Shinji Somai

[feihong]

Typhoon Club is another diverse masterpiece, but one that essentially adopts an inverted approach from P. P. Rider, reversing the explosively eclectic genre and spacial elasticity of that film. Instead, Somai reduces the action into familiarly banal spaces to detail both the versatility and normality of action and experience permeating the institutions that struggle to contain the erratic inflammations of youth culture. P. P. Rider is a film that set out to accomplish many tasks, but one of them was thematically confronting our loss of bearings as we endure the aggressively uprooting propulsion into emerging adulthood, reflexively through relentless manipulations of narrative and film grammar. Typhoon Club hits on the same ideas, but as characters are interacting less with foreign vehicles and environments like they do in P. P. Rider, and more with the tangible yet isolating experiences of pubescent development, it makes sense that Somai would concentrate the action and layer tones claustrophobically to create an equally powerful but methodologically opposing reflection of the surrealism in universal realities pertaining to psychosocial evolution. Here he's attending to the heaviness of the feelings instead of P. P. Rider's absurdist disorientation of them.

The camera peers around sometimes anxiously, other times with fluid confidence, but always persistent even as it's voyeuristically peering from an invasive yet cautious distance. Somai is demonstrating that no one can escape these changes, nor the traumas that come from coexisting with our peers, whose agendas intrude on us without our consent simply by the nature of occupying the same space and living in a milieu. Whether the institutional constructs Somai is interested in exploring here are physical buildings, like the school, or metaphysical relationship strongholds, their durability is nervously questioned throughout the film as they attempt to withstand literal and metaphorical typhoons! And just like these youths' dynamics with these apparatuses, Somai acknowledges the rigidity and flexibility pulling and grounding us in arrhythmic (dis)order that makes his films necessarily messy in order to speak truth.

Happy to see we have another convert to pal around with in the little Somai corner of the forum. This must be becoming one of the longest discussion threads on a filmmaker whose work is nearly inaccessible for most members of the board, right? I'm glad you're enjoying these Somai films––as far as I'm concerned, you led with the best.

[therewillbeblus]

Pretty sure Michel Deville has Somai beat by a hair, but unfortunately both threads are populated by relatively few voices compared to how many converts have/could have checked out the films with back channel access. Oh well- part of me was hoping to bait you with my writeups into responding with essays on how you read your all-time favs, but my ploy failed. I take that I either nailed P. P. Rider or it's just too eclectic to write about, which is also fair!

I revisited O.C. & Stiggs a few nights after P. P. Rider, and it wasn't until Never Cursed brought up the spectacular opening shot as one that PTA would adore that I realized how Somai's film unconsciously reminded me of the best of Altman's sprawling energetic and deliciously surreal films, and absolutely planted a seed that inspired that revisit without any awareness of the connection tissue- anyways, a strange, empty anecdote, but one that amused me. Like that undervalued Altman, I think fans of Licorice Pizza will also like this, even though they're obviously very different

[Never Cursed]

I was also completely bowled over by P.P. Rider (though I know nothing about this director or his predilections), which I think is a masterful metaphor for the aimless spontaneity of youthful play. Our heroes' goal of rescuing Fatty is the only thing that doesn't change across the scope of their summer odyssey, as they frequently and consciously shift location, motivation (going from rescuing him to beat him up themselves to sincerely trying to help him), and the nature of their heightened games (expressed to adults and the camera as genre shifts - the film loses interest in the police procedural stuff, for instance, when the three stop playing at/messing with the cops) as a function of the adventure itself. The repeated resistance put up by the kids to stepping back from a dangerous situation and letting the police take charge isn't (just) youthful arrogance - it's really their unwillingness to abandon the fun of their mission, which would stop being a game if the cops made them treat it like a crime to be investigated. And as it turns out, their fast-and-loose approach to investigation is a better fit to the farcical world they inhabit than the seriousness exhibited by the cops or their ill-fated teacher; given what happens to everyone else that tries to resolve the kidnapping, there's a sense that the adults are playing the zany life-game by the wrong rules.

If O.C. and Stiggs is a potent cinematic expression of a certain sarcastic teenage attitude towards the adult world as personified by the teenage goon, Somai's film applies the same approach to the experience of a more youthfully optimistic age-range. Even though both movie have different settings and levels of cynicism applied towards those settings, in each the opaque tangle of the adult world is a problem to be resolved by games and schemes that break the adult rules.

[feihong]

Oh well- part of me was hoping to bait you with my writeups into responding with essays on how you read your all-time favs, but my ploy failed. I take that I either nailed P. P. Rider or it's just too eclectic to write about, which is also fair!

