Hirokazu Kore-eda

[LQ]

The Cinémathèque Québécoise is holding a Japanese cinema exposition this month, including a Kore-eda retrospective. Kore-eda will be in attendance on the 15th for a showing of some documentary shorts and for Still Walking.

[Hail_Cesar]

September will be so great at the cinematheque!

[Michael Kerpan]

I've never ever heard of The Days After (Nochi no hi)!

[Hail_Cesar]

I've never ever heard of The Days After (Nochi no hi)!

Would it be nerd to change my university schedule (or skip a course) to see it?

[Michael Kerpan]

Depends on the class skipped (and what's happening in it) -- one coul;d always ask one's professor. ;~}

[Hail_Cesar]

Anybody was there yesterday / will be there tonight? I was there only for After Life but I won't miss anything tonight! I can't wait to rewatch Still Walking!

[Michael Kerpan]

Wish I could be there (J'aime Le Belle Province).

[heredity4me]

Anybody seen or heard anything about this? Most things by Hirokazu Kore-eda seem worthwhile, but the few things I can dig up about it are quite mixed.

[manicsounds]

I can't seem to work out what you're trying to link, but are you trying to link "Kaidan"? Isn't that the horror film by Hideo Nakata (The Ring)?

Nevermind, it seems like it is this: a TV series

[kindaikun]

Here's some information in Japanese:

It seems to be a television mini-series from 2010 composed of four one hour programmes (including ads.) based on classic ghost stories by famous Japanese writers and shot by four different directors:

Kawabata Yasunari's 'Kata-ude' (The Arm) Dir. Ochiai Masayuki Runtime: 43mins.
Dazai Osamu's 'Hazakuri to Mateki' (The Whister) Dir. Tsukamoto Shinya Runtime: 35mins.
Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's 'Hana' (The Nose) Dir. Lee Sang-il Runtime: 33mins.
Murou Saisei's 'Douji' and 'Nochi no Hi no Douji' (The Days After) Dir. Kore-eda Hirokazu Runtime: 49 mins.

Kaidan simply means 'Ghost Story' in Japanese so you do get many films using that and similar titles. (The Japanese title is closer to "Bewitching/Enchanting Ghost Stories from Literary Masters", although that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

Unfortunately I didn't catch it on TV so I can't tell you if it's worth seeing or not but personally I'd be interested in seeing anything from Kore-eda and Murou is one of my favourite Japanese authors so I may try and hunt it down myself.

[Hail_Cesar]

I actually saw Kore-Eda's The days after yesterday at the cinematheque quebecoise... Its a cute story about a dead kid who died at 1yo who comes visiting their parents 7 years later... It sure does worth seeing if you have the occasion to. Its not a masterpiece but it has the Kore-eda signature and I watched it the mouth agape like all the other Kore-eda films I've seen and I've seen them all except Hana... This director has an amazing sensibility and I love how he deals with the thematic of life and death...

[colinr0380]

I really liked I Wish - I know a lot of comparisons have been made with Nobody Knows in the sense that the film involves a group of young children in some ways left to cope in the world. However I think just as useful a comparison would be with After Life, in the sense that both films show people hoping and dreaming in various ways from big to small, and deciding what is most important and needed for themelves at that particular moment in time. Some asking for the impossible, some for the miniscule. Some for the heartbreaking (I was in tears during the dog sections, and the beautifully mundane resolution to it). Though of course the outcomes here are different!

The film could just as easily have been called "The Kids Are Alright" in my opinion! The children are wonderfully practical throughout their home and school lives, even before they start planning out their trips to see the bullet trains passing one another (something which they get the impression that seeing happen will grant their wishes). Here it is the middle generation of 30s-40s year olds who are utterly screwed up (though I suppose that the schoolteachers are not, in contrast to the kid's parents). Although in contrast to Nobody Knows at least all of the adults here are at least engaging with their children. However the film doesn't really condemn the adults as such, just shows them more as being somewhat beaten down by life, unsure of themselves and what they should be doing.

I did like the way that the main two brothers wrestle with the separation of their parents through the film, to the extent of one going with each parent to in some ways look after them and keep the possibility of their parents getting back together as a possibility (or rather the reconcilliation is only the wish of one of the brothers, while the younger one has more easily accepted the separation - again suggesting that getting older in a way causes bigger anxieties over big upheavals such as these), but that neither of the parents are portrayed as being totally responsible, or totally blameless. Rather the father is in the 'flaky penniless musician' mould and the mother is the 'uptight neurotic getting used to having to work in a supermarket' mould.

I especially liked the paired telephone calls between the brothers and their opposite parents on the other side of the country. The first is the older brother calling the father, who lets him down on the possibility of the family ever getting back together. The second is perhaps the most devastating sequence in the whole film as the mother after a night out with her colleagues drunkenly calls the younger brother and plaintively asks why he chose to stay with their father rather than go with her. The younger brother's reactions during that sequence are wonderful, a mix of tryng to keep upbeat and not let his mother down mixed with the pain of her accusations that he is somehow abandoning her along with an admirable standing by the choice that he made. It is perhaps the cruellest scene in one of Kore-eda's films and more than any didactic point-making about 'broken families' shows parents putting their children into very difficult situations, and forcing a kind of maturity of response onto them that they should not have to face at that age.

