Hiroshi Toda's Summer, Kyoto is a meditation on the fragility of being. The Nakamuras, an elderly couple living in Kyoto, make little fragrant bags for a living. Mr. Nakamura has a huge Samaritan streak, trusting and helping anyone he comes across. And this time it's an old man, whom he takes into his house. The old man and Mr. Nakamura then contemplate on life and their state in the world.
Life for the characters in Summer, Kyoto is a string of regrets. Mr. Nakamura occasionally plays a kotsuzumi (a small Japanese shoulder drum) and reminisces from time to time. The old man has some issues about his past, a mysterious golden fish and a strange fascination with fish (it makes more sense in context.) Yet while one eventually stops reminiscing and moves on with his life, the other runs away and is left in a rut. It is only through each other that both characters gain some sort of newfound insight from the whole thing, experiencing life anew.
The movie looks very low budget, and most of the camerawork is also simple. Some influences from filmmakers like Yasujiro Ozu, with a lower seated camera for example, seem to creep into the work. It's a very solemn film that captures the essence of Japanese cinema's existential explorations.
Six Feet High (also known as Oraalpokkam) may be a glimpse into the future of independent cinema. Hailing from Mollywood, the Malayalam film industry, it figures into a new wave of filmmakers whose topics vary wildly from the mass entertainers we see from Bollywood and South India. It is also supported mainly by crowdfunding, an idea pioneered in India by the Kazcha Chalachitra Vedi film movement, to create a "cinema for the people." As such, in terms of funding support, this is the first Malayalam film of its kind.
As for the movie itself, Six Feet High is a lush contemplation of love, loss, and the smallness of our being in the light of the world. Mahendran and Maya are live in partners. But after a series of spats, Maya leaves him and goes to a place that suffers a natural calamity soon after. Mahendran is soon compelled to chase after Maya and go on a journey of self discovery.
As the film goes on the dream images and the abstractions in Mahendra's journey blur the lines of reality even further, sometimes as far as to give the film an experimental feel. This is helped by capable cinematography, amazing for a small indie work. Other shots (much like fellow Asian Section's The Move) are wide and expansive, making its characters feel minute and powerless in the scheme of things. Mahendra's uncertainty becomes a lingering question within the labyrinths of his mind. Along the way he encounters a number of other people, who share their problems and views on life with him.
His journey takes him all over India, and finally to the site of the disaster. There we see how his relationship with Maya developed over the years, and the state it was during its last moments, perfectly encapsulated in one jeep driving scene near the end: Mahendra wants control over his life and Maya's, even though this is nothing but destructive. Maya realizes this, and thus, leaves.Yet by this point the movie has outgrown being just a meditation on love. It then becomes a search for meaning itself, in the end perhaps symbolized by a ritual purification by water and the ambiguous ending.
It's a film that begs to be seen again, with images that may stay indelible for a long time. At the same time, as a film financing concept, it brings about a fresh new way of looking at how films are financed from the ground up.
The Asian Section's most compelling film may well be The Night of Silence (Lal Gece) by Turkish filmmaker Reis Çelik. A bride and a groom meet together in a room. The groom is in his sixties; the girl has barely hit puberty. This is an arranged marriage, still practiced in many places around the world.
Minimalist in its presentation, the film takes place mostly in a single room. The atmosphere is uncomfortable, uneasy, unnerving; the bride, the groom, and we the audience know what they're in that room for, and we constantly ask ourselves if they will do the deed before the sun rises. Both characters are under unbelievable pressure by the society that they are in to consummate the marriage.
The movie could have taken the easy route and portrayed the groom as a sleazy, greasy old man, but as the movie goes on we realize that he is just as human as our bride, with his own faults and regrets. He treats his new bride with all the gentleness his gruff exterior can muster. The reluctant bride, on the other hand, channels her inner Scheherazade, using her wit to put the groom at bay as she tries to come to terms with her situation. As the story reaches its climax, we see that the groom, too, is as much a victim of traditions and notions of family honor as the bride is. Both try to conform to duties and responsibilities that they themselves do not want, imposed on them by a patriarchal society.
Some stories are indeed enchanted, as the young bride tells her groom, and like the tale of Shahmaran The Night of Silence plays itself up to its inevitable conclusion. It avoids being overwrought with drama. It avoids being preachy about its touchy subject matter, while shedding light on it still.
Aureus Solito's (a.k.a. Kanakan Balintagos') Esprit de Corps feels like theatre, and indeed it is based on one of his plays, written at age 17. Its use of long takes, especially a remarkable one at the very start of the film, and a moving (somewhat shaky) camera that makes you feel you are in the middle of a theater scene being played out.
Abel and Cain are ROTC cadets during the Marcos Martial Law days. They vie for the position of their training officer, Major Mac Favila. As they struggle during the last three weeks of their training, they are pushed to the limit by the Major as they start to do anything to get the position.
Much of the film is steeped in allegory, most obviously the references of the film to corruption, which trickles down from the top of the hierarchy all the way to the bottom. Cain and Abel play a psychological game with Mac and each other, where they may be baring their all (literally and figuratively) but they still have something to hide. There is also an exploration of desire and ambition explored subtly (and not so subtly) in the film. As the characters reach their individual truths, at one point in the film, the fourth wall is broken as Abel talks directly to us, hinting at his own truth and enlightenment.
It's a film that I'm still trying to process even now. While it has its flaws, Esprit de Corps is fascinating, and something that I probably need to see once more to see all the connections subtly hidden beneath its images.
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