twi-ny recommended events

THE JOURNALS OF ADAM AND EVE: THE WORLD’S FIRST LOVE STORY

Hal Linden and Marilu Henner play Adam and Eve in new play at Sheen Center (photo by Paul Aphisit)

THE JOURNALS OF ADAM AND EVE
Loreto Theater, the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture
18 Bleecker St. at Elizabeth St.
Wednesday – Sunday through July 28, $39-$99
212-925-2812
www.sheencenter.org

In September 2022, nine-time Emmy-winning writer and producer Ed. Weinberger presented Two Jews, Talking at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, a two-character play in which television icons Hal Linden and Bernie Kopell played a pair of old Jewish men, first in the desert escaping slavery in Egypt, then sitting on a park bench, complaining about the state of the modern world.

Weinberger has followed that up with The Journals of Adam and Eve at the Sheen Center, a two-character play in which television icons Linden and Marilu Henner portray the planet’s first couple. The ninety-minute show is an adaptation of two short stories written by Mark Twain late in his career, 1904’s “Extracts from Adam’s Diary” and 1906’s “Eve’s Diary,” hilariously retold in the style of Borscht Belt comedians (and with a nod to John Milton’s Paradise Lost).

Although it is a staged reading with the actors at music stands, they know most of the lines, allowing them to gesticulate, whether speaking to the audience or to each other. They do regularly refer to the script, but only to pick up a word or phrase. Behind them, a projection of the sky turns from blue skies to clouds to the sun and the moon.

“Much to my amazement, I was born a full-grown man. How old exactly I never knew,” Adam says at the beginning. “But I was made on the sixth day after G-d created everything else in the world. I like to think of myself as G-d’s ‘big finish.’ After me, He rested.”

Discussing being the only man on Earth, Adam explains, “My first day was one damn thing after another. Figuring out what was edible and what was not. Which fruit to eat as is and which fruit I had to open or peel took serious concentration. My first banana almost choked me to death.” He discovers a pleasing herb that gives him the munchies, realizes that the figure looking back at him in a brook is himself, and wonders what the two dangling objects between his legs are for.

He is tasked with naming everything, but he fails miserably. He asks for an assistant, and G-d gives him Eve. “Now, there have been those — poets mostly — who have described our first meeting as ‘love at first sight.’ Nothing could be further from the truth,” he says. Eve responds, “You can say that again.” The gender wars have begun.

Eve is not so willing to accept G-d’s word as sacrosanct; she doesn’t believe that she was made from Adam’s rib, and she refuses to be Adam’s inferior. She declares, “Well, it just so happens that this living thing that ‘moveth’ is not one of your birds, fishes, or any other animal you have dominion over. So maybe you and this G-d ought to have another little talk about who is whoest and what is whateth.”

Eve shows an immediate talent for doling out names, starting with herself, as she recognizes the beauty of the Garden of Eden, but she also wonders what those two dangling objects between Adam’s legs are for. When Adam takes her to the brook, she sees her reflection and opines, “I must do something about my hair,” then asks Adam, “You think this makes me look fat?” In the skillful hands of Linden and Henner, these old jokes still elicit laughter. (Oddly, the joke that fell the flattest is a retread from Two Jews, Talking, where it fell flat as well.)

Weinberger details their initial sexual encounter, which is both romantic and humorous as it explores classic tropes. “Was it as good for you as it was for me?” Adam asks. Eve replies, “Better,” then tells the audience, “I lied.”

But their idyllic existence is turned upside down after Eve is lured by a snake to take a bite of an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, leading to Adam and Eve’s exile from the Garden of Eden. They must make a new life for themselves, experiencing guilt and shame, fighting like husbands and wives do, raising two boys, Cain and Abel, and learning to fear death. But amid it all, Adam tells the world’s first joke.

