Tokyo senso sengo hiwa / The Man Who Left His Will On Film

Tokyo senso sengo hiwa: Eiga de ishi o nokoshite shineda – otoko no monogatari / He Died After the War / [Mies, joka teki testamenttinsa filmille] / [Mannen som upprättade sitt testamente på film]. JP 1970. PC: Sozosha-ATG. EX: Takuji Yamaguchi. D: Nagisa Oshima. SC: Masataka Hara ja Mamoru Sasaki – based on a story by Nagisa Oshima and Tsutomu Tamura. DP: Toichiro Narushima – shot on 16 mm and 35 mm – print 35 mm – b&w. AD: Jusho Toda. M: Toru Takemitsu. ED: Keiichi Uraoka. CAST: Kazuo Goto (Motoki Shoichi, student), Emiko Iwasaki (Yasuko, Shoichi's girlfriend). Members of the POSIPOSI, a film society of young radicals: Sugio Fukyama (Yazawa), Tomoyo Oshima (Akiko), Kenichi Fukuda (Matsumura), Hiroshi Isogai (Sakamoto), Kazuo Hashimoto (Takagi), Kazuya Horikoshi (Endo). 94 min. Print: New Yorker Films (New York), English subtitles. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 13 Sep 2009. - A good definition of light in a print that has signs of wear and tear, but not too much. - Anti-film, metafilm, a film that questions itself and student radicalism. The story of an impasse. - Ironic, witty, philosophical. - The cinematography is remarkable. The sense of landscape and urban living is on the level of Antonioni, but brilliantly original. Many shots can be appreciated as independent photographs. - The man who left his will on film mostly shot cityscapes. He maybe never existed, and at least there is a vicious circle of young men who leave their wills on film, as the story starts again in the end. - Disturbing: the theme of sexual violence. The young men seem to enjoy taking their girls violently, and the girls seem to enjoy it. - I have now seen all Nagisa Oshima's cinema films, and I can confirm that they are all different: each has a different way of storytelling, a different cinematography, and different music and sound solutions. - In Godard's work, the parallel to this would be Weekend.

Hakuchu no torima

Violence at Noon / [Keskipäivän demoni] / [Demonen mitt på dagen]. JP 1966. PC: Sozosha. P: Masayuki Nakajima. D: Nagisa Oshima. SC: Tsuton Tamura – based on a short story by Taijun Takeda. DP: Akira Takada - b&w - Shochiku Grandscope 2,35:1. AD: Jusho Toda. M: Hikaru Hayashi. ED: Keiichi Uraoka. CAST: Kei Sato (Eisuke), Saeda Kawaguchi (Shino), Akiko Koyama (Matsuko), Mutsuhiro Toura (Genji Hiuga), Hosei Komatsu (Shino's father), Hideko Kawaguchi (Matsuko's mother), Teruko Kishi (Shino's grandmother), Taiji Tonoyama (schoolmaster), Sen Yano (village counsel), Hideo Kanze (Inagaki), Fumio Watanabe (inspector Haraguchi), Ryoko Takahara (the woman in the hospital), Shigemi Kayashima (teacher). 99 min. A Janus Films print with English subtitles. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 28 Aug 2009. - A clean, intact print of a film with an extremely original definition of light. The definition of light in the print is not perfect but pays justice to the concept. - One of Oshima's seminal films. - Based on a true story of a serial killer, a rapist and a murderer in the 1950s, who became the "High Noon Killer" of the headlines. He is not insane, but devoid of conscience. - The film is a hard look at brutal crime, which has no rational explanation, not even insanity. - The reality of the crime is strange and complex in itself, but Oshima also builds his film as a jigsaw puzzle which starts to make sense first after the screening. - The setting is a mountain village in the Shinshu district in the north of Honshu. A group of young people establish a collective farm, but the experiment is a grave disappointment, which leads to the suicide of Genji, the son of the village chairman, and the suicide attempt of his girlfriend, Shino. Eisuke, who had followed them with the assignment to prevent the suicide attemps, is married to the teacher Matsuko. The double suicide scene triggers in him a strange reaction: he rapes what he thinks is the corpse of Shino. But Shino is revived. Eisuke starts his rapist-homicidal spree with 35 victims. In the end Matsuko and Shino try to repeat the double suicide, but again, Shino survives. - This film demands repeated viewings to be fully appreciated. - Uniquely original cinematography, montage, and a brilliant jazz-like score in counterpoint to the subject.

