The Criterion Odyssey
Spine #998
Director: Leon Gast
Cinematography: Maryse Alberti, Paul Goldsmith, Kevin Keating, Albert Maysles, Roderick Young
Production Company: Polygram Filmed Entertainment
Release: October 25, 1996
Awards: Won the Best Documentary Oscar
Country: USA
In choosing to cover a full year of new Criterion releases, I sometimes find myself at a disadvantage… diving into a film or filmmaker’s work that I have no prior knowledge of. Usually I at least have some semblance of an idea about the subject matter.
Not here, though.
I went into “When We Were Kings” about as blindly as one can go. I don’t like sports – realistically my interest in them equates to how cute I think the players look in their uniforms. Therefore, I knew absolutely nothing about boxing aside from what I learned during the exploits of the Balboa and Creed families. I had heard of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, but the latter only in context of his grills. I also, unfortunately, knew nothing about the ‘70s politics of Zaire.
I write these things not to make you judge me (though feel free), but because it underlines how thoroughly successful this documentary is at getting its points across. From minute one, I was enthralled and, by the climactic fight (of which I did not know the result, obviously), I was literally on the edge of my seat… which really hurts. Try to avoid it if possible.
The documentary covers one of the most infamous of all boxing matches, the “Rumble in the Jungle,” where all-time boxing great Ali, who was then in his thirties, went up against powerhouse up-and-comer Foreman. Each fighter would pocket $5 million for the fight, which brings me to the third player in this game: Don King. King had plans to turn the fight, which was located in Zaire during the reign of a terrifying dictator named Mobutu Sese Seko, into an almost Woodstock-like event where all the greatest soul musicians would perform leading up to the actual match. But when Foreman is injured and the match is pushed six weeks, the concerts went on to nearly empty stadiums. Though the odds were 4-1 against him, during these six weeks, Ali rallied… seeming to channel the spirit and support of the entire nation in the battle, where he felled Foreman.
There is a lot to unpack here, especially concerning all the fascinating men at the center of the event. Stories are told about how Sese Seko would have 100 men out of 1,000 shot in a stadium at random to prove his points. We see amazing soul performances by a line-up of creators that is absolutely astonishing. There’s a sequence where King is questioned by reporters about the event and he is bucking & dodging the queries while still amazingly seeming to give full, blunt answers. Foreman doesn’t speak much, but the talking heads ensure that we understand that this is actually a way for him to come off as powerful by those around him.
And then there is Ali. Holy shit, there is Ali. I listed the other guys first so you understand how interesting they each are in their own right… but this guy handily blows them all out of the water. Charisma for days. The documentary gets into his political and religious stances via commentary, but for the most part, just lets the man speak for himself. And really, that’s all we need. He all but explodes the screen with his magnetism when he is on it, and when he is not, we miss him and want him to come back.
Even with all this, the film goes out of its way to underline that he was still the underdog here. In the extras, producer David Sonenberg says that, had Foreman not injured himself, Ali probably would have lost. We see Ali stomping around angrily at the delay… doing anything to get out of Africa as soon as possible. But in staying, those around him enabled him to find the strength within to win – the locals overwhelmingly supported him and would shout “Ali, kill him!”
All the while, various talking heads help us understand the importance of what we are seeing. Norman Mailer and George Plimpton come off the best and have the most insight. Others, like Spike Lee, have one or two nuggets, but don’t say anything memorable enough to make me think they had to be included in the documentary.
Mailer and Plimpton do their best work at the aforementioned climactic fight, explaining why what the viewer is seeing is as extraordinary as it is. We get insights into why the fighters are using the punches they are, how they previously have fought and what their behavior at any given moment in the ring really means. As someone who knows nothing about this, the commentary was much appreciated.
And it only underlines what we are seeing onscreen, which is wow. Watching Ali get pummeled for round after round is genuinely hard to watch, especially considering the journey we have gone on with him so far. And then the moment… the turn… it’s glorious to see. I don’t like boxing, but watching these two in the ring made me want to stand up and cheer, just like the billion people who watched it when it happened.