Director Amy Anders Corcoran (Christmas in Connecticut, Unexpected Joy) gives plenty of space for Bronx-born ninety-three-year-old Tony and Emmy winner Linden (Barney Miller, The Rothschilds) and Chicago-born seventy-two-year-old Henner (Taxi, Madwomen of the West, Gettin’ the Band Back Together) to strut their stuff, delighting in the words of Philly-born seventy-eight-year-old Weinberger (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, The Cosby Show).

Linden, in casual gray slacks and a brown shirt that probably came from his closet, and Henner, in dazzling form-fitting black spandex, have a lovely camaraderie. (In the Los Angeles version of the play earlier this year, two-time Emmy winner Sally Struthers was Eve.) You can feel their warmth as Adam and Eve poke fun at each other, argue, and make love. Their relationship echoes a battle of the sexes that has been going on since, well, creation, especially as depicted in television sitcoms, from Ralph and Alice and Lucy and Ricky to Sam and Diane and Homer and Marge.

Even though the play is at the Sheen Center, a venue “where art and spirituality meet” — the program features a welcome that includes Bible verses — it does not proselytize. Instead, it is a very funny comic look at the ups and downs of life on Earth between men and women, asking eternal questions while (barely) skirting clichés and, most important, making us all laugh, at Adam and Eve and ourselves.

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

LITTLE ISLAND: DAY FOR NIGHT

DAY FOR NIGHT
The Amph at Little Island
Pier 55, Hudson River Park at West Thirteenth St.
July 17-21, $15 standing room, $25 seats sold out, 8:30
littleisland.org
www.pamtanowitzdance.org

Bronx-born choreographer Pam Tanowitz turns to a French Nouvelle Vague auteur for her latest evening-length piece, Day for Night, playing only five performances July 17-21 at the Amph on Little Island.

François Truffaut’s 1973 film, Day for Night — the French title is La Nuit américaine, or “The American Night” — goes behind the scenes of a movie being shot on location in Nice. Cast and crew members intertwine in all sorts of ways as a British actress (Jacqueline Bisset) who has recently suffered a nervous breakdown, aging French star Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont), Italian diva Séverine (Valentina Cortese), and young French actor Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) spend a lot of time doing everything except making a film, upsetting the director, played by Truffaut himself. The title comes from the technique in which nighttime shots are made during the day.

The Little Island commission will be danced by Morgan Amirah, Marc Crousillat, Lindsey Jones, Brian Lawson, Sarah Elizabeth Miele, Maile Okamura, and Melissa Toogood, with costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, lighting by Davison Scandrett, and sound and music by Justin Ellington. Tanowitz has previously choreographed such works as I Was Waiting for the Echo of a Better Day, Law of Mosaics, and Four Quartets, for such companies as New York City Ballet, the Royal Ballet, Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, Ballet Austin, and her own Pam Tanowitz Dance.

“I make my dances in response to everything contained in the frame, like a film still, turning things over and over to discover what I haven’t yet found,” Guggenheim fellow and Bessie winner Tanowitz said in a statement. “Little Island is the exact right place for me to examine the way something can be seen and re-seen. When we look at something long enough it reveals what’s been forgotten, or taken for granted, or not yet noticed, and rewards us with new discoveries.”

As a bonus reward, Toogood will perform a short epilogue several times each night beginning at 9:30 in the cozy Glade; admission is free, first-come, first-served.

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

KÄTHE KOLLWITZ

Käthe Kollwitz, Female Nude, from Behind, on Green Cloth (Weiblicher Rückenakt auf grünem Tuch), crayon and brush lithograph with scraping needle, printed in two colors on brown paper, 1903 (Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden / © Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden / photo by Herbert Boswank)

KÄTHE KOLLWITZ
MoMA, the Edward Steichen Galleries, third floor south
11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through July 20, $17-$30
www.moma.org

“My art serves a purpose. I want to exert an influence in my own time, in which human beings are so helpless and destitute,” artist Käthe Kollwitz said. The depiction of the helpless and destitute were central to Kollwitz, who was born in Prussia in 1867, spent almost fifty years based in Berlin, and died in Saxony in 1945, experiencing two world wars and a global depression. Kollwitz’s dark world view is on display in the poignant and powerful MoMA exhibition simply titled “Käthe Kollwitz,” consisting of approximately 120 prints, drawings, and sculptures that envelop museumgoers in a haunting atmosphere.

