this week in film and television

FOREVER YOUNG: AMERICAN HONEY

AMERICAN HONEY

Sasha Lane makes a compelling debut in Andrea Arnold’s extraordinary American Honey

AMERICAN HONEY (Andrea Arnold, 2016)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Friday, March 15, 5:30
Festival runs March 1-24
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.americanhoney-movie.com

Metrograph continues its “Forever Young” series with Andrea Arnold’s fourth feature film, an exhilarating and daring whirlwind epic about marginalized college-age youth trying to make a go of it in contemporary America. In American Honey, her third Grand Jury Prize winner at Cannes (following Fish Tank and Red Road), Arnold goes on the road with the 071 mag crew, a group of itinerant high school dropouts and runaways who cross middle America in a van, selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. As in all of her films, Arnold casts many nonprofessional actors, including Sasha Lane, who she discovered on a Florida beach during spring break. Lane makes a dazzling debut as Star, a young woman in an extremely dysfunctional family who is captivated by Jake (Shia LaBeouf) and his friends’ antics in a Walmart. Lured in by Jake’s seductive charm, she runs away from home and joins the ragtag bunch of more than a dozen lost souls who have formed a kind of unique family of their own. Led by the tough Krystal (Riley Keough) and the bold Jake, the mag crew spends its days trying to sell subscriptions for cash, making their way through various communities in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and North Dakota. At night they stay at motels and party all night long, drinking, dancing, singing, and goofing around.

The tight-knit group consists of Shaunte (Shawna Rae Moseley, the real-life owner of the mag crew’s pit bull), Pagan (Arielle Holmes, who detailed her own troubles in Heaven Knows What), Katness (former exotic dancer Crystal B. Ice), QT (Verronikah Ezell, who is raising a daughter with her wife), Billy (singer-songwriter Chad McKenzie Cox), Austin (former high school football player Garry Howell), Sean (construction worker Kenneth Kory Tucker, who is dating Moseley), JJ (Raymond Coalson), Kalium (skateboarder Isaiah Stone), Runt (Dakota Powers), Corey (McCaul Lombardi), and Chris (Christopher David Wright), most of whom revel in their freedom, unworried about parents, the government, or other authority figures. Meanwhile, Krystal is a kind of modern-day Fagin, threatening to kick out poor performers, forcing those with the lowest sales figures into brutal fistfights with each other. The street-smart but sensitive Star does what she needs to survive, including getting into cars and trucks with men who have something more than magazines on their mind, although she is disturbed by Jake’s lies and how he and others steal from customers. The film is a breathtaking coming-of-age tale not just for Star but for this entire generation of kids who have been shut out of mainstream society, for whatever reason, but are not giving up on their dreams.

Jake (Shia LaBeouf) and Star (Sasha Lane) encounter some major trouble in exhilarating road-trip movie

Jake (Shia LaBeouf) and Star (Sasha Lane) encounter some major trouble in exhilarating road-trip movie

Inspired by a 2007 New York Times article by Ian Urbina that detailed the very real and harsh story of mag crews, Arnold traveled across parts of America by herself in researching the film, then had members of the cast actually try to sell magazine subscriptions in Kansas City. The film was shot in fifty-six days as the cast and a limited crew traveled in vans and stayed in motels. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan, who has photographed all four of Arnold’s feature films (as well as Philomena and several documentaries), does a superb job of capturing the open road, the Bible Belt neighborhoods, and the wild abandon and exciting energy exhibited by the mag crew, who were allowed to develop their characters and improvise. The soundtrack is critical to the film, and it boasts a wide variety of music, with songs by E-40, the Raveonettes, Ciara featuring Ludacris, Bruce Springsteen, Jeremih, Mazzy Star, Carnage, Razzy Bailey, Kevin Gates, Quigley, MadeinTYO, Lady Antebellum, and others. The actors, most of whom are making their first cinematic appearances, form a tight-knit family that is thrilling to watch develop. LaBeouf (Transformers, Nymphomaniac) gives one of his best performances as the hard-to-figure-out Jake, while Lane, who moved to Los Angeles to continue acting, is mesmerizing as Star, whose problems are emblematic of so much of what is wrong in today’s society. The film is very much about the hopes and dreams of this lost generation — and how the American dream has failed them. A 162-minute film about disaffected youth selling magazine subscriptions in the twenty-first century might not sound like a slam dunk, but Arnold, in her first film made in the States, has created an unforgettable vision of the country today. “We explore, like, America; we party. Come with us,” Jake tells Sasha early on. We’re glad we went along for the ride too; so will you.

American Honey opened on September 30, 2016, at the Landmark Sunshine and Loews Lincoln Square, the same day that the New York Film Festival began. Curiously, Arnold was the inaugural 2013 filmmaker in residence at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the host of the festival, but American Honey was not selected for the fifty-fourth annual event. Among the upcoming “Forever Young” screenings are Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and John Waters’s Cry-Baby.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FIRST LOOK 2024: SOLARIS MON AMOUR / HANDFUL OF DIRT

Kuba Mikurda’s Solaris mon amour explores inner and outer space using found footage

SOLARIS MON AMOUR (Kuba Mikurda, 2023) / HANDFUL OF DIRT (GARSTKA ZIEMI) (Izabela Zubrycka, 2023)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, March 15, $15, 6:30
Series runs March 13-17, individual screenings $15, Weekend Pass $60, All-Festival Pass $120
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Despite its tantalizing title, Kuba Mikurda’s Solaris Mon Amour is not an experimental film lover’s fantasy mashup of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour. Instead, it’s a fascinating journey into grief and trauma, dreams and memory, using found scientific footage to create a compelling and haunting cinematic experience.

Mikurda goes back to Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris, which the Polish writer and philosopher began writing in 1959, the year that Hiroshima mon amour was released. The latter is about an actress and an architect who have a torrid affair in one of the two cities that the United States dropped the atomic bomb on in 1945; the former imagines a planet where an astronaut encounters what appears to be his dead wife, among other strange things.

Mikurda and editor Laura Pawela piece together their forty-seven-minute black-and-white story out of excerpts from more than seventy films in the WFO archives at the Educational Film Studio in Lodz made between 1952 and 1982, including Earth Our Planet, Life of the Stars, Radiographic Study of Metals, The World of Mold, Injections, Jellyfish, Plasma Torch, ABC of Cosmonautics, and She Put Down Foots Filled the Ground, accompanied by Marcin Lenarczyk’s sci-fi soundtrack. The images range from the sun, moon, and stars to technical equipment, brain tissue, blood molecules, microorganisms, astronaut training, flames, random numbers, and extreme close-ups of unidentified people, along with audio clips from Jozef Grotowski’s 1962 and 1970 radio adaptations of Solaris.

