(fighting elegy still from criterion.com)
This weekend, I delved into territories closer to home and yet still distant in parts. I’ll post my two cents on (top to bottom) Seijun Suzuki’s Fighting Elegy (1966), Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express (1994) and Happy Together (1997).
For now, I’ll say this: worth watching!
Ingats!
There is this cool looking guy in Akira Kurosawa’s High And Low (1963) that for a big chunk of his performance, wears this giant shades. And it’s amazing how this highly reflective pseudo-eye shades alienate him from a densely packed club (and distinguishes him from a slew of other characters Kurosawa brings to the table).
May I indulge myself for a paragraph’s moment to say that this club scene, this sequence is one if the things why it’s fascinating to view and review Kurosawa’s works. It, like the four minute train sequence found in the square middle of this movie, is full of layers; a big .psd file. Why did Kurosawa’s camera lingered on an African-(American?) character way after the man with bug-like shades left the scene? Why are there so many damn reflective surfaces in the scene? And that music and dance! I’ll leave it up to those who’ll watch but I just think it exudes a certain coolness, the same ‘cool’ you feel watching Tarantino’s films.
the seven samurai. can i be an eighth?
I don’t know. These past few weeks, seeing these Judai-Geki (Japanese period films) and of course hollywood blockbuster mammoths like Transformers or Star Trek, try as they might to make these characters human, morefully fleshed character so that somehow I, along with the audiences can relate to these ‘bots or see a piece of me in James Kirk. But dear reader, I am not an adventurer. I am not a traveler or a pseudo-Magellan sailing the seven seas. I am but here in my chair and contented enough as it were to just pop in my DVD or an audio broadcast ad watch and listen and dream.
I might dream of these herculean tasks and journeys. I think about how wanton (but still fascinating) the acts of men are compared to the all seeing eyes of gods, seen in epics like The Lord of the Rings, or Kurosawa’s (breathtaking) Ran. I think about the struggles of medieval peasants to strive and survive (Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai which was the base point of John Lasseter’s A Bug’s Life). I think about modern day adventures of overcoming modern day problems (like Sean Penn’s Into the Wild) and how sometimes things don’t see through.
What are myths and legends anyway?in our post-post-war world, or the contemporary age, they are affimations of what humans can do to the fullest, what our hands, and minds can overcome. We see these superhuman characters and see either our capability or our weakness.
Writing this now, I think of me sitting here and asking myself, what do I think of myself? Am I weak or potentially strong? When can I get up and do something outside? When can I smell the air, see the trees, see the people? What wild acts am I capable of? When will my advnture start?