Käthe Kollwitz, War (Krieg), portfolio of seven woodcuts, 1922 (the Museum of Modern Art, New York / Gift of the Arnhold Family in memory of Sigrid Edwards / photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Divided into six sections, “Asserting Herself,” “Forging an Art of Social Purpose,” “Her Creative Process,” “Love and Grief,” “War and Its Aftermath,” and “Maternal Protection,” the show focuses on the struggles of the working class and mothers’ desperate attempts to safeguard their children. Kollwitz was married to a doctor who cared for the poor; they had two sons, one a soldier who was killed during WWI. Using charcoal, black ink, crayon, graphite, and chalk along with etchings, bronzes, woodcuts, and lithographs, she rendered the horrors of the “Peasants’ War,” unemployment, sacrifice, lamentation, and death. The titles alone tell only part of the story: Call of Death, Storming the Gate — Attack, The Downtrodden, Dance around the Guillotine, Death Seizes the Children, and multiple versions of Woman with Dead Child. Even works called Uprising, Charge, Inspiration, Love Scene, The Lovers, and The Survivors are bleak and ghostly.

In the large bronze sculpture Mother with Two Children, a woman clutches her two kids as if in the midst of terrible danger. In The People, skeletal faces are barely visible in the blackness. In Home Worker, Asleep at the Table, a woman has draped her head on a table, overwhelmed with exhaustion, looking as if she never wants to get up again. In Love Scene I, a man and a woman hold tight to each other as if barely clinging to life. In The Mothers, a group of women are huddled in a circle, forming a kind of human shield. And in self-portraits dating from 1890 to 1934, Kollwitz looks directly at the viewer in an almost accusatory manner, demanding we take action; the portraits continue until she is old and forlorn, as if it’s too late.

Käthe Kollwitz, The Mothers (Mütter), line etching, sandpaper, needle bundle, and soft ground with the imprint of laid paper overworked with black ink, opaque white, charcoal, and pencil, 1918 (collection Ute Kahl, Cologne. Fuis Photographie)

“I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate,” Kollwitz wrote. “It is my duty to voice the sufferings of men, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high.”

This stunning exhibition captures all that and more — and, sadly, serves today as a frightening warning.

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

BILL’S 44th

Bill, operated by Dorothy James and Andy Manjuck, hosts a party to remember at HERE Arts center (photo by Richard Termine)

BILL’S 44th
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 28, $35-$100
here.org

Bill’s 44th is the must-attend party of the summer, and everyone is invited. Although it looks like his friends, relatives, and colleagues have something else to do, their loss is our gain.

Bill is all prepared for his forty-fourth birthday. He puts out the hors d’oeuvres, makes the punch, and gets out the party hats. The music is flowing — it starts with Burt Bacharach’s bright and buoyant theme song from the comic 1967 James Bond film Casino Royale, performed by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass — and Bill is ready to celebrate.

He keeps checking the clock and the door, but as time passes, no one shows up.

There’s a knock at the front, but when he answers it, he sees only a small box on the floor all by itself, from his mother, who apparently has sent a package but will be skipping the festivities as well. Growing sadder by the second, Bill becomes even more dejected when his mother’s present breaks. Bill draws a happy face on a balloon, but, magically, the smile turns upside down into a frown.

Nothing is going right for poor Bill; we feel his pain, his loneliness, his disappointment. We’ve all been there at one point or another, desperate to make a connection with anyone, anything.

Oh, did I mention that Bill is a puppet?

