Lost In Translation

Enter The Void

Gaspar Noe's latest film Enter The Void is a haunting, punishing visual experience. I have heard that this is also true of infamous debut Irreversible, which has a nine minute rape scene. The credit sequence in the beginning sets the viewer up for the onslaught of images that is  to follow. I was interested in seeing this film because of the positive critical reception, the fact that it was filmed in Tokyo, and the fact that Tokyo acquaintance, Cyril Roy has a significant role in the film. Most of the film is shot from the point of view of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) a junkie drug dealer who gets killed in a drug deal gone bad in Tokyo. This plot conceit is the least realistic part of the film for me, since I've never heard of Japanese police shooting anybody, least of all an unarmed junkie, foreigner in a bathroom. I also found it hard to care for the main characters. Oscar and his sister Linda (played by lovely Paz de la Huerta) lost their parents in a horrible head on car accident when they were small children and were immediately separated and raised by different foster families. Of course this is a terrible fate, but does it give them the permission to find solace in drugs and pay the bills by stripping? I am sure there are many foreigners that get by with these sordid livelihoods in Japan, but I can't say that it makes me feel sorry for them. I was most interested in the performance of Cyril Roy as Alex. Cyril is an acquaintance that I first met when he managed an Scruffy Murphy's and Irish bar in Harajuku that had live music, then worked at the Hobgoblin, opened his own bar, and most recently worked at a bar formerly known as the Treasure Chest. Here's a blog post (scroll down for pictures of Cyril) by a friend of his explaining the circumstance in which Roy got his first acting gig. I think he does a good job. The film is an arresting visual experience and the last 30 minutes of so shot at a love hotel is fascinating. But clocking at at 161 minutes is overlong. And Even though this isn't a completely successful film in my eyes, it is worth while seeing for the stunning camera work and visuals.

Manimal

I found a new funky tapas bar/restaurant, Manimal in Sasazuka, well, I finally got around to visiting and they have a nice selection of fusion tapas and various main dishes and a large wine selection. I like the decor-the lamps and funny animal stencils with inexplicable English quotations.

A Desert Prequel: Ashes Of Time Redux

Ashes Of Time is Wong Kar-wai's martial arts wuxia prequel to the novel The Eagle Shooting Heroes (a hugely popular novel by Jin Young aka Lousi Cha). Teo explains in his book that Wong refashioned the story and infused his own sensibilities to the big budget production filmed in the deserts of China. The two main characters from the novel are Huang Yaoshi and Ouyang Feng (played respectively by Tony Leung Ka-fai and Leslie Chung). However, he also adds a third character from the book to the mix, a knight-errant Hong Qi (Jacky Cheung) in which he creates another original back story. Since this is Wong Kar-wai most of these stories are about past relationships with various women played by Carina Lau, Brigitte Lin, Maggie Chung, Li Bai, and Charlie Yeung.There are several stories of lost love-a favorite theme of Wong. There are some impressive fight scenes that are precursors for films like Heroes and Red Cliff. However, Christopher Doyle once again provides some stunning cinematorgrpahy in this film.

The choice of revisiting the film was due to a major film warehouse in Hong Kong going into bankruptcy in 1998 and Wong was asked to pick up his film or lose it. Upon finding the film, the film was in pieces. Wong knew that he wanted to re-edit the film, part of the challenge that he faced was trying to get the film from International distributors and literally having to go worldwide in trying to get the film footage needed to restore the film and then re-editing it.  Five years gathering the pieces and restoring it has resulted in the film being reduced from 100 minutes to 93 minutes. ADR could not have been done but there was new digital color tinting, digital effects and altered scenes which certain music-based scenes were removed and also some parts during the battle. However, some have suggested that the newer version might be more disjointed than the original and I cannot comment on that since I haven't seen the original.

No Sweat

Kate Elwood has another interesting column (Cultural Conundrums) about the different meanings of emoticons to Americans and Japanese on phones and other electronic devices:

A number of American Web sites note the sweat emoticon's anime origins and variously suggest that it signifies anxiety, embarrassment, apprehension, fear, passion, determination or the close-call "Whew!" Its use among Americans appears mostly restricted to acute cases. The Skype sweaty smiley looks seriously miserable as rivers of the salty fluid pour down his face. My au sweaty smileys seem a lot less glum.