“It was the first and only totally incomprehensible case in my life,” Kris Kelvin says. “I’m flying to Solaris because I think this is about ourselves, about the limits of human cognition.”

The director was inspired by Agnieszka Gajewska’s books Holocaust and the Stars: The Past in the Prose of Stanisław Lem and Stanislaw Lem: Exiled from the High Castle, in addition to such films as Chris Marker’s La Jetée, Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog, and György Palfi’s Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen; it also made me think of Bill Morrison’s Decasia, with its decaying film stock.

Solaris Mon Amour opens with a shot of a camera lens facing slightly off center, tracking a man checking the grassy ground in a field and digging into the earth. “How exhausting. Need to wake up,” a voiceover says. Mikurda then cuts to a view of the universe and, later, microscopic images, equating the camera and the microscope, two instruments humans employ to learn more about the world and our place in the universe. Mikurda (Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk, Escape to the Silver Globe) crafts it all into a hypnotic audiovisual mystery that will keep echoing in your mind long after it’s over.

Izabela Zubrycka’s Handful of Dirt follows a rural Polish funeral singer and her gravedigger son

Solaris Mon Amour is being shown March 15 at 6:30 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s thirteenth annual First Look festival, running March 13–17, comprising more than two dozen events, from North American film premieres to screenplay readings, workshops, and an art reception. Mikurda’s film will be preceded by Izabela Zubrycka’s student documentary Handful of Dirt (Garstka Ziemi), which also explores such themes as grief and loss. Zubrycka focuses on Halina Waszkiewicz, one of the last funeral singers in Podlasie, Poland, and her son, gravedigger Andrzej Wójcik. The thirteen-minute short echoes Solaris Mon Amour in its own way, with shots of the sun, sky, and moon, Wójcik digging into the earth, moments of silence, extreme close-ups, and talk of time, dreams, sleep, and death.

Writer-director Zubrycka, cinematographer Stefan Żółtowski, editor Anna Adamowicz, and sound recordist Maciej Tobera follow Andrzej as he prepares the graves and Halina joins a group of singers in black who will help the deceased cross over through song. “I wasn’t afraid and I’m not afraid of the dead,” Halina says. “What is death?”

Mikurda and Zubrycka will be at the screening at MoMI’s Redstone Theater to discuss their work. First Look kicks off March 13 with Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s Sujo and Charlie Shackleton’s short Lateral and continues with such films as Mariam Chachia and Nik Voigt’s Magic Mountain, Robert Kolodny’s The Featherweight, and Lois Patiño’s Samsara.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

JAPANESE HORROR

Godzilla

Godzilla emerges from the ocean after nuclear testing in classic monster movie

JAPANESE HORROR
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Through March 14
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Wanna see something really scary? Then head over to Film Forum to see at least one of the two dozen fright flicks comprising “Japanese Horror,” continuing through March 14. No one makes scary movies like the Japanese do, and this series has a great mix of films as we spiral into an election year. You can’t go wrong with any of them; below is only some of the awesomeness. Also on the schedule are Ishirô Honda’s Mothra, Masahiro Shinoda’s Demon Pond, Teruo Ishii’s Horrors of Malformed Men, Mitsuo Murayama’s The Invisible Man vs. the Human Fly, and Kaneto Shindô’s Onibaba, among others.

Tatsuya Nakadai will reveal his actual face when he appears at the Museum of the Moving Image to screen and discuss THE FACE OF ANOTHER

Hiroshi Teshigahara examines identity and more in The Face of Another

THE FACE OF ANOTHER (TANIN NO KAO) (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966)
Wednesday, March 6, 6:30
filmforum.org

Kôbô Abe and director Hiroshi Teshigahara collaborated on five films together, including the marvelously existential Woman of the Dunes in 1964 and The Face of Another two years later. In the latter, Tatsuya Nakadai (The Human Condition, Kill!) stars as Okuyama, a man whose face has virtually disintegrated in a laboratory accident. He spends the first part of the film with his head wrapped in bandages, a la the Invisible Man, as he talks about identity, self-worth, and monsters with his wife (Machiko Kyo), who seems to be growing more and more disinterested in him. Then Okuyama visits a psychiatrist (Mikijirô Hira) who is able to create a new face for him, one that would allow him to go out in public and just become part of the madding crowd again. But his doctor begins to wonder, as does Okuyama, whether the mask has actually taken control of his life, making him as helpless as he was before. Abe’s remarkable novel is one long letter from Okuyama to his wife, filled with utterly brilliant, spectacularly detailed examinations of what defines a person and his or her value in society.

Abe wrote the film’s screenplay, which tinkers with the time line and creates more situations in which Okuyama interacts with people; although that makes sense cinematically, much of Okuyama’s interior narrative, the building turmoil inside him, gets lost. Teshigahara once again uses black and white, incorporating odd cuts, zooms, and freeze frames, amid some truly groovy sets, particularly the doctor’s trippy office, and Tōru Takemitsu’s score is ominously groovy as well. As a counterpart to Okuyama, the film also follows a young woman (Miki Irie) with one side of her face severely scarred; she covers it with her hair and is not afraid to be seen in public, while Okuyama must hide behind a mask. But as Abe points out in both the book and the film, everyone hides behind a mask of one kind or another.

Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) finds herself and her young son in danger in Ringu

RINGU (Hideo Nakata, 1998)
Thursday, March 7, 7:20
filmforum.org

In many ways, Hideo Nakata’s 1998 classic, Ringu, is the ultimate horror movie: a film about a film that scares people to death. But Ringu is not chock-full of blood, gore, and violence; instead it’s more of a psychological tale that plays out like an investigative procedural as two characters desperately search for answers to save themselves from impending death.

Journalist Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) and her ex-husband, professor and author Ryūji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada), are both on tight deadlines — for their lives. After Reiko’s niece, Tomoko Ōishi (Yuko Takeuchi), suddenly dies, apparently from fright, Reiko discovers a rumor that Tomoko and some of her friends had watched a short video, then received a phone call in which an otherworldly voice told them they would die in a week. And they did.

Reiko tracks down the eerie videotape and watches it herself — a few minutes of creepy, hard-to-decipher grainy images — after which the phone rings, telling her she has one week to live. She shows the tape to Ryūji, who has extrasensory powers, and they start digging deep into who shown in the tape and what it is trying to communicate. As they begin uncovering fascinating facts, their son, Yōichi (Rikiya Ōtaka), gets hold of the video and watches it, so all three are doomed if they don’t figure out how to reverse the curse — if that is even possible.