The protagonist is a puppet with a bald head, empty eye sockets, bushy eyebrows, a thick black moustache, two long arms, and a paunchy stomach. He is operated by sound designer Andy Manjuck and puppet designer Dorothy James, who created the piece together; dressed all in black and wearing black masks over their mouths, James handles Bill’s right side, while Manjuck takes care of the left. They each have one arm in a sleeve of Bill’s sweater, using their other arm to move Bill’s head and torso. It takes only a few minutes to get used to the setup and believe that Bill is just another human being, trying to enjoy life and beat the ticking clock.

But with faith in people, trust in oneself, and a boundless imagination, even potential disasters can become moments to treasure.

Bill is afraid that no one is coming to his party in the ingenious Bill’s 44th (photo by Ben Wright Smith)

Running at HERE through July 28 as part of the Dream Music Puppetry Program, Bill’s 44th is a fifty-five-minute rollercoaster of emotions that will both break your heart and lift your spirits. There is no dialogue, evoking the silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in addition to Jacques Tati’s beloved 1950s and ’60s character Monsieur Hulot, who never speaks as he encounters unusual situations in the city, at the beach, and other places.

Eamon Fogarty’s playful score picks up where Bacharach left off, accompanied by M. Jordan Wiggins’s mood-enhancing lighting and Peter Russo, Joseph Silovsky, and Taryn Uhe’s props, which range from balloons and birthday cakes to an unforgettable carrot stick and a dazzling scene in miniature. Jon Riddleberger joins in by operating surprise puppets that are utterly delightful.

With Bill’s 44th — which next travels to the Edinburgh Fringe — Manjuck and James have delivered a marvelously inspired gift, an involving and infectious experience that explores the human condition in ingenious ways that, well, will turn that frown upside down.

This is one party you truly do not want to miss.

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

OPEN THROAT

Chris Perfetti is one of three actors who portray a queer mountain lion in Open Throat on Little Island (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

OPEN THROAT
The Amph at Little Island
Pier 55, Hudson River Park at West Thirteenth St.
July 10-14, $25, 8:30
littleisland.org

In the theater, an actor is said to be “on book” if they are using the script onstage. Most often this occurs in previews because they are still working on their lines. A performer can also be on book if they are a last-minute replacement or, as in the case of the protagonist in Marin Ireland’s current Pre-Existing Condition, as a directorial choice relating to the character’s state of mind.

The full cast is on book — literally — in Henry Hoke’s expert adaptation of his highly acclaimed 2023 novel, Open Throat. Throughout the eighty-minute play, the actors read from either the hardcover or paperback edition as they walk across the spare set at the Amph on Little Island, the 687-seat open-air theater that borders the Hudson River. Because of rights issues, and probably also because there are only five performances of the piece, which was commissioned for the space, it had to be a staged reading with scripts in hand, but director Caitlin Ryan O’Connell uses that to her advantage, as the play becomes a celebration of the written word as well as clever stagecraft.

The story is narrated by a queer mountain lion (portrayed first by Chris Perfetti, then Calvin Leon Smith and Jo Lampert) living under the Hollywood sign in the Los Angeles hills, avoiding confrontations with humans, unwilling to be the hunter or the hunted, instead surviving on bats and small animals. “I’ve never eaten a person but today I might,” the lion says early on. The lion, who was inspired by P-22, a puma who lived for ten years in Griffith Park in LA, has no name; a young man in a homeless tent city calls the lion “fucker cat,” “shitfuck cat,” or “goddamn fuck cat.” His mother gave him a name he cannot share and people would be unable to pronounce, while his father gave him a name he won’t repeat. It’s all part of his search for his identity and his place in a foreign world he is trying to understand.

As the lion ventures closer to humans and vice versa, impeding on each other’s territory, the lion encounters a scary man who cracks a whip, a gay couple having sex in a cave, a woman yapping away on a phone, and various hikers and tourists. The lion listens as the people discuss capitalism, therapy, veganism, and dating. But the lion’s life changes dramatically when taken in by a young woman named slaughter who has domestication on her mind.