I actually have been planning to write something long and involved about Somai, given I've finally watched all his movies (and in some cases gone back and reviewed films I hadn't seen in a while--i don't think I'd seen Moving in 8 years or more). I was going to do it last night, but something made me pause and try to track down The Youth Killer, a film where Somai was an assistant director. I thought I'd watch it, but I didn't end up doing so. And then there's Almost Transparent Blue, where Somai assisted as well. No English subtitles for that one. But I think I'll write something tonight, not having seen those films, because I'm tired of waiting to do it. I thought your summation was awesome, especially when you're getting into the sequence where they're moving the truck through the tunnel. I'll have to reach a bit to find something original to say about the movie.

[therewillbeblus]

Looking forward to it, feihong- and great thoughts, Never Cursed! Your description of both this and the Altman could be applied to my own reading of Licorice Pizza vis adults' limitations engaging with the world on its terms compared to the secret key kids have with the elastic reach of their innocent/faux-ignorant perspectives.

Moving on in Somai's mid-80s period, I don't know exactly what to make of Love Hotel, though I liked it a good amount. The film appears pretty loose but ultimately plays to Somai's strengths of tonal layering through visual ideas regarding multifaceted characterizations, which can come off as cartoonish in their schizophrenic behavioral shifts but are really just exemplifying the complexity of human will. There's a sense of desperation and loneliness, of people trying to take existential action to connect to others via tangible vehicles of value, searching for and occasionally finding spiritual fulfillment in superficial (not to be taken as shallow in meaning) channels. Sex and conversation and impulse and aggression are all conflated into a fluid group of 'possibilities for connection', and the blending is capitalized on as pliable tools for empowering characters to access what they not only desire, but need (Somai seems to be positing: Can they be one in the same?).

As sad as this film's beginnings are, Somai isn't really interested in lingering in despair- there's a lot that's being said (or, rather, indicated) about the allure and security of power dynamics, and how even the most dominant people can respond with fearful reactivity to others' unpredictable desires. When there's another human vs objectified de-human vessel on the other end of the dynamic, we have to pivot and adapt to the dynamic in real time- flubs, imperfections and all. It's not shaming or shining a spotlight on one personality type in particular either- but ultimately becomes a fun movie about how social engagement is inherently dubious when we get vulnerable with another human being. The movie is sex positive under a plastic ethos that's way ahead of its time, and could be read as a novel approach to sadomasochism, or more broadly kink; and I was primarily reminded of Bertrand Blier's Mon Homme than any other approach to these ideas, though with less of a focus on personified roles than on broad ideas of intimacy and how intrinsically messy it is to attempt to transcend barriers to congress.

[Calvin]

I just watched P. P. Rider and I'm at a loss for words- but I'll try anyways. There are times where it feels like The Goonies with the manic energy (and liberal space to play) of Zazie dans le Métro, but Somai has such a firm control over what he's trying to accomplish, that he continuously zooms out from a zany cocktail to imbue the action with a unique vulnerability. The film is very absurd but its surrealism can encompass gentle pathos or grave awareness, just as much as it explodes with hilarity. I love the distanced camera, which forces a conscientiousness to social dynamics that feels slightly ominous, but is really just disrupting a nosedive into subjective escapism. Somai is squeezing so many wonderful ideas and tones into his film that we need to pay attention to, and he doesn't allow us to miss them.

Examples? At the halfway point, there's a long-take shoot-out setpiece that remains objective to lay bare its comprehension of the seriousness of this kind of violent situation, and then there's a great bit about forcing a truck through a tunnel, adults devolving into childlike whining, to juxtapose real mature threats vis abrasions in film grammar with mocking antisocial humor. The oscillation between exuberant and emotional fantasy for these kids, and the terrors of mature, cold spaces of adulthood, is just one of the many elusive high concepts I took away from this masterpiece. The musical aspects, that remain rooted in the same reality as the rest of the action, can come off as silly or be mixed with genuinely heartfelt scoring, with corrosive diegetic sound and spectacular non-diegetic numbers bleeding into the segues or, by the very end, the central activity of a scenario. The staging can come off like Wes Anderson's reapplication of Tati's strategies decades before he arrived on the scene. There are western showdowns, police-procedural arcs, buddy comedy adventures, crime, vérité guerrilla neorealism, observational comedy, musical elements that venture to prisms of melodramatic and riotous volumes, zoomed-out staging reminiscent of Godard's Brechtian approach to capturing action outside of editing manipulation, and so on and so forth.

