SCREENING LOG - 3/24-3/30, 2003

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Last week I watched MY SASSY GIRL, CHERYOMUSHKI (SONG OVER MOSCOW), SISTERS OF THE GION and STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTEHMUMS. Start with the easy stuff first:

My Sassy Girl (2001, Kwak Jae-young)

http://www.imdb.com/Title?0293715

Disarmingly sweet romantic comedy about a Korean nebbish (yes there are nebbishes in Korea too, boy are there) and the tough-on-the-outside, fragile-on-the-inside girl he can't help but want to save. This girl boozes like mad, pukes on baldheaded men, and repeatedly punches and threatens to kill her boyfriend, and yet she does all of this while staying as cute as a button. Sort of an Eastern hybrid of Farrelly-esque gross-out laughs and analytical romantic loser posturing of the Nick Hornby variety, this was a huge box office hit in Korea, and not without its moments of cinematic invention, as well as an undertone of heartache and longing that is too unmistakable to be a fluke. Not every gag works in this hyperactive storyline, and I could have done without the intertwining of serendipitous events in the end, but it has too much going for it to be denied.

Cheryomushki/ Song over Moscow (1963, Herbert Rappaport)

http://www.imdb.com/Title?0057939

Bubbly and fun MGM-style musical that shares the same sweet, youthful spirit of other Soviet films from the late 50s/early 60s. Here the topical storyline follows young couples anticipating their move into spanking new hi-rise apartments and the promise of an upgraded lifestyle they hold. The colors are eye-popping, the pacing is brisk, the tone generally care-free (with obligatory wrist-slapping of the greedy, bureaucratic apartment superintendent and his selfishly bourgeois honey) and Shostakovich's operetta score is happy as a lark.

Sisters of the Gion (1936, Kenji Mizoguchi)

http://www.imdb.com/Title?0027672

Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939, Kenji Mizoguchi) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/Title?0032156

I'm still sorting out my feelings about Mizoguchi. Coming into these screenings I was under the impression (given what little I've seen) that STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUMS and SANSHO THE BAILIFF were his two finest works; the earlier film boasting a dazzlingly extreme formalism while the latter was a more Western-friendly but nonetheless supremely masterful balance of heartbreakingly intense narrative and detached, contemplative style. I guess I was operating under the assumptions set forth by Noel Burch, that Mizoguchi had made his most original cinematic achievements before World War II and that his style became more conventional in the postwar years with the films upon which his reputation was founded. I wanted to see SISTERS OF THE GION to see where Mizoguchi was in his development before, to see if and how it was more or less "Japanese" than CHRYSANTHEMUMS.

The opening shot of SISTERS OF THE GION is a jaw-dropper - a long tracking shot going sideways across an entire room of auctioneers, then going past them and seemingly going through walls to the back room where the person auctioning his possessions sits in anguish. And so from the get-go Mizo lets you know that he is investigating space - how it connects people as well as separates them, how walls (literal and figurative) and what they conceal from one person to another determines lives and outcomes.

Two geisha sisters contend with each other over how to conduct their affairs - one is loyal to her bankrupt patron; the younger geisha has no such attachments and sets out to play the field to gain advantages over her lovers. By the end of the movie they're in the same boat, and we realize that a geisha is a geisha is a nothing. The ending comes in O. Henry like ironic fashion which didn't quite sit well with me - a bit too moralizing and melodramatic, though the socially-conscious outrage is completely deserved. But one can probably say without fault that Mizoguchi tends to deal with slightly-above average melodrama as his material - it's what he does with it that transforms his movies into something much more than soap operas; they become mirrors to how people see each other and how that leads to their mistreatment. You see this in how Mizoguchi shoots his scenes - you never really share a person's POV or share their emotional states as you do with Hollywood or Eurpoean cinema. Instead you're invited to share the same space, the space on the screen and contemplate not just what the person on the screen is feeling, but how you the viewer are reacting to those feelings, and how things came to be as they are.