Henry Hoke’s Open Throat begins just as the sun sets over the Hudson River (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Open Throat is a beguiling parable about personal identity, family, language, and being part of a community. It feels right at home in the Amph, surrounded by grassy hills, wind whipping through trees, and, on the west side, a beckoning river. At one point, just when the lion is describing how a young man in town refers to machines flying in the sky as “fucking helicopters,” a helicopter actually flew over the water. Unfortunately, many more did, creating loud distractions. The lion often refers to the “long death,” which is a busy street where many animals have met their end, being hit by cars; it’s hard not to compare that to the West Side Highway, which must be crossed in order to enter Little Island. And there are numerous mentions of “a deep forest on the edge of the water,” which is an apt description of the environment encircling the Amph.

Noah Mease’s set features a large, octagonal “O” on the floor; the missing center is represented twice as an object on which Steven Wendt makes shadow puppets with his hands, depicting moments from the lion’s past with his parents, including a poignant kill. Wendt also makes ingenious analog sound effects from atop a scaffold balcony. Perfetti, Smith, and Lampert each brings a different flavor to the lion, involving gender, color, and sexuality, as if any one of us could be the crafty animal. The rest of the characters are played by Marinda Anderson, Alex Hernandez, Layla Khoshnoudi, Ryan King, and Susannah Perkins, moving from the wings to the aisle steps to a balcony; rising star Perkins — she’s excelled in such plays as Grief Hotel, The Welkin, The Wolves, The Low Road, and The Good John Proctor — is particularly effective as the young slaughter, adding depth and nuance while having clearly memorized many of her lines.

Mease also designed the props and masks — each lion portrayer has a small costume element that identifies them as a cat — although they are kept to a minimum. Most of the props are imaginary, and cast members’ appearances do not change in order to match the text. The superb lighting, which emerges as the sun sets, is by 2024 special Drama Desk Award winner Isabella Byrd, with playful choreography by Lisa Fagan and immersive sound and music by Michael Costagliola. O’Connell (King Philip’s Head Is Still on That Pike Just Down the Road, Twin Size Beds) directs with a sure hand, whether depicting a tragic fire, an animal fight, an earthquake, or a road trip; a Disney dream sequence is the only scene that felt out of place. Even the actors using the script becomes organic to the tale.

Not only is the Amph itself a kind of character in the narrative but so is New York City. “they talk about new york a lot in ellay / in new york you don’t need a car,” the lion says. (The book contains no punctuation, and only the pronoun “I” is capitalized, furthering the idea of establishing one’s identity.)

“is new york where I have to go,” the lion asks. The answer is a resounding yes, as Open Throat could not have happened quite like this anywhere else.

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

WEST SIDE FEST 2024

The High Line will host special programming at West Side Fest (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

WEST SIDE FEST
July 12-14, free
Multiple locations between Bank & West Thirtieth Sts.
www.westsidefest.nyc

Every June, the Upper East Side hosts the Museum Mile Festival, when seven or eight arts institutions, including the Met, the Guggenheim, the Cooper Hewitt, the Jewish Museum, and El Museo del Barrio, open its doors for free and turn Fifth Ave. into an arts-based street fair.

The West Side is getting in on the action with its own celebration with the weekend-long West Side Fest, running July 12-14, featuring live performances, guided tours, open studios, interactive workshops, special presentations, and free entry at many locations between Bank and Thirtieth Sts., including the Rubin, Poster House, the Whitney, Hudson Guild, Little Island, the Shed, Dia Chelsea, and the Joyce. Below is the full schedule; a map is available at the above website.

