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Note: Java to China... soon. Since 1192 in Japan, a powerful daimyo (feudal lord) Minamoto Yoritomo established feudal system where the emperor's role was restricted, and the daimyo became the first shogun ruling Japan. But the system was collapsed during civil war (Onin War 1467-1468) creating power vacuum resulting in period of power struggle between daimyos in many regions while shoguns became their puppets (and emperors were still merely spiritual symbol.) By 1568, a daimyo named Oda Nobunaga started the unification of Japan which would be completed later by his successors Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Loosely based on a real-life English adventurer William Adams in late sixteenth century Japan, Shogun (1980)*** tells story a fictional English sailor John Blackthorne who arrives in 1600 Japan on a Dutch ship living through the civil war between two daimyo for the title of "Shogun". This TV series begins after the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and ends with the rise of Tokugawa Ieyasu who is fictionalized here as Lord Yoshi Toranaga. It also addresses the Treaty of Saragossa (1529) where Spain and Portugal divided the world with the blessing of the pope. Here Portuguese Jesuits and Spaniards (Catholics) are villains to the English hero (Protestants) reflecting political climate in Europe at that time which is main point of the series, as well as the political conflict in Japan. Though fictionalized, Shogun made it clear that the threat of European colonialism will be responsible for massacres of Japanese Christians in the years to come.
Driven by crisis of Catholicism in Europe, the Church sought to expand its belief to places outside. The Portuguese Jesuit priest Francis Xavier arrived in Japan by 1549. 30 years later, there were more than 200 churches, 75 priests and 300,000 believers making Japan's rulers worried about the new religion's rapid spread, since it came with the gun. Japan's persecution of Christians started in the late 1500s, and the religion was ultimately banned in 1614, though some Japanese Christians continued to practice their religion in secret. Countless Jesuit priests and believers were killed, tortured and disappeared. While Shinoda's film is better and sharper considering plot structure, Martin Scorsese's Silence (2016)*** is bigger, longer, clearer, and more faithful to the book, which make the endings of these two films feel contrary, showing differences between these two directors from different backgrounds, races and faiths.
The Tokugawa Shogunate which would rule Japan for 264 years, viewed Christianity as a threat to the stability of its rule. This religious persecution resulted in the Shimabara Rebellion (1637–1638), an uprising of Japanese Roman Catholics that deepened the shogunate's distrust of foreign influence. When the rebellion was put down, Japan decided to close country from the outside world (known as sakoku policy), except for the Dutch merchants (Protestants) at a small port of Nagasaki who continued supplying technological knowledge that would slowly modernize Japan behind closed border.
Opens with the arrival of a Black Ship at the same time as Obon festival, John Huston's The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958)** tells story of the first US diplomat in Japan in 1856, and a geisha who was sent to live with him as a spy. When cholera (brought there by Westerners) attacks a village, the Americans decide to burn down the village to kill the disease, while Japanese try to protect their belongings holding on to their past. The film makes good arguments about modernization, though the reason to force opening of Japan described here still doesn't make sense to me. Affected by the arrival of the Black Ships, the Gunboat diplomacy and unequal treaties, the Tokugawa Shogunate faced backlash while the Emperor gained momentum. This ideological-political divide escalated into major conflicts between the shogunate forces which including the elite Shinsengumi swordsmen, versus the pro-imperial nationalists. The latter was the leaders of the Meiji Restoration aiming to restore imperial rule to strengthen Japan against the threat of being colonized. This civil war ended in 1868 restoring practical rule to 14-year-old Emperor Meiji, and
officially eliminating the shogun, daimyos, and later, samurai.