“When We Were Kings” is further proof that this 2019 Criterion exploration was worth it. I have found so many new voices and discovered so many amazing stories I would have just skipped over had I not made this commitment. This is a great documentary and worthy of your time and energy, even if you hate sports as much as I do.
Cover
Ali is front and center, staring you down with hundreds of people from Zaire behind him. It’s a great image, and one of the few times this year I’ve been satisfied with a photo cover.
I award it three-and-a-half beads of sweat out of five.
Essay
Kelefa Sanneh seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place with this essay, because all it can do is restate everything that we learn in the documentary itself. He even goes into the other documentary on the disc, “Soul Power,” to help elevate the essay, with mixed results. Not great, but I don’t blame Sanneh.
I award it two boxing gloves out of five.
Extras
-We’ve got an entire other feature-length documentary here that Gast created from the footage he got in Zaire! This one is called “Soul Power” and specifically covers the concerts that played weeks before the fight. The musicians are amazing to watch, and the documentary itself is almost as good as “When We Were Kings.” Essential viewing if you loved the documentary.
-A pretty useless interview with Gast from 1997 that are sound byte responses to surface-y questions, all with a song way to loud in the background mix.
-A new interview with Sonenberg that is much more essential. I love his insights into the editing process and how he felt about the event while it was happening.
-A surprisingly good trailer.
I award them four-and-a-half runs at dawn out of five.
Up Next: “Matewan.”
The Criterion Odyssey
A beachfront town in Scotland is designated the perfect area to create a gigantic oil refinery for the Knox Oil company. CEO Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster) sends one of his key executives, the boringly handsome Mac (Peter Riegert) to scope the area out and help make the sale of the town a reality. Once there, Mac meets up with two other boringly handsome guys who help him figure stuff out – the innkeeper/banker Gordon (Denis Lawson) and Knox employee Danny (Doctor Who). If you’re anything like me, you may have trouble telling them apart in any given scene, but so does Felix when he comes to visit, so I guess that’s part of the joke. Anyway, the magic of Scotland sweeps Mac off his feet… and I don’t even need to finish this sentence for you to know the rest of the logline.
Even as I write that, it’s important to underline that Forsyth uses an expected structure to tell a story that isn’t interested in that structure at all. What Forsyth is more concerned with is playing with his more eccentric characters and keying in on his theme of nature & conservation.
Characters like these, along with Lancaster’s Happer, are so interesting that you wish that the movie was solely focused on them. And before I make this critique, I will write that I feel like Mac’s character functions both as a straight man and as a critique on the usual straight man cliché. After all, he might fall in love with Scotland, but at the end he heads back to Texas, spending the movie’s ending very, very alone. And he’s not the one who gives his boss the great idea about conservation. Actually, he’s pretty impotent all the way through.
What’s more, there isn’t just one of Mac, there are three! Gordon is zzz as well, while Danny at least gets a sweet romance with the possible mermaid. I’d much, Much, MUCH rather be watching any of the other cast having fun, and almost all the moments I remember from “Local Hero” don’t involve these characters, which is a shame.
And I’d even argue that the powerful, sad ending works not because we identify with Mac’s character and feel for him. It works because we care about that town and work, because we all understand that feeling of touching something great and retreating. Our hearts don’t break for him – they break for us.
The Criterion Odyssey
Chaplin is dear to me, ranking with Pedro Almodovar as the movie equivalent of my soul mate. His “Modern Times” remains my favorite film ever created, full stop. His mixture of laughter, humanity and tragedy is unparalleled in filmmaking. There isn’t a year that goes by where I don’t seek out as many revivals of his work on the big screen as possible, and I take great enjoyment in introducing my friends to his oeuvre.
