream of; Akira, being a 20-year-old manga animation, blends dizzying visual kaleidoscope, multi-layered narrative convolusion and metaphysical themes (Darwin, Nietsche, Foucault, Freud, you name it) all in one breath in such sweeping manner, that I stepped out of the dark screening room feeling physically drained.
THREE performers in the totally undefinable site-specific performance 'The Memory of W.T. Stead', in the most unexpected - and unpredictable - space that is the Steinway showrooms on Marylebone Lane. There were two hour-long performances each on three consecutive evenings, with seven invitees/audiences at each, for a specific reason. It's the sort of things that happen a lot more in downtown Manhattan (and probably far too much), but not nearly enough in London (which has both the venue possibilities and the potential audience to offer - someone smart will soon put two and two together, no doubt). We're seated in the eerily surreal ground-floor showroom, each between a pair of Steinways. They become performers already in this silence and semi darkness. Then someone appears, equipping us each with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and all-concealing eyemasks. With the murmurred instructions, reminiscences, echoes and fantasies through the headphones (pre-recorded and live) we enter a mysterious world with our invisible guides. There's a sombre-looking piano tuner in the far corner of the room. Or is he there? How did he get there? Are we really in a perfectly real, perfectly tangible building moments away from the bustling Oxford Street, or have we somehow fallen into a (David) Lynchian world of intrigues? The performers (Swedish dance duo Lundahl & Seitl, British pianist Cassie Yukawa) explored every inch of the available space, both in the tuning workshops and in our consciousness, and made perfect judgement of the elasticity of their materials. We emerged out of the building, a bit stumbling in our steps trying to find our way towards the tube station. It would have been more reassurling to have the directions whispered to us through the headphones.
FOUR pianists heard in contrasting circumstances. On Tuesday, Cassie Yukawa's performance of Bach's Fugue in A minor (BWV 543, arranged by Liszt) was the deeply personal yet powerful climax of the performance installation 'The Memory of W.T.Stead' (see above) - all the more striking as she conjured the entire piece out of almost total darkness, literally. On Thursday, Simon Crawford Phillips and Philip Moore's piano duo recital at LSO St Lukes offered two 20th-century classics by two Russians who were both master composer-pianists themselves - Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Knowing both well as iconic cornerstones of the orchestral repertoire of the last hundred years, hearing them in this version, side by side, was a revelation, with the shining winter sun as backdrop. On Saturday, Nikolai Demidenko gave an effortlessly exhilarating reading of Shostakovich's second piano concerto with Philharmonia Orchestra and Tugan Sokhiev. I felt all the more fortunate for having heard the rehearsal the previous afternoon in the intimacy of Henry Wood Hall - as the only 'audience' up in the gallery, I was washed over by the opening strings of the second movement, and then the piano solo, as played by this London-resident Russian, made me realise for the first time how Shostakovich did the impossible: the cross between Mozart and Rachmaninoff.
(No.) FIVE of Tchaikovsky's immortal symphonic output, with Philharmonia Orchestra under an increasingly impressive Tugan Sokhiev. One of those pieces that I know inside out (not least because I had to do a three-hour presentation about it during my academic days, now happily in the past) and frankly had got a bit sick of (reason: see previous brackets). And he gave such a fresh reading, including some remarkably daring but effective tempi and - all too rare in Tchaikovsky interpretations - meticulous precision, that it shed interesting new light on the piece for me. In a week when an older and (for now) much more famous Russian compatriot is giving a string of headlining concerts across town at the Barbican, with his own two home bands from London and St Petersburg, it pays real tribute to Sokhiev's star quality that his two Philharmonia concerts filled Festival Hall. Yes, the programms offered some big blockbuster items (second half of Saturday's concert was Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony), but London's audience wouldn't really be so generous with their ovation afterwards if the performances hadn't been so genuinely outstanding. I expect his star to rise much higher still in years to come. On top of everything else, he's so nice in person that it's impossible to envy his posession of youth, talent and good looks.
SIX more cultural events I'll have been to by this time next week. If you prefer to read about something else, let me know.
TWELVE: the number of times a certain friend told me he went to see 'Push' (the lauded collaboration last year between maverick British choreographer Russell Maliphant and iconic Parisian ballerina Silvie Guillem), because he liked it so much. And you thought I was a culture vulture of the mad kind?!
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