Father Geek here with another couple of fine reviews from Albert Lanier... he's current going thru the 2003 HAWAII FILM FESTIVAL and he and Moon Yun will be keeping us up-to-date on the wonderful films screening at that fest...
JAPANESE STORY- POTENT AND POWERFUL
by Albert Lanier
by Albert Lanier
There is an important shot in the new Australian drama JAPANESE STORY worth describing here.
The camera tightens in a close up of actress Toni Collette's face for two minutes. A man's voicecan be heard on the soundtrack. He tells her she did the best she could, that she did a good job.
However, Collette's face tells us she is having none of it. She doesn't want to forget or be soothed with reassuring words. She is no longer neutral. She cares. She wants to be involved.
This shot is one of most effective scenes in JAPANESE STORY, a film slated to receive a gala screening at this year's Hawaii International Film Festival.
The Asia-Pacific themed fest will run from Oct. 30 – Nov. 9. JAPANESE STORY, which was shown in “Un Certain Regard” at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is scheduled to be shown Nov. 4 at 6:30 p.m.
I caught JAPANESE STORY at a pre-festival press screening last week. My presumptive opinion on the film before viewing it was that it probably was some odd East-West amalgam--HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR having fevered sex with WALKABOUT. Thankfully, I was wrong. JAPANESE STORY is a quiet, powerful picture that forces its main character to alter her preconceptions, to become emotionally invested after harsh reality suddenly and forcefully impacts on her life.
That protagonist Sandy Edwards (played by Collett! e) is a geologist who has been working on a computer software program that electronically maps and examines the contours and parameters of terrain.
One day, she is informed by a co-worker that she must squire around a visiting Japanese corporate type around the deserts of Western Australia on the weekend. Sandy is pissed. The last thing she wants is to drive some foreigner around barren acres of earth. "I'm a geologist, not a geisha," Sandy complains. However, she acquiesces. Sandy flies out to the remote town of Port Hedland, rents a white Land Rover and waits for the executive in questionto fly in.
Hiromitsu's flight arrives and the two meet and drive off from the town's tiny airfield. The first stop is an Iron Ore facility where Hiromitsu is shown around. Hiromitsu jots down notes and listens to an employee discuss the varied functions of the site. Sandy looks bored and impatient.
The next day, Sandy must drive Hiromitsu five hours to another Iron Ore company site in the next town. While in that company's office, Hiromitsu is given a large piece of rock extracted from a parcel of land. Sandy attempts to demonstrate her software program which she hopes to sell to Hiromitsu (though she is baffled by why he is actually in Australia to begin with, she hasn't really been inf! ormed as to the reason for his trip) but he is fascinated with the rock and tells Sandy she must drive him to the location where the rock came from. Again, Sandy is unhappy with the entire situation. Besides, she doesn't want to drive further into the desert for fear of getting lost and ending up isolated but Hiromitsu wants to see the rock's point of origin and so they head out to the area.
Viewing the terraced layers of mined earth from a high vantage point, Hiromitsu oddly begins to ruminate and sort of philosophize. There is a great deal of land in Australia but very few people, he observes while in Japan there are many people but a minimal amount of land space. Hiromitsu wants to go out further. Sandy feels this is a crazy idea. Still, they drive onward over sand filled, desert trails with only bushes and clu! mps of foliage dotting the landscape around them. Then, the Land Rover gets stuck in a sand bog.
Now this is becoming a nightmare for Sandy. She didn't want to play driver to an Asian executive who has been rather cold and demanding to her. Now she's stuck in a remote patch of desert and could very well die.
She doesn't meet her maker, though. Despite the failure of their respective cell phones, failed attempts to push the vehicle out of the bog, and attaching a buried tire in a sand pit to a winch hooked to the front grill of the Land Rover in order to force the Land Rover out; Sandy and Hiromitsu manage to push the car out of Achilles heel-like bog and head for the open road.
In fact, the overjoyed duo belt out stanzas from Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again".
Having faced a possibly deadly predicament, Sandy and Hiromitsu begin to warm up to each other while staying at a motel and make love. The ice has now broken. Sandy and Hiromitsu start to get friendly. They drive out to isolated locales surrounded by towering rock face formations. They try to get to know one another.