Friday, July 12
NYC Aids Memorial, 7:00 am – 11:00 pm

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center, 8:00 am – 10:00 pm

Hudson Guild: Déflorée History Series, with panels by Valerie Hallier, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm

Hudson Guild: Triennial Children’s Art Show, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Poster House, free admission, 10:00 – 6:00

Little Island: Creative Break, art workshops, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

Dia Chelsea, noon – 6:00

Whitney Museum of American Art: Open Studio for Teens, 1:00 – 3:00

IndieSpace/West Village Rehearsal Co-Op: Open Rehearsal by Divine Riot Company of Five Times in One Night, 2:00 – 5:00

Hill Art Foundation: Sound Bath, with musician Daren Ho, 5:00 – 7:00

The Joyce Theater at Chelsea Green Park: Pop-Up Dance Performances by Pilobolus and Dorrance Dance, 5:00 & 6:30

The Shed: Summer Sway, 5:00 – 8:00

White Columns: Exhibition Opening Reception, with works by Michaela Bathrick, Ali Bonfils, Joseph Brock, Eleanor Conover, and Donyel Ivy-Royal, 5:00 – 8:00

Whitney Museum of American Art: Free Friday Nights, advance RSVP required, 5:00 – 10:00

Print Center New York: Print Center After Hours, 6:00 – 8:00

Westbeth Artists Housing x the Kitchen Kickoff Celebration & Poster Sale, 6:00 – 8:00

Rubin Museum of Art: K2 Friday Night, 6:00 – 10:00

Little Island: Teen Night, 7:00 – 8:00

“Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters” is on view at Poster House

Saturday, July 13
High Line: Family Art Moment: Dream Wilder with Us, ages 5–12, 10:00 am – noon

IndieSpace/West Village Rehearsal Co-Op: Open Rehearsal by Divine Riot Company of Five Times in One Night, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm

Poster House, free admission, 10:00 – 6:00

Hudson River Park: Explore & Play, 14th Street Park, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

Little Island: Creative Break, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

Westbeth Artists Housing: Penny’s Puppets, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

Rubin Museum of Art, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm

Center for Art, Research, and Alliances, Javier Téllez: Amerika, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm

High Line: A Celebration of High Line Wellness, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm

The Kitchen: Tai Chi Workshop, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm

Hudson Guild: Triennial Children’s Art Show, noon – 3:00

Poster House Block Party, noon – 5:00

Dia Chelsea, noon – 6:00

Hudson Guild: Déflorée History Series, with panels by Valerie Hallier, 1:00 – 4:00

The Kitchen Poster Sale, 1:00 – 6:00

Westbeth Artists Housing: Art & Craft Market, 1:00 – 6:00

IndieSpace/West Village Rehearsal Co-Op: Open Rehearsal by Ali Keller, 2:00 – 5:00

Print Center New York: Print Activation with Demian DinéYazhi’, 2:00 – 5:00

Westbeth Artists Housing Open Studios, 2:00 – 5:00

Dia Chelsea Soil Sessions: Earth Sounds with Koyoltzintli, advance RSVP required, 2:30

Westbeth Artists Housing: You Are Never Too Old to Play, 7:00 – 9:00

The Rubin reimagines its collection in grand finale (photo byt twi-ny/mdr)

Sunday, July 14
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center, 8:00 am – 8:00 pm

Poster House, free admission, 10:00 – 6:00

Whitney Museum of American Art: Free Second Sundays, 10:30 am – 6:00 pm

Hudson River Park Community Celebration, with Ajna Dance Company, henna, and community groups, Pier 63, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

Center for Art, Research, and Alliances, Javier Téllez: Amerika, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm

Rubin Museum of Art: Family Sunday, 1:00 – 3:00

Westbeth Artists Housing Open Studios and Art & Craft Market, 1:00 – 5:00

Westbeth Artists Housing: Art Take-Over, curated by Valérie Hallier, Claire Felonis, and Noah Trapolino, 1:00 – 6:00

Whitney Museum of American Art: STAFF ONLY, Westbeth Gallery, 1:00 – 6:00

Chelsea Factory: Ladies of Hip-Hop’s Ladies Battle!, 1:00 – 10:00

IndieSpace/West Village Rehearsal Co-Op: Open Rehearsal by Felice Lesser Dance Theater of I AM A DANCER 2.0, 2:00 – 4:00