Immortalized by modern technology like photography, these handsome samurai of Shinsengumi has been constantly romanticized in Japanese pop culture to present day. In a weird way, Taboo (1999, Nagisa Ôshima, Japan)** turns these historical poster boys into a bunch of queer samurai enchanted by the dangerous beauty of a pretty boy who might symbolize some dangerous ideas, new era, greed, or just death itself, threatening the elite squad which will soon be perished from history. As the Empire of Japan continued modernizing after the Meiji Restoration, the creation of the Imperial Japanese Army in 1873 by enlisting ordinary people made samurai force obsolete, combining with the prohibition on wearing swords in public in 1876 that destroyed status of the samurai, leading to the Satsuma Rebellion. The revolt was crushed in 1877 and effectively ended the samurai class. It was the last civil war fought in Japan.
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To make clean your toilet – to have a certain standard of hygiene – is something we've been told to do since we were children. And if we do that, we're told, then something wonderful will happen.
Maybe it's part of our culture. But there is also this idea that God resides in everything. And if God lives in everything, that of course includes a toilet. That's what we're told and it is a good way to think. If you go to the toilet, God lives there. And if you believe that, then you respect his presence. That way you're considerate of the next person who will be using the toilet. Sin is fun.
That's pretty much all I've been interested in, I think...
Am I a person who comes in and makes moral judgments on how other people live? No. I lived that way.
I can't make things like that if I don't feel those things... There is always going to be a group who will only see the brutality of the film, and what they think is thoughtless violence. The point I was trying to make [in movies like "Goodfellas" ] was, let's understand the attraction and the enjoyment of evil. And so you may say, ‘Now you're having it both ways.' Scorsese let De Niro's character in "Mean Streets" go over the top and lose control so that Marty can remain in control. I think [De Niro] is just wonderful as a sort of extension of what Marty might have been if he hadn't been a film-maker. One film I'm truly proud of — it's the best action film I've ever done because it's the most truthful — is Rambo IV, dealing with Burma, where they've had a civil war for 67 years. But I got excoriated because the movie's so violent. And it is violent. It's horrifying. It's children being burnt alive. That's what makes civil war worse than anything: It's your neighbour, all of a sudden, killing you. I was really happy with that film, and I never thought it would ever reach the theatre. I thought, ‘They're never going to show this.'
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Note: Java to China... soon. The area covering today-Myanmar contained many kingdoms from many ethnic groups at that time with Burman kingdom as major power. Conflict between Burma and the British began when the Konbaung dynasty decided to expand into Arakan in British India leading to the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26) where the British Empire started annexing some parts in Southern Burma, until the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885 when the whole Burma became a province of British India. The Overture ( โหมโรง, 2004, Itthisoontorn Vichailak, Thailand)**** depicts two periods of life of a famous Siamese traditional musician that belong to two different political climates affecting traditional arts. During the reign of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) in late 19th century, a young musician with his radical style paves his way into an elite band in a palace of a Siamese prince. And in 1942 Thailand during WWII, when the revolutionists' government joins Japan declaring war on the Allies, the aged protagonist faces the nationalist policies that aiming to modernize Thailand by promoting Western culture and arts, and abolishing traditional ones including traditional music which are considered uncivilized. While romanticizing life in feudal Siam and exploring life under Thailand's authoritarian regime, The Overture asks an important question for Asian countries under the threat of colonialism - if modernization could only be achieved by Westernization - and elegantly answers with that pivotal scene that will go down in history of Thai cinema as one of the greatest, when two generations of musicians beautifully harmonize traditional music instrument with newly arrived piano from Austria, resonating modernization in its own unique way. However, in my opinion, the film has peaked with that simple scene in the first hour, the following story is just extended part of the concept and inevitably weaker. Impressive patriotic film without using any foreign character as target.
By 1941, Thai authorities started recruiting teenagers in special forces preparing for the expansion of the Pacific War. Boys Will Be Boys, Boys Will Be Men ( ยุวชนทหาร เปิดเทอมไปรบ, 2000, Yutthana Mukdasanit, Thailand)** [watch, no subtitles] follows a group of students from Southern Thailand voluntarily joining the new force. The main character is a Thai boy who has a Japanese brother-in-law which will make him feels awkward as Japan recently invades Indochina on 28 July 1941. The structure of Boys Will Be Boys,.. obviously begins as a teen comedy and naive propagandistic film while audience anticipates Japan's invasion of Southern Thailand on 8 December 1941. However, I honestly expected something more or twisted from this respected director in the anti-climactic ending when Thai authorities announce co-operation with Japan making their battle and patriotism feel wasted. Too light, too naive, and too short of story, the lazy pacing of this mediocre film perfectly represents Thailand's experience during WWII comparing to other Asian countries brutally occupied by Japan. Could be much better if braver.