Maybe another reason Mizoguchi keeps shifting the perspective in this movie is because he is capturing the lives of two women in an unstable social position - as geishas, they can never rest easy in the security of legitimate relationships with their lovers. There are actually a lot of cuts in this film, and a lot of digressive moments where you have people around the two girls talking among themselves about them - you get to hear what everyone thinks. It's inaccurate to say that this film is "Western": the swift pacing reflects a modern sensibility but that's not to be confused with a Western one.

Because, again, you never occupy a character's shoes for a length of time as you would in a Hollywood movie - the characters are continually placed away from the center and you are forced to see how they fit into an idea of a greater visual and social order. Anyway, this is a fascinating film, full of life and reflecting an active approach to moviemaking that merits an active approach to movie watching.

When I got to LAST CHRYSANTHEMUMS, I was expecting to be as blown away by it as I was when I first saw it last year - and yet I wasn't. Well, I was for a good half of the movie - which I think is filmmaking of the highest order - the way Mizoguchi places his camera around walls and shoots through screens practically gives a 3-D effect to the flat screen - you feel like you have entered an intimate space buzzing with activity and gossip, and you can never get a clear picture of what's going on, just glimpses of people moving from one part of the maze-like onscreen space to another. Whenever someone does speak out loud and clear, it is flattery of the cheapest kind. And so, we have the grand and recurring Mizoguchi theme of public vs. private, the hidden vs. the revealed, the unseen powers that be vs. the helpless individuals who try to survive in their invisible midst. (ideas which I have an easier time dealing with than the more famous Mizoguchi theme of the hyper-idealized suffering woman). The second half of this film is difficult to take because it's all about this woman sacrificing her life so that her husband can become the great and famous actor he was meant to be. I don't know why this didn't bother me the first time I saw it - I guess I was reeling too much from the first half to notice, but this time I did, and it was bothersome. But then I saw it again, thinking back to what I had said before, "not what happens, but how" and this time I could find ideas and images to play with - the image of the actor, playing a suffering woman onstage, is dissolved into the image of his wife, who inexplicably is hiding underneath the stage - and this is the only time we get a good close-up shot of both... a melding of personas (three decades before Bergman)... one thing to take from Mizoguchi is the fluidity of ideas and personalities from one human vessel to another (think SANSHO), and if you look at it a certain way it is extremely touching.

But still, the way she gives herself completely to her husband, leading to her own demise... but did she really have a choice? Are we really to believe that the greatest moment of triumph in her entire life was to stand underneath the stage in the dark while her husband basically acts out an impersonation of her suffering for the world's applause? Is that really all that society was prepared to give her? And if this is what Mizoguchi is saying, is he saying it as an outraged challenge to the world to reform or is he bluntly stating a cruel fact of life that must be acknowledged? So frustrating to think about, I want to reject it. I wonder if it is even desirable to make movies that deal so deeply in the idea of injustice without pissing the viewer off - maybe that has to be part of the package. If anything, it leaves the viewer wondering...

Another thing I want to note quickly is the soundtrack -- it is simply masterful, you don't even notice it for a while but then a song being sung in the background emerges and you realize it's helping to shape the overall texture of the film, very similar to Tarkovsky's ambient use of sound -- it opens you up almost subliminally to a realm of contemplation. The sound in the last scene -- when the hero floats down the river to the cheers of the adoring crowd, and then he realizes what it took to get him there, and somehow the changing look on his face transforms the sounds of those cheers into something menacing -- this is a brilliant brilliant brilliant symbiosis of sound and image in the harmonious development of meaning.

Anyway, there's a lot of meat here to chew on and I'm not done, I may never be done with these movies. I'll have to come back, maybe when I'm older, wiser and hopefully more perceptive. For now I can't decide which is best, SISTERS OF THE GION (which I love for its swiftness and sense of social disharmony), STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUMS (for its stunningly composed longtakes and exquisite sound), UGETSU (for its range of moods and approaches, from the mundane to the mystic) or SANSHO THE BAILIFF (for its ending, and everything leading up to it) -- each is uniquely accomplished and sheds a different light on one of the truly singular artistic visions that passed through the realm of cinema.

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