Blackout

FI (c) 2008 Filmiteollisuus. EX: Jorma Reinilä, Aleksi Bardy, JP Siili. P: Olli Haikka. D+SC: JP Siili. DP: Jarkko T. Laine. AD: Päivi Kettunen. COST: Helena Paavilainen-Takala. M: Lauri Ylönen. S: Juha Hakanen. ED: Jyrki Levä. LOC: Helsinki University Hospital (HUS, Helsinki). CAST: Petteri Summanen (Pekka Valinto), Jenni Banerjee (Laura Koskimies), Irina Björklund (Anne Hartela), Ismo Kallio (Ismo Valinto), Lena Meriläinen (Hanna Kajaste), Mikko Kouki (Juha Pasanen), Mari Perankoski (Mari Koski), Mikko Leppilampi (Kari Tuikkanen), Eppu Salminen (Arto Suominen), Risto Kaskilahti (Risto Vierikko), Miitta Sorvali (ward sister), Hannu-Pekka Björkman (Aleksi Partio), Asko Sarkola (director of the hospital). Released by FS Film. Viewed at Tennispalatsi, 9 Jan 2009. - A digi-mastered look, bleak, ok in close-ups and medium shots in the hospital, not good in nature scenes. - An interesting and original thriller to the obsessive amnesia trend of 2000s cinema (the Bourne films, Mies vailla menneisyyttä, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memento). The man wakes up from coma with a long nail in his brain and has totally forgotten certain things, including his wife, and who tried to kill him. His father (Ismo Kallio) suffers from dementia / Alzheimer's disease. He is estranged from his wife who is a minister (Irina Björklund) but gets support from an ex-policewoman who now studies the law (Jenni Banerjee). - It is a suspense thriller with serious moral and social themes. The hospitals are overcrowded. Medicine develops fast, and cures are possible that had been impossible before. How long shall a person's life be prolonged in borderline cases? Must a doctor be a killer (of the old and the hopelessly ill) in order to save lives? - This is a film based on solid performances of the actors. Only the talented Irina Björklund seems lost in this picture.

Der Baader Meinhof Komplex

Baader Meinhof Komplex / Baader Meinhof Komplex. DE/FR/CZ (c) 2008 Constantin Film Produktion / Nouvelles Éditions de Films / G.T. Film Production. P: Bernd Eichinger. CO-P: Manuel Cuotemoc Malle. D: Uli Edel. SC: Bernd Eichinger - based on the book by Stefan Aust (1985, 2008). DP: Rainer Klausmann - 35mm Kodak - digital intermediate ARRI - released in 35mm - colour - 1:1,85. PD: Bernd Lepel. ED: Alexander Berner. CAST: Martina Gedeck (Ulrike Meinhof), Moritz Bleibtreu (Andreas Baader), Johanna Wokalek (Gudrun Ensslin), Bruno Ganz (Horst Herold), Simon Licht (Horst Mahler), Stipe Erceg (Holger Meins), Sebastian Blomberg (Rudi Dutschke). 152, 157 min. Released in Finland by Nordisk with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Tarja Sahlstén / Saliven Gustavson. Viewed at Kinopalatsi 2, Helsinki, 25 Oct 2008. - A high quality print with many different kinds of imagery (from the sunny beach to the prison world). No objections to the digital intermediate. - The story of the Baader Meinhof terrorist group based on the book of the former editor of the prestigious Der Spiegel magazine, Stefan Aust. It covers the ten years from the Shah demonstrations of 1967 to the German Autumn of 1977. I am not an expert of this subject, but from an outsider's point of view it feels true and plausible. It may even be useful in trying to figure out contemporary terrorism. - It is also a good thriller, without banalizing the subject matter. - I like the basic sense of this film: it strives for honesty and balance in even the most absurd turns of the story, such as the drill at the Arab terrorist training camp. The charisma of Rudi Dutschke and Andreas Baader is evident in the performances of Sebastian Blomberg and Moritz Bleibtreu. - One can understand the indignation of the radicals in the start, but things take a crazy turn. - The film is a veritable panorama of history from the "Crazy Year 1968" with its documentary montages, the Rudi Dutschke assassination attempt, the Middle East situation, bank robberies in West Berlin, the police round-ups, attacks on US military bases, the attack on the Axel Springer building, the prison life of the main terrorists, the trials, Stammheim, the Lufthansa hijack, the liberation of the hostages at Mogadishu, to the collective suicide of the main terrorists and the murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer (the final image). - The performances of the actors are first rate.

Le Diable probablement

Paholainen luultavasti / Djävulen förmodligen / The Devil Probably. FR (c) 1977 Sunchild Productions. D+SC: Robert Bresson. DP: Pasqualino De Santis – Eastmancolor – 1:1,66. M: Philippe Sarde; Claudio Monteverdi (”Madrigal Ego Dormio”). Cast: Antoine Monnier (Charles), Tina Irissari (Alberte), Henri de Maublanc (Michel), Laetitia Carcano (Edwige), Régis Hanrion (the psychoanalyst, Dr. Mime), Nicolas Deguy (Valentin), Geoffroy Gaussen (the bookseller), Rogert Honorat (the inspector). 96 min. A vintage Diana-Filmi release print with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Satu Laaksonen / Lisbet Eriksson viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 24 Oct 2008. - The Eastmancolor of this print is fading. - Robert Bresson: "Ce qui m'a poussé à faire ce film, c'est le gâchis qu'on a fait de tout. C'est cette civilisation de masse où bientôt l'individu n'existera plus. Cette agitation folle. Cette immense entreprise de démolition où nous périrons par où nous avons cru vivre. C'est aussi la stupéfiante indifférence des gens, sauf de certains jeunes actuels, plus lucides." Robert Bresson - The story of a suicide. The young people of Paris facing Weltschmerz: ecocatastrophe, nuclear danger. The questions of crime, sabotage, terrorism. The nihilism of clochard life, soulless sex, drug addiction. - The question of the church and the religion: "when a priest enters the church, God leaves". - An exchange in the bus: "Who is guiding us now?" "Le Diable probablement". - The encounter with the psychoanalyst, the death wish, the exaggerated libido. "I'm just clear-sighted". - Charles has failed in his suicide attempts, he loves the sensual side of life too much, but the psychoanalyst gives him the clue that ancient Romans asked slaves and friends to help. - Charles hires his drug addict friend to be his contract killer to execute him.