Thailand might be the only country in the world that could produce a straightforward romantic film about a Japanese soldier and a local woman during WWII without being irony. Adapting from extremely popular novel by Tommayanti, Sunset Over the Killing Fields ( คู่กรรม, 2013, Kittikorn Liasirikun, Thailand)*** [watch, no subtitles] modernizes the story with younger and moodier version of characters. The Japanese guy will find out that the Thai girl is a member of Free Thai Movement secretly helping the Allies, during the bombing of Bangkok by the Allied forces. The engagement of the couple demanded by Japan's authorities apparently suggests the nature of the co-operation of Thailand and Japan. Her love/hate relationship with the Japanese also reflects the awkward situation. She will help him from assassination by Thai nationalists while he will help her from the bombing by the Allies. However, I must confess that I'd avoided watching this film expecting it to be very cheesy. But this fast-paced film might actually be made for someone like me who've been familiar with this popular story, and it works really well as the least informative version. It's like revisiting the historical story with awareness, in a form of a stream of beautiful shots, or a train of memories reminiscing the well-known story. In this case, nostalgia is not for history or the past, but for the story itself. Very good in what it tries to achieve and has been misunderstood. The mysterious guy who the girl keeps waiting throughout the film obviously is metaphor for the Thai royalists who will return to power after the war. After WWII, Britain demanded huge war reparations from Thailand, while the United States refrained from dealing with Thailand as an enemy country in post-war peace negotiations and also helped Thailand closing the deal with Britain. Thailand will be an important ally to the US in the Cold War and wars against communism in Asia during 1950s to 1970s.
Opens in 1947 with the assassination of Aung San, The Lady (2011, Luc Besson)*** skips to 1988 when Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma to visit her mother during the student demonstrations and the massacre in Rangoon/Yangon. She became a symbol of resistance and led the NLD Party to win election in 1990, but the results of that election were ignored by the military junta. The film also shows the role of her British husband in lobbying for her Noble Prize in 1991, which combines with China's influences over Burma's military leaders, helped ending her house arrest, temporarily. Filmed mostly in Thailand, The Lady is a nice biopic that is not very political since it equally focuses on relationship with her distant family. A psychologically-broken American woman traveled to Burma in a tourist group but was left stranded on her own during 1988 demonstrations which later known as the 8888 Uprising that ended with 3000-10000 death. Her recklessness and typical American ignorance in foreign country will cause her troubles with the authorities (SLORC). Filmed mostly in Malaysia, Beyond Rangoon (1995, John Boorman)** follows the woman with a local tour guide who was once a professor of English at Rangoon University, through the jungles of Burma while trying to reach Thailand's border with help from the Karen guerilla army, one of ethnic groups fighting with the Burmese government. I expected the film to be a disaster but it's actually quite watchable if you can stand this self-centered American woman.