Adapted by screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi from the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki, Ringu is a softer film than you might expect, maintaining a slow, even pace, avoiding cheap shocks as the relatively calm and gentle Reiko continues her research and is able to work together with her former husband, who has not been a father to Yoichi at all. The film gains momentum as Reiko and Ryūji learn more about the people in the video, but Nakata, who went on to make several sequels in addition to Dark Water, Chaos, The Incite Mill, and the Death Note spinoff L: Change the World, never lets things get out of hand. The supporting cast includes pop singer Miki Nakatani as Mai Takano, one of Ryūji’s students; the prolific Yutaka Matsushige (he’s appeared in more than one hundred films and television shows since 1992) as Yoshino, a reporter who assists Reiko; and Rie Inō as the strange figure hiding behind all that black hair. Oh, and just for the record, a “homomorphism” — the word is written on Ryūji’s blackboard of mathematical equations — is a map between algebraic objects that come in two forms, “group” and “ring,” the latter being a structure-preserving function.

KURONEKO

A black cat is not happy with the turn of events in Kaneto Shindô’s Kuroneko

KURONEKO (藪の中の黒猫) (Kaneto Shindô, 1968)
Thursday, March 7, 12:30
Monday, March 11, 7:40
Thursday, March 14, 9:10
filmforum.org

“A cat’s nothing to be afraid of,” a samurai (Rokkô Toura) says in Kaneto Shindô’s 1968 Japanese horror-revenge classic, Kuroneko. Oh, that poor, misguided warrior. He has much to learn about the feline species but not enough time to do it before he suffers a horrible death. In Sengoku-era Japan, a large group of hungry, bedraggled samurai come upon a house at the edge of a bamboo forest. Inside they find Yone (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law, Shige (Kiwao Taichi), whose husband, Hachi (Kichiemon Nakamura), is off fighting the war. The men viciously rob, rape, and murder the women, but they leave behind a mewing black cat (“kuroneko”) that is not exactly happy with what just happened. Three years later, the aforementioned samurai is riding his horse on a dark night when he encounters, by the Rajōmon Gate, a young woman positively glowing in the darkness. She says she is frightened and asks if he can accompany her home; he claims he has met her before but can’t quite place her. He agrees to help her, and when they reach her abode he is treated to some tea served by an older woman and some fooling around with the younger one — until the latter creeps on top of him and turns into a menacing animal, biting into his throat and drinking his blood. One by one, the samurai are lured into this trap, until a surprise warrior arrives.

KURONEKO

A bamboo forest leads to a kind of hell for samurai in Kuroneko

Written and directed by Shindô and based on an old folktale, Kuroneko is a tense, spooky film, with a foreboding score by Hikaru Hayashi (Shindô’s The Naked Island and Onibaba) and shot in eerie black-and-white by Kiyomi Kuroda (Shindô’s Mother, Human, and Onibaba). One of the great feminist ghost stories, it’s like the missing sequel to Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan, with elements of Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress and Rashomon thrown in, along with echoes of flying ninja movies. Memorable images abound: The two women, in ghostly white, float in the air; the camera weaves through the bamboo forest; a gruesome killer is beheaded. The film also features Kei Satō as Raiko, Hideo Kanze as Mikado, and Taiji Tonoyama as a farmer, but Kuroneko belongs to Shindô regular — and his lover and, later, his wife — Otowa, who appeared in nearly two dozen of his films, and Taichi, who also worked with such other directors as Keisuke Kinoshita, Mitsuo Yanagimachi, Yôji Yamada, and Shintarô Katsu before dying in a car accident in 1992 at the age of forty-eight. The two women go about their business with a calm and somewhat placid demeanor until they pounce, like cats luring mice to certain doom.

Nobuhiko Obayashi’s wild and crazy Hausu has to be seen to be believed

HOUSE (HAUSU) (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
Friday, March 8, 2:40
Tuesday, March 12, 7:00
Wednesday, March 13, 2:20
filmforum.org

Japanese experimental filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House (Hausu) is one of the craziest movies ever made; the 1977 cult classic took more than three decades to get its U.S. theatrical release, but it’s been a must-see ever since. Truly one of those things that has to be seen to be believed, House is a psychedelic black horror comedy musical about Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) and six of her high school friends who choose to spend part of their summer vacation at Gorgeous’s aunt’s (Yoko Minamida) very strange house. Gorgeous, whose mother died when she was little and whose father (Saho Sasazawa) is about to get married to Ryoko (Haruko Wanibuchi), brings along her playful friends Melody (Eriko Ikegami), Fantasy (Kumiko Oba), Prof (Ai Matsubara), Sweet (Masayo Miyako), Kung Fu (Miki Jinbo), and Mac (Mieko Sato), who quickly start disappearing like ten little Indians.

House is a ceaselessly entertaining head trip of a movie, a tongue-in-chic celebration of genre with spectacular set designs by Kazuo Satsuya, beautiful cinematography by Yoshitaka Sakamoto, and a fab score by Asei Kobayashi and Mickie Yoshino. The original story actually came from the mind of Obayashi’s eleven-year-old daughter, Chigumi, who clearly has one heck of an imagination. Oh, and we can’t forget about the evil cat, a demonic feline to end all demonic felines. The film was released in 2009 prior to its appearance on DVD from Janus, the same company that puts out such classic fare as Federico Fellini’s Amarcord, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Jacques Tati’s M. Hulot’s Holiday, François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa Vie, so House has joined some very prestigious company. And who’s to say it doesn’t deserve it?

Godzilla

Ishirō Honda has a smoke with his atomic-gas-breathing monster on the set of Godzilla

GODZILLA (Ishirō Honda, 1954)
Friday, March 8, 4:40
Tuesday, March 12, 4:50
filmforum.org

More than two dozen sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots have not diluted in the slightest the grandeur of the original 1954 version of Godzilla, one of the greatest monster movies ever made. If you’ve only seen the feeble, reedited, Americanized Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, made two years later with Canadian-born actor Raymond Burr inserted as an American reporter, well, wipe that out of your head. On March 8 and 12, Film Forum is screening the real thing, the restored treasure as part of “Japanese Horror.” The film was inspired by Eugène Lourié’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and a real incident involving the Daigo Fukuryū Maru, a tuna-fishing boat that got hit by radioactive fallout in January 1954 from a U.S. test of a dry-fuel thermonuclear device in the Pacific Ocean. Writer-director Ishirō Honda and cowriter Takeo Murata expanded on Shigeru Kayama’s story, focusing on a giant dinosaur under the sea who comes back to life after H-bomb testing by the U.S.