At the heart of JAPANESE STORY, there are at least two questions that need answers: When does a stranger stop becoming "strange" and starts becoming familiar? At what point does one person's life or death affect others?
The script, written by Alison Tilson, largely answers these questions. Sandy's life has intersected with Hiromitsu's. They not only lived through a possibly hazardous situation but Sandy has seen Hiromitsu die. He is no longer a stranger, an indecipherable Japanese man who has a bland, colorless personality. Hiromitsu has dimensions and depth.
Toni Collette is a big reason why JAPANESE STORY succeeds. The Australian actress gives a strong performance here. Collette has realistically grounded her character in a plausible mode of behavior! thus laying the groundwork for the jarring effect of Hiromitsu's death on her psyche. Not to mention, Collette has a lot of emotional heavy lifting here as the film’s center of dramatic gravity and she more than delivers.
Gotaro Tsunshima does a fine job giving definition to the role of Hiromitsu in what could easily have been an underwhelming performance. Tsunshima infuses his character with a certain boyish enthusiasm and joy at times, a giddiness that is often funny and a little surprising.
Director Sue Brooks ably guides JAPANESE STORY onwards toward its moving conclusion. Brooks is especially skilled at directing quiet intimate scenes such as the love scene between Sandy and Hiromitsu. In this scene, Collette strokes Tsunshima's chest while he lies on the bed and then takes all her clothes off. She then takes Tsunshima's pair of black p! ants and slides into them. Collette then mounts Tsunshima in what is visual role reversal of gender expectations and positions (Collette's wearing long pants and turning into a gentle aggressor show her masculine side while Tsunshima's stillness and passivity in bed demonstrate a vulnerability and feminine sensibility).
JAPANESE STORY reminds its audience that the death of a person one knows, even for a brief period of time, can produce a wider effect like a stone hurled at the surface of a pond that creates circular ripples that spread and touch other ripples created by the initial impact of the stone hitting the face of the pond.
John Donne wrote that "No man is an island" isolated entirely from mankind. In JAPANESE STORY, it might glibly be said that no woman is a desert. Even in this no man's land, some rain must eventually fall.
THE COOLER -- ICE COLD AND REFRESHING
by Albert Lanier
Bernie Lootz is unlucky. Professionally unlucky.
You see, Bernie practices a trade that has long gone out of style in Las Vegas, the city where this practitioner of a unique art resides: He's a cooler. A cooler is essentially a jinx, a curse made manifest in flesh and bones, a paradigm of bad luck. In other words, a man who's very presence at a crap table, near a roulette wheel, in the proximity of a slot machine virtually inspireslosses for the varied faceless bettors seeking to break the house and make off with 100 large or more.
Catching the film at a pre-festival press screening, THE COOLER will be one of the gala feature presentations to screen at the 2003 Hawaii International Film Festival (Oct. 30 - Nov. 9).
Bernie works at the Golden Shangri-La (a name that obviously comes from the magical, carefree land described in the novel LOST HORIZON), a casino that while not a run-down flea pit has obviously seen better days and nights in the past. We learn later in the film that Bernie has been working as a cooler for six years in order to pay off a gambling debt of at least $100,000. In a few more days, he can walk away a free man. His debt paid in full.
You could see Bernie out there limping out to the floor of the casino, perhaps heading out to a small bar and saying a hello to the bartender as she get! s his cup of coffee. Bernie sits at the bar in waiting for an announcement to blare out over the P.A. system which mentions a call perhaps for someone at Table 6. With this signal, Bernie limps off headed to Table 6. Some customer may be up 18 or 20 large and rolling dice as if he’s skipping stone on a pond and always coming up with a winner. This guy is on a roll.
Now, Bernie has to do his magic and end this winning streak pronto. He might utter a phrase or two, distract him by asking if he ordered a drink as a nearby waitress appears with a beverage or he might stand next to him and not say a word or do anything but this guy betting, this poor sap who doesn't know he is about to lose.
Goodbye huge winnings. Goodbye winning streak.