An informal survey of Japanese acquaintances revealed that many use the ase mark frequently. Most found it difficult to put into words the feeling behind the icon, beyond saying that they used it after writing about something "not good" (yokunai koto). Examples of sweat-inducing sentences were "We planned to play volleyball but it's too windy," "The newspaper hadn't been delivered by the time I left the house," and "The train stopped for five minutes between stations." My informants told me that these were not grave situations. They were minor problematic matters. For more critical circumstances, angry or upset smileys were employed, like the one that resembles Edvard Munch's painting The Scream.

More often than not, the ase mark serves the function of a rueful smile. It's an indication of casual chagrin that abounds in Japanese e-mail communication. The general meaning of the emoticon may coincide in Japan and America, but the intensity conveyed and the frequency of use are far from equal.

My perspiration contemplation led me to recall an essay written by Donald Richie that appeared in his 1987 book Different People: Pictures of Some Japanese. In the essay, which begins with his recollection of seeing a woman narrowly miss catching a train, Richie notes the prevalence of "disappointed grinners" in Japan. Richie suggests that smiling in the face of thwarted wishes expresses a basic attitude in which personal preference is set aside for an "appreciation of reality" that is quite different from the American outlook regarding similar setbacks.

The smile that Richie observed and the ase emoticons that appear in cell phone communications are not the same, but both are related to expressions of reactions to untoward events, and both diverge from typical American manifestations in similar circumstances. Emoticons are a new arena for cross-cultural discrepancy in the interpretations of their significance, but as such they offer a chance to further explore differences in visual representations of meaning.

Semantic interpreter Heeryon Cho and five other researchers used an online pictogram survey to assess divergent construal of meaning between American and Japanese respondents. Five hundred and forty-three Japanese people and 935 Americans responded to the survey, which included 120 pictograms, 19 of which were identified as having culturally different interpretations.

Some of the differences were not surprising for those familiar with gestures in Japan and America. For instance, an image of a person raising their hands above their head to form a circle was understood to mean OK or correct by Japanese respondents, while Americans suggested it was exercise. The figure of a person with hands pressed together signified praying for many Americans, but meant please or thank you for Japanese respondents.

More unexpected were differing frequencies of interpretations related to gender and color. For the Japanese, it was more cut-and-dried. A simple figure drawn in red was seen as a woman or girl by 92 percent of the Japanese respondents, but 32 percent of the Americans thought it was a man or boy. Similarly, the same figure drawn in blue was more likely to be seen as a man or boy by the Japanese respondents than the Americans.

Smiley-face pictograms were frequently perceived differently. Twenty-five percent of the American respondents interpreted a pictogram of a simple face with lips pursed and two horizontal lines indicating that the face was turning to the right as whistling. On the other hand, 30 percent of the Japanese who took the survey felt that the same pictogram expressed feigning ignorance, an interpretation not provided by the Americans. Only 5 percent of Japanese respondents thought the face was whistling.

Similarly, a face with simple furrowed eyebrows, a wavy line for a mouth and wavy diagonal blue lines on either side was viewed as a representation of being cold by 50 percent of the Japanese but only by 11 percent of the Americans. Thirty-nine percent of the Americans saw it as "scared," "worried," or "nervous," but only 17 percent of the Japanese wrote that it was "scary" or "trembling."

Wa Udon Dining

There's a nice new little udon shop, Wa, in the buidling next to Sasazuka station. However, I don't think it was as necessary as the little Thai restaurant/bar it replaced, since there's another udon placed a 100 meters away. But the price is right for the set which includes a mini curry rice bowl for ¥780.

Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel

Gary Shteyngart's latest novel Super Sad True Love Story is another entertaining and effective satire. This novel was alternately funny and profound like his previous two novels The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan. This one is several books at once a dystopian science fiction story, a paean to New York, a romance, a biting satire, and an immigrant's coming of age story. In this novel he also tackles big questions about the meaning of life, sex, the family, and identification. Shteyngart's future America is one where America's financial woes have reduced it to a third world status where the dollar is pegged to to foreign currencies like the yuan and America fights another seemingly pointless war with Venezuela. Credit poles constantly monitor people's credit rating as they move about the city. A city that is in decline that is obviously dear to Shteyngart, one of the funny realities of his future vision is that Manhattan has become an undesirable place to live and all the cool kids live out in Staten Island. Illiteracy is at an all time high (books are said to literally smell) as people in the youth orientated culture are obsessed with apparati (smart devices that stream data, allows on line shopping, rates people's personality and fuckability among other ratings, provide chatting via a Facebook like system called Global Teen). The protagonist Lenny Abramov, a first generation Russian Jew, is obsessed with living forever via his company that he works for by searching for High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) to invest in his company's longevity program run by his friend Joshie. While in Italy, he falls in love with another first generation American, Eunice Park daughter of Korean immigrants who is enjoying some time abroad after graduation. Immediately Abrmov is smitten and is convinced that Eunice will be his salvation and Shteyngart draws a parallel between the aging, physically unattractive Abramov and the young beautiful Eunice and Chekhov's story of a mismatched love in "Three Years" (which I read and wrote about here earlier). Throughout the novel there are little digs at contemporary society and its obsessions with sex, consumerism, and 24 hour news cycles of the media. Women wear see through jeans called Onionskins and underwear called Total Surrender that can be removed with one touch and children are reared on pornography. The story is told through the diaries of Lenny and emails and chat transmissions between Eunice her sister, mother, best friend, Lenny, and Joshie. At first, it did not seem like the type of novel I would like, but I thought the same about Absurdistan, which I also enjoyed. I can safely say that Shteyngart is rising to the top of the list of my favorite contemporary American authors. I eagrly look forward to his next novel.

On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl: Chungking Express

My continued retrospective of the films of Wong Kar-wai brings me to his 1994 film Chungking Express, which was distributed by Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures company. Thus, it was the first Wong film that I saw and after watching it again, it reminded me that it is one of my favorites as well. This was a supposed to be a quick one off film, which was made while Wong was editing his first big budget martial arts film The Ashes of Time, which was eventually released the same year as this film. Stephen Teo says that Wong was inspired by the Haruki Murakami's short story "On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning." Specifically the film's mutability of perceptions, which begins with the sentence: "One fine April morning, I passed my 100% woman on a Harajuku back street." And so chance encounters fuel the plot as the main protagonist have chance encounters and missed opportunities fly by without connecting. But, perhaps the true theme, as usual, is lost love. There are two stories about two cops, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung, who have been jilted by their lovers and the ways that they deal with their heartbreak. Place and time are important motifs to this film as well. The places in particular the Chungking Mansions and The Midnight Express snack bar, and time as in expiration dates and meeting times. There is the usual innovative and interesting cinematography by Christopher Doyle and great use of musical motifs as well-in particular "California Dreamin" and Wong's Cantonese version of The Cranberries' song "Dreams." It also marks the debut of the magical pixie girl known as Faye Wong, who almost steals the film with her quirky comic performance.

Chekhov: "Three Years"

I am in the process of reading Gary Shteyngart's 2010 novel Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel. In this novel he makes reference to a Chekhov novella "Three Years"-so I decided to read it since I have only read a few short stories and plays by Chekhov. "Three Years" is collected in Ward No.6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895. It is a curious tale of love since most of the story is about how a beautiful young girl, Julia, marries a rich and kind, but homely man, Laptev. The first three years of their marriage is full of resentments and recriminations and both party is deeply unhappy, but they continue on for lack of conviction on how to change their lives for the better. In Laptev's defense he is still in love with Julia and it pains him to live with her disapproval and disdain when all he is trying to do is make her happy. Essentially she wanted to escape from the confines of life with her father-Laptev does has value and worth according to Julia when she considers her life options after she initially turns down his marriage proposal. Chekhov is excellent at capturing the character of people and the inner lives and emotional outbursts of people that can sometimes be contradictory, destructive, or operating against their own best interests. Shteyngart's novel is inspired by the basic mismatch of the relationship between Julia and Laptev.