That also for me added extra pathos to the scenes of the kids and their hopeful wishes shouted (or not shouted) at the train - the idea of all of this potential on the verge of being disillusioned themselves with life becomes more than even a happy ending can counter. Yet there is the sense that these characters are romantic yet also clear-eyed about the limitations of their romanticism and that the presence or lack of miracles from the encounter with the bullet train is not the most important thing. This make me think that the film also had a sense of the Wes Anderson films about it (although the characters being children rather than over privileged adults with time on their hands helps this idea to perhaps not grate as much as in the Anderson works). It is the trip itself more than the result, which allows the characters to be there actually working together for a shared goal and to then return back home to relatively unchanged lives with a slightly different, yet perhaps more hopeful, perspective on things.

In terms of technique, I did like the way that often the main characters of the film (often the kids, but also the mother drunkenly saying goodbye to her workmates before returning home and making the telephone call) are shown in the foreground facing the camera while there are often three or four 'adults' in suits with their backs to the camera walking down a road away from the scene. I'm not sure if this actually means anything but I like to think that it is showing the norms of daily life as being something that feels always to be just out of the grasp of the characters (or at least the older kids). Perhaps most obvious example is when the older brother, as the train he is on with his two friends begins to leave the station, sees two children and their parents walking along the platform - a vision of something he is desperately wishing for, but which is already in the process of slipping away, and a sign that the whole trip is really standing in more for the processing and coming to terms with things already lost, and of then setting new goals for yourself.

[Michael Kerpan]

Nice review of Kiseki! I thought the performances here (adult and child, seasoned pro and near-amateur) were absolutely wonderful (as is typically the case in Koreeda's films). Really not much I would want to criticize in this film -- really just about perfect.

[colinr0380]

That montage of all the little moments that went into the journey at the end of the film was quite wonderful, wasn't it!

Also if Criterion ever release the film they could continue the tradition from Still Walking booklet and put the grandfather's Karukan cake recipe in there!

[Hail_Cesar]

I want to see I Wish so badly... Any DVD released other than the Japanese one? (I mean any subbed DVD that does not cost 50 bucks)

[puxzkkx]

Does anyone know exactly what happened with Night-Fragrant Flower? For a couple of years there it was looking like a sure thing.

[antnield]

Air Doll will be getting a UK DVD release in late November.

[manicsounds]

UK DVD of "Air Doll", November 26, 2012

[reno dakota]

I want to see I Wish so badly... Any DVD released other than the Japanese one? (I mean any subbed DVD that does not cost 50 bucks)

I Wish [DVD] to be released in the US on Nov. 06.

[RyanGallagher]

I want to see I Wish so badly... Any DVD released other than the Japanese one? (I mean any subbed DVD that does not cost 50 bucks)

I Wish [DVD] to be released in the US on Nov. 06.

As of this morning, it's available on Netflix Watch Instantly as well.

[bigP]

Kore-Eda Hirokazu Collection - Pre-order 28th January from Matchbox Films. No idea what will be in the set, though I'd assume it will include their November release of Air Doll. Nobody Knows and After Life still appear to be in print on Amazon so I'm assuming neither of those.

Edit: Moviemail have the details up. The set will include After Life and Nobody Knows as well as Still Walking and Air Doll.

[JonasEB]

Moviemail have the details up. The set will include After Life and Nobody Knows as well as Still Walking and Air Doll.

How is the U.K. After Life? Does it look like the U.S. New Yorker DVD or the Japanese DVD? I don't own After Life, Air Doll, or Nobody Knows so I'm very interested in this.

[bigP]

Moviemail have the details up. The set will include After Life and Nobody Knows as well as Still Walking and Air Doll.

How is the U.K. After Life? Does it look like the U.S. New Yorker DVD or the Japanese DVD? I don't own After Life, Air Doll, or Nobody Knows so I'm very interested in this.

It's been ages since I saw the Soda DVD, but going by the Beaver caps, it looks closer to the Bandai release, including the Picture Boxing and 1:66:1 aspect ratio, and it definitely had more grain than the New Yorker. Saying that, I don't remember it having as much clarity or sharpness as the Bandi caps suggest. Overall it's pretty watchable but far from stellar.

Here's a review I found on Cine Outsider that say's pretty much the same thing. I'm sure it had removable subs though (may be the check-disc subs were un-removable or my memory's fading)...

Hopefully there'll be some improvement with the Matchbox release.

[JonasEB]

Thanks. Looks like the current DVD is an NTSC-PAL transfer, which I was expecting (and which for once isn't a problem with the New Yorker but aside from the digitization, that one is also non-anamorphic.) Looks like I'll have to bite the bullet and get the Bandai unless the boxset edition turns out better or someone announces this for Blu-ray.

[RobertB]

Just watched the Chinese (Golden Scene) blu ray of I Wish. Good picture and excellent English subs. No extras but it costs a lot less than the Japanese blu ray. It is sadly locked to region A. I agree withmanicsounds, in that I did think about Kitano's Kikujiro, but this is less crazy. Also there is a lot of japanese everyday life in it. "Horse sashimi tasting crackers"! I love it! Sounds like a Kyushu speaciality.