Standing 165 feet tall and able to breathe atomic gas, Godzilla — known as Gojira in Japanese, a combination of gorira, the Japanese word for gorilla, and kujira, which means whale — wreaks havoc on Japanese towns as he makes his way toward Tokyo. While the military and the government want to destroy the creature — who is played by Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka in a monster suit, tramping over miniature houses, streets, cars, trains, and buildings using the suitmation technique (both men also make cameos outside the costume) — Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura) wants to study Godzilla to find out how the radiation only makes it stronger instead of destroying it. (Throughout, Godzilla is referred to as “it” and not “he,” perhaps because the creature is in part a representation of America and what it wrought in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) “Godzilla was baptized in the fire of the H-bomb and survived. What could kill it now?” Dr. Yamane asks. Meanwhile, one of Dr. Yamane’s assistants, Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), is working on a secret oxygen destroyer that he will show only to his fiancée, Yamane’s daughter, Emiko (Momoko Kōchi), who is having trouble telling Dr. Serizawa that she is actually in love with salvage ship captain Hideto Ogata (Akira Takarada). “Godzilla’s no different from the H-bomb still hanging over Japan’s head,” Ogata tells Dr. Yamane, who is none too pleased with his take on the situation. Through it all, the media risks everything to get the story.

Even for 1954, many of the special effects, photographed by Masao Tamai, are cheesy but fun, and composer Akira Ifukube’s fiercely dramatic score goes toe-to-toe with the monster. The Toho film is no mere monster movie but instead is filled with metaphors and references about WWII and the use of atomic bombs, examining it from political and socioeconomic vantage points while questioning the future of technological advances. “But what if your discovery is used for some horrible purpose?” Emiko asks Dr. Serizawa, who wears an eye patch, as if he can only see part of things. Godzilla could only have come from Japan, much like King Kong was purely an American creation produced by Hollywood; in fact, the two went at it in Honda’s 1962 film, King Kong vs. Godzilla. The next year, Akira Kurosawa would make I Live in Fear (Ikimono no kiroku), an intense psychological drama about the nuclear holocaust’s effects on one man, a factory owner played by Toshirô Mifune — who meets with a dentist portrayed by Kurosawa regular Shimura — a kind of companion piece to Godzilla. Honda, who served as an assistant director to Kurosawa on many films before making his own pictures, would go on to make such other sci-fi flicks as Rodan, The H-Man, Mothra, and Destroy All Monsters, but it was on Godzilla that he got everything right, capturing the fate of a nation in the aftermath of nuclear devastation while still managing to gain sympathy for the monster. It is also difficult to watch the film today without thinking of America’s current debate over illegal immigration and fear of the other, particularly when Godzilla approaches an electrified fence meant to keep him out, as well as the threat of nuclear war.

Jigoku

Shirō Shimizu (Shigeru Amachi) is trapped in the realms of hell in Nobuo Nakagawa’s awesome Jigoku

JIGOKU (THE SINNERS OF HELL) (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1960)
Saturday, March 9, 9:10
Wednesday, March 13, 12:15 & 6:30
filmforum.org

Nobuo Nakagawa’s Jigoku is a dark, demonic masterpiece, a descent into the deepest circles of hell, where sinners face the swirling vortex of torment and rivers of pus and blood. Jigoku goes places that would make even Dante and Hieronymus Bosch turn away in fear while Roger Corman and Mario Bava rejoice. In the film, seemingly everyone theology student Shirō Shimizu (Shigeru Amachi) comes into contact with dies a tragic death. He and Yukiko Yajima (Utako Mitsuya) become engaged, but their lives change forever when Shirō and his friend Tamura (Yōichi Numata), a sociopath of pure evil, go for a ride and Tamura, behind the wheel, runs over gangster Kyōichi “Tiger” Shiga (Hiroshi Izumida) and drives away, showing no remorse whatsoever, reminiscent of Artie Strauss (Bradford Dillman) and Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell) in Richard Fleischer’s Compulsion. However, Kyōichi’s mother (Kiyoko Tsuji) witnessed the hit-and-run and is determined to exact revenge, joined by Yoko (Akiko Ono), Kyōichi’s girlfriend.

Jigoku

Nobuo Nakagawa’s Jigoku takes viewers on a dark journey through hell

Shirō is called home to visit his ill mother, Ito (Kimie Tokudaij), while his corrupt father, shady businessman Gōzō (Hiroshi Hayashi), shamelessly has an open affair with Kinuko (Akiko Yamashita). Shirō takes an instant liking to his mother’s nurse, Sachiko Taniguchi (Mitsuya), who looks almost exactly like Yukiko, but her father, painter Ensai Taniguchi (Jun Ōtomo), is being threatened by dirty Det. Hariya (Hiroshi Shingûji), who wants Sachiko for himself or else he will arrest Ensai for a long-ago crime. Sachiko’s appearance frightens Yukiko’s parents, Professor Yajima (Torahiko Nakamura), who is Shirō’s teacher, and his wife (Fumiko Miyata), who are shocked by the doppelgänger. Also hanging around are Dr. Kusama (Tomohiko Ōtani) and journalist Akagawa (Kôichi Miya), who have secrets of their own. As people start dropping like brutally swatted and electrocuted flies, Shirō takes all of the blame even though he does not cause any of the deaths directly. (Even the production studio, Shintoho, didn’t survive, declaring bankruptcy after releasing the film.)

But none of that matters once everyone is in hell, facing a series of horrific tortures that are spectacularly photographed by Mamoru Morita, who enjoys keeping the color red at or near the center of most images, along with occasional touches of blue and green. Inspired by the Ōjōyōshū, the tenth-century Buddhist text about birth, rebirth, and the realms of hell, Nakagawa cowrote the screenplay with Ichirō Miyagawa; Nakagawa made nearly one hundred films in just about every genre before he died in 1984 at the age of seventy-nine, but Jigoku is his crowning achievement. It’s horror of the highest order, immersed in a jaw-dropping madness. It’s also a warning, since everyone is a sinner in one way or another, and retribution awaits us all.

KWAIDAN

Masaki Kobayashi paints four chilling, ghostly portraits in Kwaidan, including “Hoichi, the Earless”

KWAIDAN (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964)
Sunday, March 10, 3:00
filmforum.org

In the mesmerizing Kwaidan, based on folkloric tales by Lafcadio Hearn, aka Koizumi Yakumo, Masaki Kobayashi (The Human Condition, Samurai Rebellion) paints four marvelous ghost stories, each one with a unique look and feel. In “The Black Hair,” a samurai (Rentaro Mikuni) regrets his choice of leaving his true love for societal advancement. Yuki (Keiko Kishi) is a harbinger of doom for a woodcutter (Nakadai) in “The Woman of the Snow.” Hoichi (Katsuo Nakamura) must have his entire body covered in prayer in “Hoichi, the Earless.” And Kannai (Kanemon Nakamura) finds a creepy face staring back at him in “In a Cup of Tea.” The four films subtly, and not so subtly, explore such concepts as greed and envy, love and loss, and the art of storytelling itself. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, Kwaidan is one of the greatest ghost story films ever made, a quartet of chilling existential tales that will get under your skin and into your brain. The score was composed by Tōru Takemitsu, who said of the film, “I wanted to create an atmosphere of terror.” He succeeded.

