Two things have been cutting back on my general film viewing lately (three if you include the NBA playoffs and baseball season, both of which command the attention of a dedicated Cleveland sports fan -- so now it’s back to Boston for Game 7, where have I heard that story line before?).
With the absence of any television series I was committed to, with several favorites finished and others awaiting a new season (Big Love and Mad Men, in particular, as well as Generation Kill, the forthcoming Iraq series from the creators of The Wire), I finally succumbed to repeated recommendations for Battlestar Galactica, and while I’m recording new episodes in the fourth and final season, I’ve been catching up with the first three on DVD. No doubt I will have some summative statement when I get to the end, but in passing let me say that while the series will not overcome my inherent resistance to sci-fi to enter my pantheon of long-form tv masterpieces, I have been drawn into its canny blend of character development and social commentary. The show does a nice bit of political jujitsu in forcing both left and right to take a different look at the insurgency in Iraq, among many other issues of note.
The other claim on my viewing time has been putting together a series of Japanese animated features for the Clark next fall. With no expertise going in, it took some doing for me to survey the many-tentacled genres of anime and narrow down to five films. Of the numerous films I considered and rejected, there’s one I was reluctant to exclude, and that was Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy (2004), a retro sci-fi that presents a fabulous vision of Victorian London and Manchester, only to overstay its welcome with an extended orgy of picturesque destruction -- at 95 minutes I figured it was a sure bet for my series, but a half-hour later, with London in ruins and all character development abandoned, I was looking for some alternative choice. So here’s what I wound up with:
“Anime for Grown-ups: The Art of Japanese Animation.”
Anime, as Japanese animation is usually called, is an immense presence in the culture of Japan, with global reach as well. The Clark will look at anime not from the perspective of genre expectations, but through the work of directors who speak in the international language of film. So -- no bodacious robot babes or cyberpunk gunslingers, but rather serious and wide-ranging exploration of character and theme in an influential graphic medium, a cinema of dreams replete with fantastic imagery. Specifically, we’ll screen three films by different directors from Studio Ghibli -- led by Hayao Miyazaki, Japan’s answer to Walt Disney -- and two films by the leading director of the next generation, Satoshi Kon. On the five Saturdays of November, each film will be shown twice, at 1:00 pm in Japanese with English subtitles, and at 3:00 in the dubbed American version.
November 1: Porco Rosso (1992, 94 min.)
A decade before he became a household name in America with an Oscar for Spirited Away, along with other children’s favorites, Hayao Miyazaki directed this film explicitly for adults. Rather like Casablanca meets Only Angels Have Wings, it tells of a World War I flying ace, reduced to bounty hunting against air pirates over the Adriatic while the Fascists come come to power in ’20s Italy -- and oh incidentally, he’s turned into the Crimson Pig of the title.
November 8: Whisper of the Heart (1995, 111 min.)
Unlike Disney, Studio Ghibli is collaborative rather than corporate. For this thoroughly charming tale of adolescent romance and a bright young girl’s search for self, Miyazaki wrote the script but gave the direction to heir apparent Yoshifumi Kondo. Set in a realistic present, it is a testament to the expressive powers of rather simple animation, with brief fantasy interludes. If you liked Juno, you will love this winning story of a brash schoolgirl finding both a boyfriend and a calling in life.
November 15: Grave of the Fireflies (1988, 88 min.)
Directed by Isao Takahata, Miyazaki’s longtime collaborator, this sensitive, harrowing film depicts the impact of war on children, warranting comparison to all-time classic Forbidden Games. Two orphans, a boy and his younger sister, struggle for survival in the aftermath of the World War II firebombing of Japan, finding evanescent beauty in a terminal landscape. This sad and powerful masterpiece evokes the horror of war and the hope of humanity as well as any live-action film.
November 22: Tokyo Godfathers (2004, 92 min.)
Satoshi Kon has established himself as the younger director to watch, among those for whom animation is simply the most expressive medium for serious films of all sorts. Here he transposes John Ford’s Western Three Godfathers to the underbelly of modern day Tokyo, with three tramps -- an alcoholic, a transvestite, and a teen runaway -- finding a baby on Christmas Eve, and encountering comic adventures in their heartwarming attempt to return the child to its mother.
November 29: Paprika (2006, 90 min.)
Satoshi Kon delves into the sci-fi realm so common in anime, but with a distinctive bent, adapting a (non-graphic) novel obsessed with psychoanalysis and the meaning of dreams. Paprika is the therapeutic avatar of a powerful woman psychiatrist, partnered with a blubbery nerd genius who has invented a machine that allows physical entry into the dreams of subjects, a dangerous weapon in the hands of the unscrupulous and power-mad. This may be the boldest popular exploration of dream imagery since Hitchcock’s Spellbound.
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