A young Thai police lieutenant is voluntarily transferred to a police station near Salween River along the Thailand-Myanmar border. Infested with crime, the province is under control of a wealthy Thai merchant in timber business with an ethnic Karen colonel who is constantly fighting Myanmar's SLORC for Karen independence since 1947. Exclusively shot in Karen territory in Myanmar in some parts, Salween ( มือปืน 2 สาละวิน ,1993, Chatrichalerm Yukol, Thailand)*** [watch, no subtitles] is one of the better films by this prominent Thai director, though sometimes feels a bit dated in Thai soap opera style, it's still very interesting and complicated in large scale conflicts. That bombing scene in Salween River clearly reminds me of Good Morning, Vietnam's What a Wonderful World and also is equally effective. The film apparently sympathizes the Karen insurgent group, while the real villain is the Thai merchant who takes advantages from the unrest in neighboring country. A rare Thai film involving international conflicts. Muslim communities had been settled in Buddhist-dominated Rakhine State (formerly known as Arakan), westernmost of Myanmar, long before the arrival of the British. When Burma became part of British India (1885-1948) there were influx of Muslims from Bengal (present-day Bangladesh) since there was no border. During WWII in Burma, the Arakan Muslims, known as the Rohingyas, who were allied with the British and promised a Muslim state in return, fought against local Rakhine Buddhists, who were allied with the Japanese. After Burma became independent in 1948, the newly formed union government denied citizenship to the Rohingyas. When Aung San Suu Kyi ascended to the office of state counsellor in 2016, she was criticized for Myanmar's inaction in response to the genocide of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State. Luc Besson even stated that he regretted making The Lady (2011). On the other hand, Wirathu condemned her and called her "a prostitute sucking up to foreign interests". Suu Kyi was later arrested and deposed by 2021 coup d'état, while more than 900,000 Rohingyas are now living in the world's largest refugee settlement in southeast Bangladesh, with no sign of a return.
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Paul Mescal's sexuality is powerful and cool, and I believe him so much on the screen. He's very real. That film he did with the daughter, Aftersun, was a Mount Olympus of acting. Saoirse Ronan is great, too. I think that the actors coming up in that age group are so different to my generation...
Perhaps growing up watching real things on YouTube or Instagram feeds has given younger people a taste for reality. My generation was fixated on male legends like Pacino and De Niro, and actors used to base a lot of their acting on other movies, so we were imitating others, which made what we did less real. That's not the case any more, which is great. Those movies [ Alice in the Cities (1974) and Paris, Texas (1984)], are about searchers, characters who are seeking, but they don't find it. Hirayama [ in Perfect Days ] is not searching... All of my films are dealing with that question of how to live, even though for a long time I did not know that, because I was searching for answers, too. Perfect Days is quite a precise answer. I think a lot of people will watch it and feel a longing for a simpler way of life, for a reduction in what we have and what we consume. In many ways, Hirayama is a perfect example of how to live. I don't think there's any comparison. Kubrick had a brilliant mind and really explored things. He wasn't frightened of going down very dark corridors. Spielberg is the Norman Rockwell of cinema. He's brilliant, but there's always something reassuring about his movies. There's no leaving doubt for the viewer other than the world is an OK place. I don't agree with that. Film-making is more about leaving people without a clear answer to life and making them do some work. My movies are pretty funny most of the time, but they're not reassuring in the way a Spielberg movie is. I think the last one – The Man Who Killed Don Quixote – has got the happiest ending of any of my films. Exactly 100 years ago, in an article in Collier's magazine in 1924, the film director DW Griffith made the following prediction: “In the year 2024 the most important single thing which the cinema will have helped in a large way to accomplish will be that of eliminating from the face of the civilised world all armed conflict.” He added: “Pictures will be the most powerful factor in bringing about this condition. With the use of the universal language of motion pictures the true meaning of brotherhood of man will have been established throughout the Earth.”