Model Eihi Shiina makes a stunning debut in Takashi Miike’s Audition

Model Eihi Shiina makes a stunning debut in Takashi Miike’s Audition

AUDITION (ÔDISHON) (Takashi Miike, 1999)
Sunday, March 10, 6:10
filmforum.org

When Audition opened in 1999 at Film Forum, it was New Yorkers’ major introduction to the work of Japanese director Takashi Miike — and some cineastes ran out of the theater faster than they lined up around the block to get in in the first place. The shocking, unconventional psychosexual horror classic, which won the FIPRESCI Prize and the KNF Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, will likely have people lining up at Film Forum again. But this is a different (#MeToo, social-media-obsessed) era, so don’t expect many walkouts, although there will be plenty of head-turning and face-covering. There also will be a critical reevaluation of the film’s central concept, a misogynistic male fantasy that evolves into torture/revenge porn.

Yoshikawa Yasuhisa (Jun Kunimura) and Aoyama Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) get more than they bargained for in Audition

Yoshikawa Yasuhisa (Jun Kunimura) and Aoyama Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) get more than they bargained for in Audition

Written by Daisuke Tengan based on the novel by Ryu Murakami, Audition begins like a Japanese family melodrama. The gentle-hearted Aoyama Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) watches his wife, Ryoko (Miyuki Matsuda), die in a hospital, leaving him to raise their young son, Shigehiko. Seven years later, the teenage Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki) thinks it’s time for his father to find a new wife, as does Aoyama’s best friend, filmmaker Yoshikawa Yasuhisa (Jun Kunimura). Yoshikawa and Aoyama decide to hold fake auditions so the lonely widower can find just the right new romantic partner. He is immediately drawn to the younger, damaged Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina in her stunning film debut), a suicidal former ballerina with a sketchy past filled with questions that worry Yoshikawa. But Aoyama starts dating her anyway, and what starts out sweetly ends up something entirely different as he meets a onetime music executive (Ren Osugi) and an old dance teacher (Renji Ishibashi) who — well, you’ll just have to see that for yourself. The last half hour is so brutal, so grotesque, so disturbing, so violent that you should hang on only at your own risk as it travels “deeper, deeper, deeper” into the psyche, among other things.

There’s something not quite right with Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina) in Takashi Miike’s Audition

There’s something not quite right with Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina) in Takashi Miike’s Audition

Intimately photographed by Hideo Yamamoto and featuring an ominous score by Kōji Endō, Audition has lost none of its power to thrill and chill, right down to the bone. The film has always raised issues of misogyny and male guilt, but, viewed in 2024, those elements come to the fore. The scene in which Yoshikawa and Aoyama interview numerous women contains more than a few cringeworthy stereotypes, and the flashbacks of the abuse suffered by Asami as a child feel more manipulative today. Essentially, Audition is a film that could spring only from a male brain. That said, it is still terrifying twenty-five years later. Miike (Ichii the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris), who has directed nearly a hundred films in his three-decade career, from Westerns and yakuza movies to children’s fare and superhero flicks, is best known for the graphic violence in his films, but he also has a wild sense of humor and a knack for making audiences think, “Oh no he won’t,” and then he does. And it’s Audition that cemented that well-earned reputation.

Kakihara surveys the damage in Takashi Miike’s ultraviolent cult classic Ichi the Killer

ICHI THE KILLER (Takashi Miike, 2001)
Sunday, March 10, 8:30
filmforum.org

Takashi Miike, who had New York filmgoers rushing to Film Forum to see Audition — and then rushing to get out because of the violent torture scenes — did it again with Ichi the Killer, a faithful adaptation of Hideo Yamamoto’s hit manga. When Boss Anjo goes missing while beating the hell out of a prostitute, his gang, led by Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano), a multipierced blond sadomasochist, tries to find him by threatening and torturing members of other gangs. As the violence continues to grow — including faces torn and sliced off, numerous decapitations, innards splattered on walls and ceilings, body parts cut off, and self-mutilation — the killer turns out to be a young man named Ichi (Nao Omori), whose memory of a long-ago brutal rape turns him into a costumed avenger, crying like a baby as he leaves bloody mess after bloody mess on his mission to rid the world of bullies. This psychosexual S&M gorefest, which is certainly not for the squeamish, comes courtesy of the endlessly imaginative Miike, who trained with master filmmaker Shohei Imamura and seems to love really sharp objects. The excellent — and brave — cast also includes directors Sabu and Shinya Tsukamoto, composer Sakichi Satô, and Hong Kong starlet Alien Sun.

Washizu (Toshirô Mifune) and his wife, Asaji (Isuzu Yamada), reimagine Shakespeare tragedy in Kursosawa classic

THRONE OF BLOOD, AKA MACBETH (KUMONOSU JÔ) (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
Tuesday, March 12, 12:20
filmforum.org

Akira Kurosawa’s marvelous reimagining of Macbeth is an intense psychological thriller that follows one man’s descent into madness. Following a stunning military victory led by Washizu (Toshirô Mifune) and Miki (Minoru Chiaki), the two men are rewarded with lofty new positions. As Washizu’s wife, Asaji (Isuzu Yamada, with spectacular eyebrows), fills her husband’s head with crazy paranoia, Washizu is haunted by predictions made by a ghostly evil spirit in the Cobweb Forest, leading to one of the all-time classic finales. Featuring exterior scenes bathed in mysterious fog, interior long shots of Washizu and Asaji in a large, sparse room carefully considering their next bold move, and composer Masaru Sato’s shrieking Japanese flutes, Throne of Blood is a chilling drama of corruptive power and blind ambition, one of the greatest adaptations of Shakespeare ever put on film.