The ending is almost painfully anticlimactic in its long-gestated unraveling of frantic antics captured in a single exhausting -but most importantly, exhausted on behalf of the camera- take, reflexively expressing the characters' and film's empty gas tank as the vehicle peters out of fumes. One could probably write an essay arguing how this film is cinema. I checked it out after seeing feihong list it as his favorite film, which makes a lot of sense. In many ways, this is The Movie. I don't know, maybe someone who understands this filmmaker's wavelength better can weigh in with more concrete readings. All I know is that I need to see more of Somai's work, stat

I'm glad that you're discovering Somai's work, TWBB!

I adore P.P. Rider. 'Zany' is an apt description for it; it might be the most physically energetic film in Somai's filmography and perhaps the purest example of the sheer dynamism of Somai's cinema - there is constant movement, whether it be literal within the frame or an excitation of ideas threatening to burst forth.

The thrilling unpredictability of the opening shot of P.P. Rider - a near-7-minute long take - is evidence of this, as we're taken from the opening image of two yakuza, up to a children's swimming pool that establishes some of the characters that we'll follow. I expect that we're going to follow Fatty but, no, we're going horizontal through the bushes - we hear motorcycles - then we're in a playground, we move right and more people and objects fill the frame. There's a fight, a car pulls up, moves off, Yakuza appear, another car. Now what?! Fatty is kidnapped. Now that's how to hook an audience! What will possibly happen next?

Somai's camera seems to see the threads that can connect these places, people, and groups despite their seeming dissimilarity and follow them through space and time in a manner that makes perfect sense. I think Aaron Gerow, in the essay linked in the first post, put it very well and much better than I can:

"One could say that Somai is respecting the ambiguity of reality by enabling the viewer to read cinematic space as they would real space. At the same time, the elaborate camera movement and the complex traffic of characters evokes a kind of freedom that, while certainly a central theme in Somai’s world of adolescence, could also remind one of Renoir. Off-screen space, for instance, is constantly evoked, as characters disappear out of the frame, only to reappear in the same shot in an unexpected location. There seems to be no limit to their range of action."

Is there an HD copy floating around the backchannels yet? I only have one sourced from the ancient DVD but I know it has been available digitally in Japan for some time now (clip here).

[feihong]

There's a 720p copy from Japanese iTunes you can find. Not great, but 100 million times better than the previous DVD versions.

Odessa, the company that seems to have the rights to P.P. Rider, Typhoon Club, The Terrible Couple, Moving, Kaza-Hana and The Friends, has expressed disinclination to release blu rays of these films, in response to an e-mail inquiry I sent them. They have released digitally-remastered DVDs with HD transfers, and I believe they're responsible for the HD streaming versions of P.P. Rider and Typhoon Club. But they've said to me that blu-ray is a non-starter. Hopefully the economics of this have changed since I heard from them? I really hope they reconsider this position.

[Calvin]

There's a 720p copy from Japanese iTunes you can find. Not great, but 100 million times better than the previous DVD versions.

Odessa, the company that seems to have the rights to P.P. Rider, Typhoon Club, The Terrible Couple, Moving, Kaza-Hana and The Friends, has expressed disinclination to release blu rays of these films, in response to an e-mail inquiry I sent them. They have released digitally-remastered DVDs with HD transfers, and I believe they're responsible for the HD streaming versions of P.P. Rider and Typhoon Club. But they've said to me that blu-ray is a non-starter. Hopefully the economics of this have changed since I heard from them? I really hope they reconsider this position.

I'm not sure if we have some sort of psychic powers but...

Typhoon Club. Blu-Ray. November 2nd......with English subtitles listed!

[bad future]

Bless your psychic powers! Currently listed as unavailable; I assume preorders just aren't live yet, but in the meantime can anyone comment on if Amazon Japan is an ideal way to order to the US? YesAsia carries the DVD (listed as Taifuu Club) so that could also be an option for the blu-ray.

[therewillbeblus]

I now feel an obligation to prioritize the rest of Somai's filmography- maybe Never Cursed and I can create a typhoon and bring all his work to blu-ray. Though that's not exactly working with soundchaser and my TAL conjuring-attempts...

[feihong]

Oh man, this is exciting! Hope this turns out great. P.P. Rider might follow.

I can't tell if Odessa has ever released a blu-ray before. I'm nervous about the grain management, is what it comes down to. Has anyone seen any other releases they've put out? I have a feeling they have only released DVDs up until now.

[Calvin]

Oh man, this is exciting! Hope this turns out great. P.P. Rider might follow.