Merna Kennedy stars as the none-too-creatively named Merna, a trapeze artist in a struggling circus still learning her routine. Her father (Al Ernest Garcia) owns the circus and is very abusive toward her – beating and often withholding food from her. Into their lives waddles our beloved Tramp (Chaplin), who becomes the star of the show accidentally… his bumbling is the thing the audiences really want to see. He falls in love with Merna, who unfortunately only sees him as a BFF, especially after sexy, sexy tightrope walker (not a metaphor) Rex (Harry Crocker) joins the circus. Merna and Rex fall in love, but the Tramp makes one final play for her heart, one which sends him on a most dangerous (and by that I mean hilarious) trek on the tightrope high above the circus.
Realizing Merna and Rex are meant to be, he enables them to be married and then makes the decision to stay behind as the circus moves on to its next town. Sound films were arriving, and this was Chaplin’s final all silent film – one can’t help but watch these final moments, as the wagons drive off, leaving the Tramp in the literal dust, as an explicit illustration of how Chaplin may have been feeling at the time… especially after such a difficult production.
The introduction of the Tramp, in which he is so hungry that he literally eats a hot dog out of a baby’s hand (and adding some ketchup for taste, natch), dominoes into a breakneck race through an amusement park and hall of mirrors which is rightly considered one of the very best sequences in Chaplin’s work. There’s one other such crown jewel in “The Circus,” the aforementioned climactic stunt scene of the Tramp struggling mid-show on a tightrope with no net underneath… ending with a group of monkeys attacking him on the rope and biting his face all over (this looks very real). It’s a perfect meshing of humor, stunts and most impressive special effects – there isn’t a moment you don’t believe he’s actually up there with his life in peril.
That said, the smaller jokes and gags are all very stellar. Chaplin excels with the big set pieces, but is smart enough to know that sometimes you just need to splash shaving cream across someone’s face. But perhaps that may be the problem with “The Circus.” With most of his other masterpieces, you first think of the human moments – the final moment of “City Lights,” the Tramp showing his love the house he built for them in “Modern Times,” and so forth. Here all you really think about are the laughs.
The second is more frustrating, because Chaplin had the solution right in front of him. This is that he doesn’t properly set up the romance between Rex and Merna… nor even that Rex is a decent guy. As a result, the final sacrifice of the Tramp where he matchmakes their marriage doesn’t land as well as it should.
Still, the above quibbles are just that… quibbles.
The Criterion Odyssey
This is my awkward way of backing into the fact that, while I admire everything surrounding Waters’ work, I don’t much like his actual films. Dear readers, I have tried! I’ve tried multiple times during different times in my life, waiting for that switch to be flipped. But at this point, I am becoming more and more convinced that there isn’t even a switch. Criterion’s release of “Polyester” was just about the most ideal circumstance to try again outside of a midnight screening, with its included Odorama card… and yet it still didn’t happen.
“Polyester” chronicles Waters’ take on a Douglas Sirk melodrama if it had starred Elizabeth Taylor, with the William Castle-esque Odoroma cards distributed to audiences so they can experience the smells of Baltimore along with the main character. That main character is the sweet Francine Fishpaw (Divine), who is stuck in a terrible life. Her gross, flatulent husband Elmer (David Samson) is cheating on her and taking every opportunity he has to call her fat. Her son Dexter (Ken King) is infamous all over the city for randomly approaching women and stomping on their feet, which gives him a sexual thrill. Her asshole daughter LuLu (Mary Garlington) is sleeping with another asshole and quickly finds herself pregnant. And then there’s her mother La Rue (Joni Ruth White), who at first just appears nasty, but may be scheming against her daughter in the soapiest of ways.
Okay, here is my fundamental problem with the film… if you are going to do parody, I only laugh if everyone in the movie plays things completely seriously. If every actor is winking or, in this case, turning to the camera, nodding and saying “check this shit out!”, it does not work. Divine plays it straight most of the time, which makes the moments when he winks all the more noticeable. The worst offender is Garlington, who didn’t meet a line of dialogue she couldn’t add ten exclamation points to.