UGETSU

Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) makes his pottery as son Genichi (Ikio Sawamura) and wife Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka) look on in UGETSU

UGETSU (UGETSU MONOGATARI) (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Tuesday, March 12, 2:40
filmforum.org

Ugetsu is one of the most important and influential — and greatest — works to ever come from Japan. Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 1953 Venice Film Festival, Kenji Mizoguchi’s seventy-eighth film is a dazzling masterpiece steeped in Japanese storytelling tradition, especially ghost lore. Based on two tales by Ueda Akinari and Guy de Maupassant’s “How He Got the Legion of Honor,” Ugetsu unfolds like a scroll painting beginning with the credits, which run over artworks of nature scenes while Fumio Hayasaka’s urgent score starts setting the mood, and continues into the first three shots, pans of the vast countryside leading to Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) loading his cart to sell his pottery in nearby Nagahama, helped by his wife, Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka), clutching their small child, Genichi (Ikio Sawamura). Miyagi’s assistant, Tōbei (Sakae Ozawa), insists on coming along, despite the protestations of his nagging wife, Ohama (Mitsuko Mito), as he is determined to become a samurai even though he is more of a hapless fool.

“I need to sell all this before the fighting starts,” Genjurō tells Miyagi, referring to a civil war that is making its way through the land. Tōbei adds, “I swear by the god of war: I’m tired of being poor.” After unexpected success with his wares, Genjurō furiously makes more pottery to sell at another market even as the soldiers are approaching and the rest of the villagers run for their lives. At the second market, an elegant woman, Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyō), and her nurse, Ukon (Kikue Mōri), ask him to bring a large amount of his merchandise to their mansion. Once he gets there, Lady Wakasa seduces him, and soon Genjurō, Miyagi, Genichi, Tōbei, and Ohama are facing very different fates.

UGETSU

Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyō) admires Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) in Kenji Mizoguchi postwar masterpiece

Written by longtime Mizoguchi collaborator Yoshitaka Yoda and Matsutaro Kawaguchi, Ugetsu might be set in the sixteenth century, but it is also very much about the aftereffects of World War II. “The war drove us mad with ambition,” Tōbei says at one point. Photographed in lush, shadowy black-and-white by Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Floating Weeds, Yojimbo), the film features several gorgeous set pieces, including one that takes place on a foggy lake and another in a hot spring, heightening the ominous atmosphere that pervades throughout. Ugetsu ends much like it began, emphasizing that it is but one postwar allegory among many. Kyō (Gate of Hell, The Face of Another) is magical as the temptress Lady Wakasa, while Mori (The Bad Sleep Well, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs) excels as the everyman who follows his dreams no matter the cost; the two previously played husband and wife in Rashomon Mizoguchi, who made such other unforgettable classics as The 47 Ronin, The Life of Oharu, Sansho the Bailiff, and Street of Shame, passed away in 1956 at the age of fifty-eight, having left behind a stunning legacy, of which Ugetsu might be the best, and now looking better than ever.

FOREVER YOUNG: LA HAINE

La heine

Hubert (Hubert Koundé), Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui), and Vinz (Vincent Cassel) experience a wild and dangerous day in La haine

LA HAINE (HATE) (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
March 1, 2, 4, 7, 9
Festival runs March 1-24
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

On March 1, Metrograph kicks off the series “Forever Young,” featuring fifteen international works with unique perspectives on youth culture. Among the selections are Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World, Tsai Ming-liang’s Rebels of the Neon God, and Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados.

One of the highlights is Mathieu Kassovitz’s underseen incendiary 1995 stunner, La haine, inspired by the real-life stories of Makome M’Bowole and Malik Oussekine, two young men who were killed by police in 1993 and 1986, respectively. Kassovitz’s second feature film (following Métisse), La haine, which means “hate,” is set in the immediate aftermath of Paris riots as three friends —the Jewish Vinz (Vincent Cassel), the Afro-French Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and the Arab Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) — spend about twenty hours wandering the mean streets of their banlieue (suburban projects) and Paris, causing minor mayhem as they encounter skinheads, stop off for some wine at an art opening, try to get into a hot club, and, over and over, become embroiled with the police.

La heine

Vinz (Vincent Cassel) sees trouble coming in Mathieu Kassovitz’s explosive La haine

The disaffected youths are fed up with a system that continues to treat them as outsiders, assuming they are criminals. Hubert wants to get out of the banlieue through hard work, but he keeps running into obstacles that are out of his control; at one point, when something goes wrong, he closes his eyes as if he can wish it away. Saïd is an immature schemer who thinks he can slide out of any untoward situation, especially with the help of his much more grounded older brother. But Vinz is a significant problem; one of their friends, Abdel (Abdel Ahmed Ghili), was arrested at the riots and has been severely injured while in police custody. Vinz has sworn to kill a policeman if Abdel dies, something that becomes more possible when he picks up a gun an officer dropped. “I’m fuckin’ sick of the goddam system!” Vinz proclaims, filled with resentment. The three young men pass by a few signs that say “The World Is Yours,” a reference to Scarface, but that seems far out of reach for them.

Photographed in gritty black-and-white by Pierre Aïm and edited with a caged fury by Kassovitz and Scott Stevenson, La haine is electrifying cinema, a powder keg of a film ready to explode at any second. The time is shown onscreen before each scene, going from 10:38 to 06:00, like a ticking time bomb. The film has a documentary-like quality, complete with actual news footage of riots and violence. Kassovitz shows up as a skinhead, while his father, director and writer Peter Kassovitz, is a patron at the art gallery. The soundtrack features songs by French hip-hoppers Assassin; Cassel’s brother, Mathias Crochon, is a member of the group. And look for French star Vincent Lindon’s riotous cameo as a very drunk man.

Several times Vinz appears to be looking straight into the camera, pointing his gun accusingly at the audience; his complete disdain for all types of authority is reckless and dangerous but also understandable, and Kassovitz is extending that rage beyond the screen. In fact, during the November 2005 riots in France, people looked to Kassovitz for a response, and the writer-actor-director eventually got into a blog battle with Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, who would later become prime minister. Kassovitz wrote, “As much as I would like to distance myself from politics, it is difficult to remain distant in the face of the depravations of politicians. And when these depravations draw the hate of all youth, I have to restrain myself from encouraging the rioters.”

Sarkozy replied, “You seem to be acquainted with the suburbs well enough to know, deep inside you, that the situation has been tense there for many years and that the unrest is deep-rooted. Your film La haine, shot in 1995, already showed this unease that right-wing and left-wing governments had to deal with, with varying results. To claim this crisis is down to the Minister of the Interior’s sayings and doings is yet another way of missing the point. I attributed this to an untimely and quick-tempered reaction.”

Have things gotten better in the last thirty years, or are governments still missing the point?

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

VESELKA: THE RAINBOW ON THE CORNER AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD

Documentary traces multigenerational history of Veselka, including father and son Tom and Jason Birchard

VESELKA: THE RAINBOW ON THE CORNER AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD (Michael Fiore, 2023)
Village East by Angelika
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St.
Opens Friday, February 23
veselka.com
www.angelikafilmcenter.com/villageeast

Watching Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World is like having two meals, the first a solid lunch, the second a complex, emotional dinner.