I can't tell if Odessa has ever released a blu-ray before. I'm nervous about the grain management, is what it comes down to. Has anyone seen any other releases they've put out? I have a feeling they have only released DVDs up until now.

Looking at their website, they have released other Blu-Rays - a Bi Gan box set, Enyedi's My 20th Century, Straw Dogs...there's not many but there's some.

If you could email them to thank them for their change of heart (and confirm English subtitles!) that would be much appreciated!

[feihong]

Oh man, this is exciting! Hope this turns out great. P.P. Rider might follow.

I can't tell if Odessa has ever released a blu-ray before. I'm nervous about the grain management, is what it comes down to. Has anyone seen any other releases they've put out? I have a feeling they have only released DVDs up until now.

Looking at their website, they have released other Blu-Rays - a Bi Gan box set, Enyedi's My 20th Century, Straw Dogs...there's not many but there's some.

If you could email them to thank them for their change of heart (and confirm English subtitles!) that would be much appreciated!

I'll do just that. Didn't think of it, but thanks for putting that idea in my head.

Interesting to see their website. A lot of their HD remastered releases have been finding their way onto streaming, like Afternoon Breeze and The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girls. I wonder if Typhoon Club is their trial balloon for these Japanese film releases.

[Calvin]

Having got over the initial shock and excitement, reading the (Google Translated) blurb more closely...

In 2021, a special screening commemorating the 20th anniversary of director Somai's death will be screened all over Japan, and based on the evaluation, a revival re-screening of "Typhoon Club" is currently being planned in Japan. Also, in 2023, the director's retrospective project (retrospective screening) is scheduled at the Japan Society in New York, USA, and after that, distribution in North America is underway with a US distribution company. Theatrical development in South Korea is also underway.
All of them are centered on this "Typhoon Club" as a representative work.

[therewillbeblus]

It's a bit unclear to me, but the way I'm reading that seems to indicate that there may be other films screened and restored from Somai in the works as well, with just Typhoon Club being the one promoted as a key film?

[bad future]

Oh, wow, this sounds very exciting. Could it be Janus? If so, then presumably this Japanese blu will eventually be made redundant by a release with more supplements and maybe better subtitles or encode, but I suppose there are possibilities where those things are less assured. (Film Movement? Cinema Guild? Do any labels have an established relationship with the rights holders?)

[Calvin]

It's unclear to me too. Maybe it would be less ambiguous to a Japanese reader?

--

Typhoon Club is owned by Toho, so Criterion would be the obvious candidate. I'm not sure if any other label has licensed from them?

[beamish14]

Oh, wow! That is tremendous news. I hope to see some of Japan Society’s 35mm prints

[therewillbeblus]

I’m now imagining a forum meetup in NYC reflexively imitating a Somai film with a convoluted cast of characters messily engaging around an eclectic series of tones in both the artworks themselves and refracted back into the awkward social dynamics of meeting new people off the internet in the surreal real world we call our own set to the zany rhythm of this forum poster’s runon sentence describing his version of a Somai movie he can be a part of which is a desperate attempt to gain control over intangible surroundings much like the characters in Somai’s fi- (*pauses, inhales*)

[knives]

Or like Goodbye Dragon Inn.

[feihong]

Received this response from Odessa to my thank you e-mail:

"Thank you for your mail again. Typhoon Club Blu-ray definitely includes English subtitles, so please introduce this outstanding movie to everybody! We haven't thought about Shonben Rider’s Blu-ray yet, but if Typhoon Club sell well, it might be possible."

So...that's cool. A pretty positive response from them. If people are interested in a P.P. Rider blu ray, it sounds like Odessa might be somewhat responsive to communication in that regard. Certainly, they're hoping to net some international sales by putting English subtitles on the Typhoon Club disc.

[Calvin]

That's positive, thanks feihong. What's their e-mail? I'll suggest it to them too (via Google Translate).

[feihong]

I wrote to them at info@odessa-e.co.jp. I used Google translate as well, and they haven't been annoyed by that at all.

[Calvin]

Thanks.

--

While going down an internet rabbit hole, I've discovered that Kaza-Hana was probably not Somai's last directed work. That honour seems to go to an episode of an NHK series that seems to be based around the concept of well known actors reading aloud works of Japanese literature. Somai directed Akira Emoto reading Atsushi Mori's Gassan, which was earlier adapted into Japan's submission to the 1980 Oscars. Other directors who contributed to the series include Nobuhiko Obayashi, Jun Ichikawa, Sogo Ishii, Shinji Aoyama, Naomi Kawase, Shinya Tsukamoto, and Hideo Nakata. At 50-minutes they even qualify as features! Naturally, it doesn't seem to be easily available.

