Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Lost Optomist is one of our longtime friends in NYC, and this report from him is a great example of why:
Hey Harry & Drew & Co.,
Been spending much of this past week at "Asia Films Are Go" here in New York City and, needless to say, I’ve been having a helluva good time. I’ve taken in 8 movies so far and plan to see many more. In the meantime here are some quick reviews for films that have made the biggest impression on me:
PING-PONG - Director: Fumihiko Sori; Japanese
I saw a trailer for PING-PONG just before the screening for THE RESSURECTION OF THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL (a movie I won’t comment on at the moment because I’m still a little baffled by it). At the time it looked sort of goofy since they were portraying the game as if it were one of those Extreme Sports which, if you’ve ever seen a professional ping-pong match, is a little hard to fathom. Still I figured, "What the hell," you know? I’ll see it on a lark. As it turns out that decision was the best blind choice I’ve made so far at the festival.
The plot is relatively straightforward, or so it would seem: You have a short, arrogant, and extremely nerdy ping-pong playing firebrand with an incredible bowl-cut (as in hairstyle) named Peko. Peko's best friend, and fellow high school ping-pong team member, is also his antithesis: A tall, bespectacled, and acutely shy kid nicknamed Smile (because cracking a smile is the last thing he’d ever do). Unlike Peko, however, Smile thinks of ping-pong as merely a means to kill time and not a career move--For him winning isn’t as important as it is to play the game with honor, dignity and respect. The only problem is he's got this nasty habit of taking his "niceness" to such extremes that he holds back and even tanks his game if it means his opponent will save face; something he has done far too often with Peko as far as their coach is concerned.
Okay, what I’ve just described above is the movie’s set-up. And you would think you know where it’s headed, that’s it going to pull out all the stops and use every single sports movie cliche in existence and, to be fair, it does do that to a certain degree. The thing is though, by the movie’s midway point, I began finding certain things that I had thought were well-established becoming harder and harder to pin down -- I mean major stuff, too, like: Who your Sympathies lie with, character motivations, both the movie’s main theme and even its minor ones (such as its suggestion that having desire and a hard work ethic isn’t enough; you actually need to have talent as well). Without giving anything away, let’s just say the movie winds up going in some surprising directions and inverts nearly every expectation you may have had after the first half hour, the effect of which I can only describe as totally disarming. I haven’t had such a good time with a film like this since SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISHER. It’s a real find and, for what it’s worth, of all the films that I’ve seen so far this one probably got the most applause afterwards.
Oh, and one last thing. Please don’t let the fact that the sport in the movie is ping-pong dissuade you from seeing it. On a technical level the matches are well shot and tightly edited and the drama, as presented, plays out just as well as it would in your average football/basketball/baseball movie. Players make impossible shots, there is an abundance use of slow motion, and you get fan reactions from the bleachers, stirring music, the whole shebang. Seriously, the game montages here are as good (and as exciting) as anything in HOOSIERS.
SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE - Director: Chan-wook Park; South Korea
The plot has been covered in other AICN reviews but it can be summed up thusly: Ryu, a deaf-mute recently terminated from his factory job, finds himself in need of cash to pay for his ailing sister's kidney transplant. Left with no other alternative, he makes a deal with some black market organ peddlers that leaves him minus a kidney of his own plus $7,000 short of the actual cost of the surgery. In desperation he and his girlfriend kidnap the daughter of his former employer in hopes of ransoming her for the required money. Unfortunately, even with best intentions at heart, everything goes horribly awry.
The second this movie ended I found myself saying, "Man, was this movie bleak." That statement was then quickly followed by, "God damn, that was the best thing I’ve seen since CITY OF GOD".
Folks, trust Harry on this one. This thing is in a class of it’s own by sheer dint of the emotional wallop it packs. No bullshit. I don’t think there’s another movie in existence that has dealt with vengeance so compassionately. The visuals, the long stretches of silence, the way everyone regards one another…it’s like a tone poem -- And it’s simply stunning to witness in a movie that deals almost exclusively with one of humanity’s baser instincts. Usually in a movie like this you might get some sick, joyous kick out of the carnage like in ICHI THE KILLER or, at the bare minimum, you can distance yourself from all the sadism and violence by rationalizing that no one like these people really exist (like the omniscient psychopaths in Michael Haneke's FUNNY GAMES), but that’s not the case here.
Director Chan-wook Park has created an elegant movie that is brimming with real people reacting in ways that are not just fundamentally human but also understandable and horrifyingly justifiable. It’s wonderful (because you rarely if ever see something like this depicted on film) and horrible (because it feels so authentic) at the same time. If it isn’t a bonafide masterpiece, it’s at the very least a towering piece of art.
GRAVEYARD OF HONOR - Director: Takashi Miike; Japan
Rather than give a plot synopsis for this "Unofficial" re-make (Miike went back to the original Goro Fujita novel itself rather than the Kinji Fukasaku film) I’m just going to give a reference point: It’s SCARFACE without the excess, and that right there is actually the biggest problem I have with it; the lack of excess. I mean there’s no doubting that the film is 'good' empirically speaking. The acting, story, and production values are all top notch. But we're talking about Miike here, you know? This is the guy who loves making things way more over-the-top than they need be, and provoking as many people as possible. Yet here he is with a Yakuza film with a tremendous performance by Narimi Arimori (in the Tony Montana role) and instead of going bonkers with it and having a field day, for some ungodly reason, he puts a straightjacket on his signature style.
Maybe Miike wants to confound his fans, or maybe he wants to be taken seriously as a prestige director. I don't honestly know, but with the way the story is told here, the way it unfolds, it all comes across as very restrained, classy even. Hell, if I didn't know better I’d swear the film was made by Seijun Suzuki circa TOKYO DRIFTER, which isn't meant to be a sleight to either man. It's just...well, it certainly wasn't what I was expecting from Miike but I still feel pretty comfortable in recommending it. It's just, when you get the opportunity to see it (and you should), don’t expect to have your mind blown. The only thing you need prepare yourself for is to be impressed.
--Lost Optimist
Sounds like you’re having fun with it, man. Nice work, and thanks for writing in.
"Moriarty" out.