When he isn't "working" at the Golden Shangri-La, Bernie goes back to his cheap hotel apartment (where even the p! lants near the window have wilted and died) and tries to turn up the volume of a faith-healing religious program to drown out the orgasmic screams and moans of the couple in the room next door as they screw their brains out so loudly that even the voice of God would be drowned out.
Into Bernie's life comes Natalie, a waitress at the Golden Shangri-La who seems to be interested in the pathetic loser. Don't think I use the term pathetic loser as an insult--this phrase is an accurate description, an apt label to foist on Bernie. Even Bernie knows how terrible his life, how his lack of fortune has become. "I know the outcome," he says to Natalie at a restaurant. Still, Bernie and Natalie got back to his hotel room and hump heartily. Maybe, Bernie might finally "win" at something in his life.
In the meantime, Shel! ly Kaplow the owner of the Shangri-Lais feeling some pressure of his own. Corporate interests are starting to muscle in on his casino. They want to make over the casino, renovate it into a post-modern family friendly complex with an IMAX theatre and a roller coaster. Shelly will have none of it. He loved Vegas when it was "pure"and can't stand the current business-dominated ambience of the town.
A young executive suggests some changes. For a start, changing the wallpaper. "Muted tones" would be nice. The music needs to play some blues at sub-sonic levels. And for God sakes get rid of the cooler. Nobody uses coolers in casinos anymore.
Shelly refuses. He's no dumb east coast crumb bum. S! helly knows Bernie is great at being a human magnet for betting loss leaders. No way is he going to get rid of a bad thing that's been good for business. However, another situation has arisen. Bernie is falling in love with Natalie and Shelly got to deal with that too, or else. This triangular relationship forms the essential conflict in the new film.
I am reminded what a great actor William H. Macy is and how he truly is one of the unsung heroes of contemporary American Cinema.
Macy infuses the role of Bernie Lootz with his trademark brilliance. Macy is superb at playing the everyman, the average Joe with such power and depth that very few actors can top him. What Macy does well here in THE COOLER is to react and to observe. His face is like a cheap pulp fiction short story where a character always ends up shortchanged and swindled. Really, Macy's face is the best thing about his performance in THE COOLER. The variations in expressions are wonderful--his warmth and tenderness as he kisses Natalie lovingly in a hospital waiting room, his surprise when customers actually begin winning big at the Shangri-La and his sternness! when lecturing Shelly on the rooftop of the hotel near the climax of the film. Any actor can play a loser but Macy can play a loser with such sincerity and authentic ordinariness that the character takes on greater dimensions.
As Shelly, Alec Baldwin gives a slightly touching performance as a casino proprietor who misses the good old days and aims to stall "progress” as long as he can. Shelly is a bruiser, tough-talking guy who will see to it a cheater is taken off the floor and beaten to a pulp as a lesson in casino protocol but he also seems to be dreamer of faded dreams. For example, there is a scene where Baldwin talks about Shangri-La, the mystical land of the novel LOST HORIZON and equates that fictional land to what Las Vegas used to be. It’s a sad speech and Baldwin d! oes a skillful job of creating pathos in what could have been a one-dimensional character.
Mario Bello is also effective as Natalie, the waitress who falls for Bernie. Bello does an able enough job of bringing out the survivor's instinct in her character while underlining the sadness and lost goals of Natalie.
Director Wayne Kramer does a fine job helming this picture. Wisely, he aims at showing the drama behind even the lower-rung casinos in sin city and extracts fine performances from his cast. Kramer's shot selections include a number of effective close ups that clearly demonstrate the desperation and anxiety of some of his characters.
Kramer's script (which he co-wrote with Frank Hannah) is also effective at finding the broken light bulbs hidden among the massive neon lights of Las Vegas, the mournful and morose denizens behind the flash and glitz of the gambling Mecca.
However, at its core, THE COOLER is a cinematic elegy about the Las Vegas of the past, the kind of town where Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack could not only rock a showroom but an entire town.
That Vegas is no longer around as the film's end titles demonstrate as footage of older hotels imploding and exploding.
I guess you could say, in a larger sense, Bernie isn't the only loser in THE COOLER but the spirit and presence of old-time Las Vegas.