And because there is little plot drive or development until the last act, all we are doing are living in those sequences of big actors playing things even bigger. It’s just not my thing. For me, the movie improved exponentially once the Todd romance/gaslighting plot clicked into gear because there is some real drive to the storytelling – it’s by far the best section. Then, of course, in the special features, Waters talks about how he wishes he could entirely rewrite that third act. Whoops.
But, ultimately, those moments are small in comparison to the rest of “Polyester.” Sure, it was fun to sniff along when told to, though the Odorama card’s odors were sometimes a little… off. But despite all the dressings, it still doesn’t change my big problem with the film, and the reason why it doesn’t work for me. That said, I have a feeling if you are reading this, you are a big Waters fan and I’m very happy you enjoy it. Please don’t hit me with a broom when you drive by me next.
Over the past few weeks, the zeitgeist has been filled with chatter about the comments of film writer and director Martin Scorsese and, more recently, writer/director Francis Ford Coppola. Specifically comments they made about Marvel superhero films.
“I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again,” Coppola added. “Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.”
The reaction is as visceral as it is predictable.
I watched my first Hitchcock movie when I was four – and this is not an exaggeration. Growing up, my bedroom had video store racks in it to house my VHS and DVDs. I attended the American Film Institute Conservatory for Screenwriting, go to TCM Fest every year and own about 400 movies from the Criterion Collection. More than that, I often guest on podcasts about the Criterion Collection. I’m the guy who wrote a letter to Warner Brothers when they shuddered Filmstruck. I’m the asshole who corrects you that “Star Wars” was really just “The Hidden Fortress” with more robots and less rape jokes.
I love Scorsese and his films have meant a hell of a lot to me. His “The Last Temptation of Christ” is one of those movies that made me begin to question all the strict teachings of the Catholic Church I had been brought up with. “Hugo” was the first movie I saw when I moved to Los Angeles. 
I’m also the guy who started collecting comics when I was 12 and now have probably 80 boxes of them in my mother’s basement (because of course they’re in my mother’s basement) back in Ohio. In undergrad, I interned for Wizard Magazine and wrote a cover story about fellow geek Kristen Bell… she later hugged me, which is still one of my top fourteen memories. I wrote an interview column for Comic Book Resources for seven years and have talked to just about everyone in the industry multiple times. I remember 
Yes, all of this seems very important right this very second, but remember that park I was talking about earlier? It’s the same thing here. In 10, 20, 50 years, all these Marvel movies will still be here. And so will the oeuvres of Scorsese and Coppola. Because, let’s face it, when Scorsese and Coppola use the word “cinema,” they really mean “art.” Great art will outlast all the Rotten Tomatoes scores. And the message boards. And the Reddits and SubReddits and the Instagram Stories and I don’t know what all.
The comments, of course, caused a lot of hubbub at the time, but now they are nothing but a funny footnote in both filmmakers’ filmographies. Kurosawa’s work includes masterpieces that helped shape modern filmmaking like “Yojimbo,” “High and Low” and the aforementioned “Hidden Fortress.” He has two films on 
Earlier I mentioned the end of “The Age of Innocence,” where Daniel Day Lewis’ character can’t quite bring himself to enter the home of his lost love. When I first saw it, I cried and cried. Hell, I still do when I watch it. Near the end of “Avengers: Endgame,” there is a 
The Criterion Odyssey
It’s minute six, and there is not a doubt in the world that you are in an Ernst Lubitsch film.
Well, not quite.
That’s what makes Cluny’s happy ending so much more spectacular than the usual ending to romantic comedies of the era. She’s in her maid outfit on a train with her true love Adam, who insists that she remove her hat and apron… throwing them from the train while she watches. She is now free from the societal constraints around her, and through this gesture Adam underlines that their marriage won’t be one where he would ever tamp down her spirit. Plus, as we find out in the flash-forward, he also buys her a mink purse (?!) – what more could you ask for in a man?