Michael Fiore wrote, directed, produced, and edited the film, which starts by telling the fascinating history of the beloved restaurant, opened by Ukraine immigrants Wolodymyr and Olha Darmochwal as a candy store on the southeast corner of Second Ave. and Ninth St. in 1954. It expanded over the years to a full-service restaurant as it was handed down to Wolodymyr’s son-in-law, Tom Birchard, and then Tom’s son, Jason. Cinematographer Bill Winters follows Jason and his employees greeting customers and working in the back office and kitchen, where they make five thousand varenyky (pierogi) a day, three thousand latkes (potato pancakes) a week, and fifty-two hundred gallons of borscht a year.

“Jason Birchard has a hunger to feed people like his father and grandfather before him,” narrator David Duchovny explains. “But the feeding goes beyond food itself. Food should unite us, and it can transport us.” Duchovny grew up in the area; his paternal grandfather was from Ukraine, his paternal grandmother from Poland.

Jason initially was not interested in following in his father’s footsteps, but stuff happened. “I’ve worn many hats here as the proprietor of Veselka,” Jason, who has worked at the eatery since he was thirteen, says. “I never really envisioned a long-term future here in the business. And with the onset of the war, some days I need to give a little extra love to my Ukrainian staff, who have been unsure of what the future holds.”

In the first half of the film, we are introduced to Mrs. Slava, who fries the latkes; grillmen Dima Prach and Ivan; Jason’s nephew Justin, who oversees business development; pastry chef Lisa; potager chef Arturo; short order cook Max; operations manager Vitalii Desiatnychenko; muralist Arnie Charnick; and the pierogi ladies. Everyone is considered family at Veselka, from the employees to the customers. “The way that they treat people personally is a direct reflection about what makes this place so special,” Lisa says.

During the pandemic, Veselka, which means “rainbow” in Ukrainian, turned to outdoor dining; in one poignant scene, Jason and Ukrainian consul general to New York Oleksii Holubov can only shrug as Mayor Adams, eating borscht, pays more attention to the cameras outside than to Jason’s pleas for Hizzoner to support the restaurant industry.

But everything got more complicated on February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine; the second half of the film focuses on Jason’s efforts to help his staff, most of whom have relatives in Ukraine, some of whom are determined to stay, others considering coming to America. Several male employees feel guilty for not returning to Ukraine to join the fight. For every person who shares their personal story, another chooses not to because it’s too painful. Veselka collects donations of clothing and other goods and raises money through borscht sales and its World Central Kitchen Ukraine Bowl.

Dima wants to bring his mother and aunt, who are twins, and his father and uncle to the United States. Vitalii is trying to get his mother out of Ukraine but agonizes when he cannot get in touch with her for days. The Ukrainian national baseball team comes to Coney Island to play charity games against the NYPD and FDNY. Charnick designs a new mural celebrating Ukrainian strength. Jason puts off expansion plans in order to help the community. Employees gather to watch news reports and speeches by Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. New York governor Kathy Hochul stops by to find out what she can do.

Veselka began life as a neighborhood candy store opened by Ukrainian immigrants

Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World is a testament to the human spirit, a vivid depiction of a community in action, showing how individuals can make a difference in difficult times. Jason is an inspiration, a mensch who doesn’t believe in the word no; he has an inner drive to do what’s right for others. He feeds people’s souls and their stomachs.

Ryan Shore’s score can get treacly, but David Sanborn’s sax solos lift the music. Fiore (Floyd Norman: An Animated Life) captures the essence of Veselka, which is the heart of the Ukrainian community in New York City and a vital part of the East Village. The film is especially poignant as the war enters its second year and the US Congress is taking its time deciding whether to send more funding to Ukraine.

Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World opens February 23 at Village East, just a few blocks from the restaurant, making your choice of where to eat before or after the movie that much easier. The 7:05 screenings on Friday and Saturday will be followed by Q&As with Fiore and Tom and Jason Birchard.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FIRE OVER WATER — FILMS OF TRANSCENDENCE: ONLOOKERS

Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers is a uniquely visual film that looks at tourists and locals in Laos

ONLOOKERS (Kimi Takesue, 2023)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens Friday, February 16
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.onlookersfilm.com

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak,” John Berger writes in the seminal text Ways of Seeing. “But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

In documentary filmmaker Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers, which opens theatrically February 16 at Metrograph as part of the series “Fire Over Water: Films of Transcendence,” there are no words, no dialogue — just seventy-two minutes of stunning visuals exploring what we see and what we know, what we are present for and what we are absent for.

The film takes place in various parts of Laos as director, producer, cinematographer, sound recordist, and editor Takesue sets up her camera and leaves it there as scenes unfold in real time and with natural sound, from a breathtaking fourteen-second sunset to five and a half minutes of six women sitting by the side of the road, preparing to fill begging bowls for a long line of Buddhist monks. Animals graze in a temple courtyard as bells chime. Women sell goods at an open-air market. Rivers flow, wind rustles trees, roosters crow, birds chirp, a cat rests on a step, a man relaxes in a hammock, all taking their time, no one in a hurry.

Then the tourists arrive; a few run up to take pictures of a monk beating a drum, then walk away, not actually stopping to watch and listen. A woman snaps a photo of three fellow sightseers standing atop a small, raging waterfall as a man fishes below. A local worker waits as a woman checks her cell phone, as if he isn’t there, standing next to her. A group of backpackers gets a prime view at a boat racing festival while locals observe from the shore. On a mountain, six tourists search for the best angle to take selfies. Visitors at a guest house sit in an outdoor lounge and watch Friends.

Born in Colorado and raised in Hawai’i and Massachusetts, Takesue has previously made Where Are You Taking Me? in Uganda, Heaven’s Crossroad in Vietnam, and 95 and 6 to Go in Hawai’i, about reconnecting with her grandfather. In Onlookers, she is not necessarily criticizing the tourists or celebrating the Laotian locals; she’s merely showing how people witness and experience the world, particularly when it comes to travelers and residents. (95 and 6 to Go and Where Are You Taking Me? will both be available to stream on Metrograph at Home beginning February 16.)

Takesue beautifully captures this relationship in a short but captivating scene that begins with a static shot of an old religious shrine that looks like it hasn’t been in operation for years. A young woman enters the frame, sits down, poses for a selfie, stands up, snaps a photo of the shrine, then saunters off, never once stopping to just look at the shrine itself. The camera lingers on the building for several seconds, with nobody around, just the decaying structure set against a blue sky and between lush greenery.