EDIT: Tsukamoto's entry 'Tokage' is up on YouTube though

[feihong]

The new Kadokawa blu-ray of Luminous Woman arrived in the the mail today. Like all the Kadokawa discs I've seen, the quality is top-tier. Really clear grain, great color separation (with the color filtering that's part of the very stylized cinematography, this film needs it!), and extraordinary depth-of-field (which tends to reveal stuff not visible on the old DVD––miniature frames-within-the-frame Somai sets up so that figures appear viewing scenes in little sections of the picture––lots of these were not visible at all on the very compressed, old Pioneer DVD). The picture has had restoration, and but for the fashions on display, you would think the film came out yesterday (it is grainier than we would probably see nowadays, but you get the drift).

The Pioneer DVD had stacked a bunch of extra features on top of the nearly 3-hour film, and put all of it on one disc. But this new blu-ray is a 2-blu ray set; the feature is on one disc, along with the standard trailer (which was amazing––I don't know how the film wasn't a hit with this beautiful trailer selling it), and there is a second disc which includes the nearly 40 minutes of footage which seems like it was important to the narrative, but also cut for time. These scenes seem to have been restored, too––though most of them have no audio (nor had they any on the DVD). Back up a few pages on this thread, I did a long writeup of what I found in those scenes, and I still feel the same about them; long story short, I feel like the scenes were cut because the film was dragging, but I feel the theatrical film ended up dragging anyway, and I have a hunch that if the film were teased out to 3 1/4 hrs., with the additional scenes, that might have solved the problem, and just made the film seem more gradual by design. The movie takes some giant leaps in continuity in the second half, and these scenes really fill that in. Also, the scenes in Hokkaido, where the hero is surrounded by the natural world, Somai seems to ease off on the red/blue color filtering that is an overwhelming feature of almost the whole theatrical film. Because the later scenes in the countryside don't have that red cast to them, because they bring out greens and more natural blues, I have the feeling that the film was meant to be delineated into two halves by this color system; a first half in Tokyo, in the red/blue color filter––indicating that we, like the nature-boy protagonist and all the characters around him, are in hell––and then a second half of the film in which the hero retreats to the natural world, and Monday Michiru, the titular "luminous woman," follows him into nature––at which point the filtering lessens and goes away. Problem being, most of that second part of the film has been cut, so we get a film which is predominantly in hues of red, magenta, purple, and day-glo blue. The second disc also features a collection of video from the time, including press junkets and a lot of behind-the-scenes imagery. This stuff is interesting just to get a sense of how the filmmaking can change the impression of the environment. The reddish filter over most of the film isn't present on the videotape, and we see there a very different–looking world in which the film was made.

This is a Somai movie I really appreciate without loving unreservedly. The pacing is a big problem, as is the quirky, ham-fisted conception of the film screenwriter Yozo Tanaka seems to provide. There's this constant contrast of city/country, industrial hell/harsh but soulful natural world, opera with big bruisers in an underground fight club, high culture cross with low human greed. It's the most ambitious film Somai and Tanaka ever attempt––a kind of splurging, romantic fantasy of Japan filled with desiccated roman colosseums, empty swimming pools, flooded houses, and giant pyramids of detritus. It pits an innocent country giant against a subtle, tricky city that aims to eat him alive just as he falls for one of its classiest denizens––an opera singer who seems to be lamenting the very landscape around her. There are extraordinary long takes in the movie, with complex fight choreography and jesters on swings, and opera singers on rising platform cranes all fitting into the same composition. There wonderful visuals, and a very European cast to the imaginative imagery––it's a film seemingly made under the sign of Jean-Jacques Beineix and Luc Besson. But it also seems to have been a failure, as far as I can see––and it seems to have affected both Somai's and Tanaka's future filmmaking prospects. Somai makes far fewer movies in the next decade, and all of them seem notably cheaper to produce than this one––Tokyo Heaven, right after this, seems to be Somai's cheapest movie since his debut film––perhaps a sign of lost confidence on the part of investors. And Yozo Tanaka writes screenplays for only 6 films produced in the 20 years after Luminous Woman; whereas the previous 20 years saw him author almost 50 screenplays. But I think the film is really interesting, and worth seeking out. Unfortunately, this set doesn't have English subtitles––but there are good fansubs available out on the interwebs. For Somai fans it's definitely worth seeing. It features some of his most impressive creative/technical filmmaking; it just happens to not be one of his top most impressive movies.