High Line: The Death Avenue Posse, by the Motor Company, 5:30 & 7:00

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

JAPAN CUTS — MOTION PICTURE: CHOKE / THE BOX MAN

Everyone becomes obsessed with the title character in Gen Nagao’s strange and unusual The Box Man

JAPAN CUTS: FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
July 10-21, $10-$25
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

“I never would have expected to be praised for my tentative steps as an actor at Japan Cuts, a film festival in New York!” eighty-two-year-old Chinese-born Japanese actor Tatsuya Fuji said about winning the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s fest at Japan Society. “The last time I visited New York was nearly half a century ago. Back then, Nagisa Oshima’s film, In the Realm of the Senses, was invited to the New York Film Festival, but unfortunately, it couldn’t be screened due to censorship. And now, in 2024, the film I participated in, Great Absence, is being screened in New York, and they’ve even given me an award! I am overwhelmed with emotion!”

It would be a shame for movie lovers to be absent at the seventeenth annual festival, which runs July 10-21 and celebrates new Japanese film with more than thirty features, documentaries, animation, shorts, and a few classics. The opening-night selection is Masanori Tominaga’s Between the White Key and the Black Key, which takes place over the course of one night in the life of jazz pianist Hiroshi Minami. The centerpiece is Shadow of Fire, which concludes Shinya Tsukamoto’s war trilogy that began with Fires on the Plain and Killing and stars Cut Above honoree Mirai Moriyama. The festival comes to an end with the international premiere of Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic, a revised version of the 2016 original.

In between there are family-friendly works, romance stories, manga-based cartoons, searches for the meaning of existence, and a samurai tale from Takeshi Kitano. As is my preference every July, I’ve checked out two of the most unorthodox films, a pair that are unexpectedly similar in their use of black-and-white, dialogue, sex, violence, music, small casts, and investigations of loneliness.

A man (Daiki Hiba) and woman (Misa Wada) fear danger ahead in Gen Nagao’s Motion Picture: Choke

MOTION PICTURE: CHOKE (『映画 (窒息)』/ EIGA CHISSOKU) (Gen Nagao, 2023)
Friday, July 12, 9:00
japansociety.org

Nary a word is spoken in Gen Nagao’s black-and-white Motion Picture: Choke, which is set in a dystopian past/future that is either pre- or postverbal as it explores the inflexibility of the human condition in an unidentifiable time or place. The film begins in total darkness with Kiyoyuki Yoshikawa’s pulsating score, evoking the music of Bernard Herrmann in Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, followed by a frightening figure in black crawling up a woman’s body. The terrified woman (Misa Wada) awakes from the dream, panting, but then goes about her daily chores. Dressed in ragged, primitive clothing reminiscent of what Raquel Welch wore in One Million Years B.C., she scavenges for food, washes herself in a stream, collects water, and weaves by candlelight.

Living in an abandoned three-level concrete building with no outside walls or doors, she seems to enjoy her life. Every so often, a sweet-natured elderly peddler (Minori Terada) stops by to barter by playing a game. Everything is pleasant until a white-robed man (Takashi Nishina) and his two underlings (Yuri Tajima and Hiroshi Niki) brutally attack the woman, leaving her devastated and angry. She constructs a trap for protection that captures a shirtless young man (Daiki Hiba), who she ties to a wall like Jesus on a cross. They ultimately start a charming partnership, learning together how to survive this empty world, but when the evil bandits return, male toxicity rises up as a battle for power ensues — with the woman determined to not play the victim again.

In only his second full-length film, following 2019’s Someday in Love, Nagao is in complete command as he explores multiple genres; perhaps Motion Picture is part of the title to remind the viewer that this is about the cinematic experience as much as it is a history of how women have been treated by men since the beginning of time. Wada (Cape’s Brothers and Sisters, Kiku to Guillotine) is captivating as the woman, who is not about to get taken advantage of twice. She has an understanding of life that the men will never have, especially when she seeks revenge.

