Eiga Sai 2015 is over! ...at least here in Manila. While I didn't get to watch all the films in the theater, there are three films in particular that I did see either after or before the festival ended. Since the festival will still go on next month at UP and at other places in the country, I might as well talk about them.
Japanese movies that focus on people taking up interesting or uncommon jobs (and getting good at them) are almost a genre into itself. I want to call them "ganbatte!" movies, but they really don't have a name. These kinds of movies have been usually of good quality, and some, like 2008's Departures, really stand out among the rest.
Director Shinobu Yaguchi is an old hand with these kinds of movies; he directed the highly successful Waterboys (2001) and Swing Girls (2004) which followed this general concept. His latest film following the formula, Wood Job!, based on a novel by Shion Miura, ends up in my opinion as one of his best films to date.
The story follows Yuki Hirano, a fresh graduate from highschool, who has failed to enter the college of his choice. As a ronin, rather than reapply to the college next year, he decides on a whim to pursue forestry after seeing a pretty girl on the brochure. While at first he tries to balk as nothing turns out as he initially expected, he comes to appreciate and even love the profession he chose by chance.
Man and nature intermingle in this movie as the residents of the remote town Hirano works in have been men of the mountain and the forest for many generations. Hirano's immediate superior, Yoki, is a prime example of this, as he knows the place like the back of his hand, and exudes an aura of rugged manliness. There is a high level of respect between these men and the place they live in, and it is always give and take. What trees the men cut down, they replace by planting. In exchange for their mutual respect, they receive the blessing of mother nature. It's an environmental message that people seem not to take to heart these days.
This brings me to another theme present throughout the film - along with the gifts of prosperity, there is fertility. Aside from the festival at the climax, which is for all intents and purposes a fertility festival, there are many plot points that relate not just to sex, but starting and expanding the family. Some characters in the film actively plan to have children. Various drinks and foods for enhancing virility and one's 'seed' are referenced constantly. In a country like Japan where the population is dwindling thanks to an increasingly urbanized and busy lifestyle, this is another message that people might want to take to heart too.
Shota Sometani does a great job as our protagonist, and the supporting cast (notably Hideaki Ito, who plays Yoki) deliver good performances. Also, I really wouldn't blame Hirano if the girl in the brochure was Masami Nagasawa, who serves as our romantic lead.
Wood Job! is a funny, highly entertaining film, even considering films of the same ilk. It eases you through the protagonist's journey in learning the job such that, in the end, you get to empathize with these characters and you get to appreciate the job they do as well.
(note: watch out for an easily-missed after credits scene that is not necessary, but still fun to see.)
While I didn't get to see the original Taishoken (it closed down around 2007 as the area was redeveloped), the legendary ramen store featured in the documentary The God of Ramen, I've come across the reopened main store a few times during my travels to Tokyo.
The God of Ramen (Japanese title: Ramen yori taisetsuna mono) is about Kazuo Yamagishi, a legendary chef who invented tsukemen, a ramen dish where you dip noodles in a very seasoned broth. For the past 40 plus years, he has run a restaurant in Higashi Ikebukuro named Taishoken, where he serves his meals to super long queues of eager customers.
The documentary, taken over the course of eleven years (2001-2012), takes us into the life of a man whose passion for making people happy through food has touched the hearts of many people. His strict regimen makes him get up at 4am to prepare food for his restaurant's 11am opening, where he serves most of the meals himself. And yet this is a very humble man who really has no riches or fancy houses to brag about: he is a man who just loves to (and I paraphrase from one of the customers here) share his happiness through food.
The documentary is a very emotional ride, as we find out about his wife and how they ran the restaurant together until she died. He keeps a room sealed behind the restaurant - their old bedroom. Yamagishi himself is a tireless worker, but his health problems, including bone and joint problems, really take their toll on the man. But he is a man who truly loved his wife and his craft (a picture of cats really brought me to tears for some reason). Ramen to him really was the most treasured thing.
The God of Ramen is a great, if simple documentary that will make you want to eat a bowl of ramen after you come out of the theater.
Sadly, Yamagishi passed away last April at the age of 80. His many apprentices have opened their own Taishoku restaurants in Japan and other places, and his main apprentice reopened the main Taishoku restaurant (still in Ikebukuro, but in a different place) that I saw during my trips to Tokyo. If you don't have the money for a trip to Japan, don't fret - one of his apprentices has opened a restaurant, Ramen Yushoku, somewhere in Muntinlupa.
The first of two parts of the live action adaptation of the horror manga Parasyte was shown in Philippine cinemas for a short time a while back. Since it was screened in Eiga Sai as well, I might as well put it here too.
I haven't seen much of the source material, Hitoshi Iwaaki's horror manga Parasyte (there was also a recent anime adaptation, Parasyte the Maxim, of which I saw around two episodes' worth). But as it stands by itself, Parasyte (Part 1) is a highly entertaining movie.
In this movie, parasites take over human bodies with the intent to use them as host bodies to eat other humans. However, with teenager Shinichi Izumi (Shota Sometani) the parasite that attacks him fails to eat his brain, creating a weird symbiotic relationship between him and his parasite, who he names Migi (or, "Righty"). Together they try to survive against other parasites who either want to kill them or want to study (read: experiment on) their unique shared body.
This movie adaptation leaves out a lot of plot points and condenses them for the sake of time. Several major characters are cut from the story, and the roles of some cut characters are given to others. Fans of the manga might understandably freak out. But, that's what you get when you adapt a 10 volume manga into four hours of film.
The special effects in this movie are a mix of nicely done CGI and practical effects, with Shinichi and Migi seamlessly integrated in many scenes. There's a good amount of gore as well, so this may not be a good movie for the queasy.
Motherhood seems to be Parasyte the movie's underlying theme: Shinichi's relationship with his mother is played up in the film, one of the antagonists begin to consider the concept of being a mother, and some minor scenes emphasize the power of a mother's intuition, either to recognize her child or to save him or her.
The climax is satisfying enough, given the story's accelerated pace, and there are a lot of mysteries and plot points to be resolved by the next part, which came out in Japan earlier this year, and will reportedly come to the Philippines soon. Despite some adaptation-related problems, Parasyte Part 1 is a decent live action adaptation that manages to entertain and horrify at the same time.
While Eiga Sai's theater run at Edsa Shangri-la has ended, you can catch some of the movies featured in the festival up to July 26 in Davao, and next month in select theaters in Cebu and the UP Campus. Go to the Japan Foundation Website for more details.
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