There are also many genuine laughs throughout, like where Adam is about to have fisticuffs with his friend Andrew (Peter Lawford), but realizes that they may break Andrew’s mother’s favorite vase in the process. Another runner with a doorbell had me in stitches. But describing great comedy is never as good as experiencing it, and despite the problems I’m about to get into, this is definitely a film worth seeing.
It’s not that she is bad as Cluny, because she isn’t. Jones does a perfectly acceptable job in the role, which would be fine if this was a lesser movie. But when most everything around you is firing on all cylinders and you, frankly, are not… then it’s a problem. Then there’s also the problem of Jones’ place in the master’s filmography. Lubitsch has drawn extraordinary performances from many of his leading ladies, including Greta Garbo, Margaret Sullavan, Carole Lombard, Jeanette MacDonald, Miriam Hopkins and Kay Francis. That’s quite the list. And the thing that, for me, connects all of their performances is that their work feels effortless. I’m sure it wasn’t, and they went through great pains to get it just right, but the final product feels that way. With Jones, who adopts a weird breathy tick in most of her scenes, you can tell that she’s trying. She’s trying oh so hard. It doesn’t help that she has no sexual chemistry with Boyer either.
There are other, smaller problems. Mostly with the script. Certain scenes sit there, almost funny or almost clicking, but not quite. Cluny arriving at her estate and being mistaken for a person of distinction is one of them, as is a recurring bit with a nightingale that never lands as solidly as it should.
The Criterion Odyssey
Because of this, I felt a close connection with Neeta (Supriya Choudhury), the main character in the extraordinary “The Cloud-Capped Star.” The smartest member of her family, she works in addition to going to college, though she gives every penny she earns to her ungrateful family. Her younger brother (Dwiju Bhawal) is too busy with other work, schooling and sports to care. Her father (Bijon Bhattacharva) may pretend to care, but never enough to actually intervene as others take advantage of Neeta. Her mother (Gita Day) snatches Neeta’s money away, insults her and then blatantly tries to set Neeta’s boyfriend’s (Niranjan) eyes away from Neeta and to her younger sister Geeta (Gita Ghatak).
The one person who may actually care is her older brother Shankar (Anil Chatterjee). Studying to be a professional singer, he happily (and usually unapologetically) takes her money… but there is an understanding between them that, once he makes it, he will be able to pay her back. More than that, he loves her and supports her emotionally, which is more than can be said for the others around her. Shankar sings early and often in the film – almost turning it into a low-key musical at times – and the most impressive scene of the impressive film is one of these moments. When Neeta has had so much of her soul taken away, Shankar joins her in a dark room and they sing a mournful, gorgeous melody as the camera simply pans in and out… contemplating them, their connection and the emotions both are experiencing; her pain, and his pain at seeing her in pain.
Because that is what happens. This is one of the great melodramatic tragedies in film… you can say that her soul is taken away, but you can also argue that she gives it away willingly. Realistically, it’s a mix of both. Life for her family was difficult to begin with in the aftermath of the partition, with a major class change and living conditions that have altered dramatically. Her family is in debt to the local grocers, so she begins to spend all the money she makes to pay them back and keep the family fed. Her father gets injured, so it only makes sense that she drop out of school and become the soul breadwinner. Her life is busy and her weak asshole of a boyfriend begins to look elsewhere for a warm body.
But then her family begin to savagely rip away pieces of her. Because they know they can. Because they know she’ll allow it. Her mother’s gambit to pair Geeta with Neeta’s boyfriend works – her love is stolen by her own sister, who could care less about Neeta’s feelings. Right before the wedding, Geeta sends her mother to demand Neeta’s best jewelry, and the mother can barely muster something close to an apology for legitimately ruining Neeta’s life.