We see what we want to see, when we want to see it, not always recognizing what is right in front of us, whether we’re at home or on vacation. It reminded me of people who go to a museum and take pictures of classic artworks but only see them through the lens of their phone rather than experiencing them with their own eyes. In fact, each frame of Onlookers is composed like a painting that slowly comes to life.

“The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe,” Berger writes in his book. “Yet this seeing which comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them, is not a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. (It can only be thought of in this way if one isolates the small part of the process which concerns the eye’s retina.) We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach — though not necessarily within arm’s reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it. . . . We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are. Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen.”

In all films, the audience might not have a choice of what they’re looking at, but they can decide for themselves what they’re seeing. And in the case of Onlookers, what they’re seeing is a gorgeous portrait of ourselves that no selfie can catch.

Kimi Takesue’s Where Are You Taking Me? will stream on Metrograph at Home

Takesue will be at Metrograph for introductions and Q&As before and after four screenings: February 16 with Inney Prakesh, February 17 with Dessane Lopez Cassell, February 18 with Lynne Sachs, and February 21 with Ari-Duong Nguyen.

“Fire Over Water” also features Michaël Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle, Phạm Thiên Ân’s Caméra d’Or winner Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendour.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FAMILY PORTRAIT: JAPANESE FAMILY IN FLUX

Yoko is making its US premiere at in Japan Society / IFC Center series

FAMILY PORTRAIT: JAPANESE FAMILY IN FLUX
Japan Society, 333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
February 15 – March 22
www.ifccenter.com
japansociety.org

In February 2021, as part of the ACA Cinema Project, Japan Society and Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs teamed up for “21st Century Japan: Films from 2001-2020,” a three-week virtual festival of Japanese films from the previous twenty years, followed in December by “Flash Forward: Debut Works and Recent Films by Notable Japanese Directors,” a three-week hybrid series pairing directors’ most recent works with their debuts. Since then, they have also presented “Emerging Japanese Films” and “The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from Japan Cuts and Beyond.”

The festival is now back with “Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux,” ten films that explore familial bonds. The selections range from Yasujirō Ozu’s 1967 Tokyo Twilight and Kohei Oguri’s 1981 Muddy River to the New York premiere of Ryota Nakano’s 2019 A Long Goodbye and the US premieres of Teruaki Shoji’s Hoyaman and Keiko Tsuruoka’s Tsugaru Lacquer Girl. Nakano will take part in a Q&A and reception following the February 23 New York premiere of Her Love Boils Bathwater, and he will be on hand for a discussion after the February 24 showing of his latest work, The Asadas, which was inspired by real-life photographer Masashi Asada.

All screenings take place at Japan Society except for the February 22 US premiere of Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s Yoko, which will be shown at IFC Center; the film stars Pistol Takehara, Jun Fubuki, Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi, and TV, film, and music favorite Joe Odagiri.

“‘Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux’ is a richly thematic series celebrating the rise, fall, and rebirth of the Japanese family,” Japan Society director of film Peter Tatara said in a statement. “Showcasing films from across the past sixty-five years, audiences will find an ever-evolving image of what family means in Japan, and the universally human sorrow and joys at its core.”

Below are select reviews from the series.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s STILL WALKING is a special film about a dysfunctional family that should not be missed

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Still Walking is a special film that honors such Japanese directors as Naruse, Ozu, and Imamura

STILL WALKING (ARUITEMO ARUITEMO) (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008)
Japan Society
Thursday, February 15, 7:00
japansociety.org

Flawlessly written, directed, and edited by Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters, After Life), Still Walking follows a day in the life of the Yokoyama family, which gathers together once a year to remember Junpei, the eldest son who died tragically. The story is told through the eyes of the middle child, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), a forty-year-old painting restorer who has recently married Yukari (Yui Natsukawa), a widow with a young son (Shohei Tanaka). Ryota dreads returning home because his father, Kyohei (Yoshio Harada), and mother, Toshiko (Kirin Kiki), are disappointed in the choices he’s made, both personally and professionally, and never let him escape from Junpei’s ever-widening shadow. Also at the reunion is Ryota’s chatty sister, Chinami (You), who, with her husband and children, is planning on moving in with her parents in order to take care of them in their old age (and save money as well).

Over the course of twenty-four hours, the history of the dysfunctional family and the deep emotions hidden just below the surface slowly simmer but never boil, resulting in a gentle, bittersweet narrative that is often very funny and always subtly powerful. The film is beautifully shot by Yutaka Yamazaki, who keeps the camera static during long interior takes — it moves only once inside the house — using doorways, short halls, and windows to frame scenes with a slightly claustrophobic feel, evoking how trapped the characters are by the world the parents have created. The scenes in which Kyohei walks with his cane ever so slowly up and down the endless outside steps are simple but unforgettable. Influenced by such Japanese directors as Mikio Naruse, Yasujiro Ozu, and Shohei Imamura, Kore-eda was inspired to make the film shortly after the death of his parents; although it is fiction, roughly half of Toshiko’s dialogue is taken directly from his own mother. Still Walking is a special film, a visual and psychological marvel that should not be missed.

Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) has trouble facing his sudden unemployment in Kiyoshi Kurosawas Tokyo Sonata

Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) has trouble facing his sudden unemployment in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata

TOKYO SONATA (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)
Japan Society
Sunday, February 18, 7:00
japansociety.org

Winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes, Tokyo Sonata serves as a parable for modern-day Japan. Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) is a simple family man, with a wife, Megumi (Kyōko Koizumi), two sons, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) and Kenji (Kai Inowaki), and an honest job as an administration director for a major company. When Ryuhei is suddenly let go — he is being replaced by much cheaper Chinese labor — he is so ashamed, he doesn’t tell his family. Instead, he puts on his suit every day and, briefcase in hand, walks out the door, but instead of going to work, he first waits on line at the unemployment agency, then at an outdoor food kitchen for a free lunch with the homeless — and other businessmen in the same boat as he is. Taking out his anger on his family, Ryuhei refuses to allow Kenji to take piano lessons and protests strongly against Takashi’s desire to join the American military. But then, on one crazy night — which includes a shopping mall, a haphazard thief (Koji Yakusho), a convertible, and some unexpected violence — it all comes to a head, leading to a brilliant finale that makes you forget all of the uneven missteps in the middle of the film, which is warmly photographed by Akiko Ashizawa and about a half hour too long anyway.

Kagawa (Sukiyaki Western Django, Tokyo!) is outstanding as the sad-sack husband and father, matched note for note by the wonderful pop star Koizumi (Hanging Garden, Adrift in Tokyo), who searches for strength as everything around her is falling apart. And it’s always great to see Yakusho, the star of such films as Kurosawa’s Cure, Shohei Imamura’s The Eel, Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel, seen here as a wild-haired, wild-eyed wannabe burglar.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]