The lack of dialogue is no mere gimmick; instead, it harkens to how humans communicate with one another in the most basic of ways in any era, without language, like animals. The film is gorgeously photographed by Sota Takahashi, with stark lighting by Kohei Kajimoto; Yoshikawa’s music shifts genres as well, from ominous and threatening to innocent and playful.

From its opening moments to its startling, accusatory finale, Choke is precisely the kind of film that makes Japan Cuts one of the best festivals of the year.

A nurse (Koichi Sato) contemplates her future in Gakuryu Ishii’s strange and unusual The Box Man

THE BOX MAN (『箱 男 / HAKO OTOKO) (Gakuryu Ishii, 2024)
Saturday, July 13, 5:30
japansociety.org

“Those who obsess over the box man become the box man,” a man in a shabby box whispers early in Gakuryu Ishii’s creepy, bizarre adaptation of Kōbō Abe 1973 novel, The Box Man.

I can now firmly declare that I am obsessed with the box man. But aren’t we all?

The film takes place just as the prosperity of Japan’s Shōwa period is ending in 1973. The first few minutes are in black-and-white, featuring Abe’s street photography, before we meet the box man, aka Myself (Masatoshi Nagase), who declares in voice-over:

“I see right through everything. A fabricated box you put your faith in. It is you people who live inside it. I have abandoned all that is fake, to obtain the real thing. What is more, I can see. You people as you truly are. The hidden shape of this world. Together with this box, the world shall be completely reborn. I am the box man. I gaze at you unilaterally.”

As it turns to color, he continues, “I become identifiable. You may see me, but you pay no attention. You feign ignorance. And yet, just as I once did, if you become overly aware of the box man . . .”

The box man lives in a cardboard box that reaches down to his knees; it is from the Argon company, makers of medical supplies. There’s a rectangular slit on one side so he can see in front of him; the horizontal space resembles a letterboxed film, except in this case it works both ways, from the inside and the outside. He watches us as we watch him.

He moves stealthily through the streets, avoiding unnecessary contact, until he’s being tracked by a photographer with a rifle and threatened by a slingshot-wielding ex-military madman. But soon he finds himself in a small, private hospital run by an older gentleman called the General (Ayana Shiramoto), his assistant, a doctor (Tadanobu Asano), and their nurse (Koichi Sato), where an odd power dynamic unfolds involving self-identity, sex, control over one’s body and mind, who gets to tell their story, and reality itself.

Ishii’s film has been thirty years in the making, when he received Abe’s blessing to go forward with it. The book has previously been adapted into two short films, but this is the first full-length version, with screenwriters Kiyotaka Inagaki and Ishii (Crazy Thunder Road, Punksamurai Slash Down) making significant changes while staying true to Abe’s original vision.

Hideho Urata’s photography gives the film an immersive quality, as if we are all in our own box, which is sort of true whether we’re experiencing it at home on a TV or streaming device or in a theater. When the doctor is questioned by a detective (Yûko Nakamura) in a police interview room, another cop peers through a long slit in a wall, making him another kind of box man. Michiaki Katsumoto’s wide-ranging score guides us through 1940s detective noir, 1960s jangly pop, 1970s thriller, and a hilarious psychedelic scene with an enema.

The Box Man doesn’t always make sense; some plot twists are hard to decipher, and it is too long at two hours, but you won’t be able to look away for even a second. You’ll also wonder what life inside a box could be like, if you’re not already in one, psychologically or physically.

Like Motion Picture: Choke, The Box Man deals with loneliness, sex, violence, love, faith, misogyny, homelessness, and a dark future in which humanity builds cages for themselves and others, as well as how we tell stories — and who gets to tell them. At one point, the box man sees words appear on a wall, expressing, “Within this labyrinth, I shall seek an exit.” But getting out is not going to be easy, for any of us.

The Box Man is screening July 13 at 5:30 at Japan Society, with Ishii on hand for a Q&A. He will also participate in a Q&A following the July 14 showing of his 1995 rite-of-passage drama, August in the Water.

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