She’s committed to a medical facility, but it’s not just her body that is broken – her mind has gone too. When Shankar visits her, she dies in his arms while screaming “I want to live!” He returns home, and we realize every character has gotten their happy ending. A new, expensive house has been built for the mother and father to live in. Geeta has had her first child and is happily married to that motherfucker. But no one speaks of Neeta and her sacrifice, and no one in the surrounding town remembers her.
Choudhury’s performance is one for the ages. The gentleness she has at the beginning… the chemistry she shares with every member of the cast. And her range! Watching her finally spit vitriol at her mother was amazing, as was her desperation in Neeta’s final moments of life. The entire ensemble around her turns in fine work as well, but you’ll walk away remembering Choudhury first and foremost.
This is the first film I’ve seen from writer/director Ritwik Ghatak, but it will hopefully not be the last. Ghatak is an excellent writer, but excels just as much visually throughout. He takes major chances with his camera, and they almost always work. Odd angles, editing that doesn’t quite fit, noir shadows… it feels like it should send the film over the top, but it never quite goes there. The final act in particular goes fully into the fractured mind of Neeta, with weird pans, cross-cutting and blackness filling much of the frame. The music, for the most part, is luscious and beautiful, though my one annoyance is some weird instrumentation that makes several emotional sequences sound like they are verging on science fiction, which took me out of the film.
Spine #990
Spine #991
Spine #992
The Criterion Odyssey
And then there are the stories themselves, which almost never lean into the easy drama we often get from these types of family dramas. But “subtle” isn’t the right word for a guy who has more than one fart joke in his oeuvre, is it? If I described to you the climactic scene of “The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice,” where the most action-packed moment involves a woman cutting a radish, your eyes may glaze over before I get to the second sentence. And yet these moments have such quiet power they often cover your body in goosebumps or, in a movie like “Tokyo Story,” feel like a sledgehammer to the gut.
I guess what it comes down to is this – the only way to truly capture or understand the work or Ozu is to experience it firsthand. Without this context, there’s no way you can really grasp the man. So if you’ve somehow gotten to this article in a series of articles about the Criterion Collection and miraculously haven’t seen his stuff, stop reading now and go watch one of his movies. I’ll be here when you get back.
Taeko is the absolute worst.
Now, Ozu and his regular collaborator and co-screenwriter Kogo Noda had every opportunity to shade Taeko as an actual human being. To frame her flaws from a point of inadequacy instead of class. To have her be nice to a single other person in the movie. But they choose not to. This is genuinely surprising to me, especially considering how often they go out of their way to draw most of their protagonists in shades of grey. And make no mistake, Taeko is our protagonist here, which makes for a sometimes difficult watch because you begin to stop paying attention to the screen and start to think about ways karma could come and bite her in the butt. Even when the screenwriters do deal with archetypes or cliché characters in their films, it is almost always with a specific point or purpose behind it… often to undercut or twist it into something unexpected. But not here.
Even as I make these statements, I should underline that these do not take away from “Flavor’s” inherent watchability. Even though I have… strong… opinions about Taeko, I never wanted to stop the disc, and the fact that they kept me mostly engaged (except for the aforementioned karma fantasies) for all of the two-hour running time when I hated the main character is some kind of astonishing. That said, the climactic turn, which I’ll get to in the next paragraph and involves her emotional breakthrough, can’t help but feel somewhat unearned because all we’ve known of Taeko is how terrible she is before those moments. I balanced this in my mind for awhile before writing this – would it have been better to slightly (slightly!) shade Taeko before her change or is the turn more shocking and also emotionally satisfying because Ozu and Noda refuse to give her that depth? Ultimately, I decided I would have preferred a moment or two of humanity.
Saburi was a regular for Ozu at this point and turns in another fine, expected performance. Kogure, on the other hand, only collaborated with him this once, and does quite well with a role where the audience hates her for most of the running time. Technically, it’s everything you expect from Ozu from the main titles onward, including what amounts to a spiritual meditation as we watch bikes race around a stadium for several minutes. We can’t see the colors the racers have, of course, and the continuity between shots is nonexistent. And yet, thanks to the music and placement within the film, it’s a necessary palate cleanser that weirdly sticks with you longer than much of the rest of the running time.
The Criterion Odyssey
It’s an interesting sentiment, and upon first blush a romantic-yet-authoritative one, at least when heard stated with such certainty by Richie, whose voice is perfectly formed for this type of storytelling. Nostalgia for something that once was is a powerful sentiment, because in looking fondly back it’s so much easier to focus on the 1% of the 1% of things that worked better. That were great. That embrace your ideology. And because you do that, with a wave of the hand one can easily disregard the warlords, mass starvation, disease, the harakiri and the I-don’t-know-what all which was the actual reality for most folks. It’s also incredibly dismissive of all the… I guess… “not real” Japanese who have lived there all their lives and have for generations. But maybe that’s just me.
We’ve got a Frank Sinatra-loving monk who wants to tear down his monastery and completely rebuild it. There’s an elderly woman who relates her difficult early life, carrying both her baby and heavy packs of fish up a mountain (!) in order to make ends meet – she now delivers newspapers. A rich man has recreated an entire ancient building out of cheap modern supplies in order to get the tourists to come by. These people seem no more-or-less happy than anyone around them, and it’s almost funny that Richie’s narration is at its strongest when describing the more modern Japan: “Copies of the latest ‘Vogue’ (and other magazines from overseas) lie scattered in coffee shops all over Japan. There’s no attempt at discrimination, but many of the pieces of various foreign cultures are lying there, all brand new, and ready to be put together like pieces of some giant scattered puzzle.”
I fear that I’m making all these descriptions are making this sound more interesting than it actually is. To be perfectly upfront, I have not read the book upon which this documentary is based… and neither seem to have any of my fellow Criterion fans who I asked about this. That said, explaining the origin of the project is actually more confusing than the experience of watching. Richie, a talented writer and friend of Criterion until his death earlier this decade (he penned several truly excellent essays for the company) was a major proponent of introducing Japanese culture to America. He wrote a memoir (though he called it a novel) about the years he spent living in Japan and his exploration of the Inland Sea. Decades later, Carra got the rights and convinced Richie to narrate and write some of the screenplay, which ended up being almost entirely lifted from his text. Carra’s intent was to revisit many of the locations Richie visited, but ended up visiting many others and interviewing people not in the text.
That’s a lot of track laid for what is, in the end, a pretty shallow travelogue. Carra introduces us to fascinating subjects, teases us and then has already moved on before the viewer finishes contemplating what he or she is looking at. The Shinto religion is brought up, described for three sentences and the filmmakers are moving on, even though the reader is still trying to parse Richie’s quizzical, paradoxical explanation of the beliefs. Then, oh look, it’s a leper colony! Isn’t that… oh wait, now we are looking at an island of cats. At a certain point, I just pulled out my notepad and began listing everything I was watching to Google later, since there was no real insight present in the film itself. At least modern viewers have Wikipedia to fall back on… imagine the frustration of those watching in 1991.
And I honestly have no idea why there couldn’t be more depth here. The movie is only 56 minutes… why not make it two hours and double the time spent on all the subjects? Or why not just focus on the three or four most notable passages/subjects from Richie’s book and do a deep dive? These half measures do no one any favors and I’d imagine would frustrate most viewers. Then again, the movie is being released on the Criterion Collection, so perhaps I’m crazy. It’s always a possibility.
The two things that Carra absolutely nails are tone and music. She really creates a grand atmosphere for the islands that is underlined by the shot choice, the space between sequences and the framing of the world. Toru Takemitsu’s (“Ran”) great score certainly adds to this in every scene it supports, though Carra smartly knows when to let atmospherics and nature permeate the soundtrack.