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Note: My favourite series of 2023
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Contrarily, I believe that by showing more murdered Native women on screen, it normalizes the violence committed against us and further dehumanizes our people. I can't believe it needs to be said, but Indig ppl exist beyond our grief, trauma, & atrocities. Our pride for being Native, our languages, cultures, joy, & love are way more interesting & humanizing than showing the horrors white men inflicted on us. […] Admittedly, I would prefer to see a $200 million movie from an Osage filmmaker telling this history, any day of the week. I never recount what I have observed in the lives of myself or my comrades, friends and neighbours. I simply invent parables and try to make them as close to real life as I need to, so that people will believe in these parables. My definition [of storytelling] is: I'd like to know where it starts, and I'd like not to know how it ends. I'd like to know where it wants to take us, and then I'd like to follow it. My ideal story is one that I can tell in chronological order. That's the reason why I did so many road movies. This genre forces you to tell a thing in chronological order. The road becomes a story, and therefore the itinerary, and therefore the structure. Normally, you're not allowed to do that. You're never, ever allowed to tell anything in chronological order. You are always forced to shoot locations out of order. But if you shoot on the road they'll let you shoot a story. It should be lived and not sort of conceived before. Critics that year saw ‘Safe' (1995) and they were like ‘Hmm, New Queer Cinema.' They didn't quite understand what it was. But the film critics came back, and they saw it again, and they were talking to each other about ‘Safe.' And they were engaged in a culture of cinema that we all grew out of. I wouldn't have the career that I have, I wouldn't have made the films that I've made, without the critical community. My advice to a young artist… painter, photographer, filmmaker, video artist… whatever you do, nobody else can do that better than you. And you have to find what you can do better than anyone else, and what you have in yourself that nobody else has in them. Don't do anything that you know deep in your heart somebody else can do better. Do what nobody else can do except for you. There's always a balance in Hollywood between established titles that can assure a return in audience and give people more of what they want, that's always been a big part of the economics of Hollywood. And it pays for lots of other types of films to be made and distributed. [Powell & Pressburger's] A Canterbury Tale (1944) is magical. It's just the music [by Allan Gray] shifting, the shots of the cathedral from afar, as she sits in the grass, the listening to the… here's the past come up. It's something worth looking at…what the past means to us in our culture and our lives, and how it speaks to us. That, again, is like the landscape in Archipelago [Joanna Hogg, 2010]. Or the prairies out in Oklahoma, it speaks to you if you shut up and listen. And we did [on Killers of the Flower Moon]. Granted I come from Manhattan, but still it said something. I don't know what the hell it was, but it said it. But in A Canterbury Tale, the past speaks to you through the land. It's beautiful. There's a great quote from La Dolce Vita : “I'm too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional.” In the film, it's spoken as an expression of meekness, but I see it as a real position of strength because it means one can remain limber and unformed. There is something about keeping work in one's peripheral vision that allows it to live in an atmosphere of adventure and rest and play. The core themes of Safe (1995) are about how we internalise the causes of our illnesses, and how willing we are to make ourselves culpable for our physical frailty, and the industry that has risen up around that. It's almost like a free-market sensibility. It's saying: you're responsible for your own lot in life and your conditions. And it's a way of excusing or dismissing cultural and social factors in the way we suffer. In that really cruel, but very human, way, we're made to feel it's a trick – you can make yourself better, if you love yourself enough. Or if you do these things, you can make yourself better, and therefore the burden to be better and to feel better is on you. While that seems to be empowering, it ultimately makes you subject to powers you can't possibly change. The most agonising realisation that befell us this month is that the West is no different than Arab governments: no more democratic, no more compassionate or progressive, not more free, and not less self-serving. It's a lot easier to be a free individual if you don't work in art or academia these days.
I honestly believe that the high school quarterback who's dating the homecoming queen cheerleader – even that guy thinks he's an outsider. Who doesn't think that they're an outsider? That's the fundamental difference between me and Tim Burton. Tim Burton believes that Edward Scissorhands is an anomaly. I just don't know anybody who doesn't think, in some kind of way, that they're Edward Scissorhands. I like what François Truffaut said: ‘Always make each film against your last one.' It doesn't mean you don't like the last one – it's just about discovering something different. Jean-Luc Godard had this theory that U.S. studios would do less and less films and at the end they would do just one film all together. It would be the film that everyone on earth would need to see, and it would be the end. There is a tendency in biography post-Freud to attribute characteristics of the person you're dealing with to their genetics from their parents. It's a very reductive view of a human being. If you're writing a book that's 500 pages or 1,000 pages, there's a way to balance that with their individuality and experiences. When you compress and strip down to the necessary simplicity of a screenplay, it's incredibly reductive. Well, what is in us that makes us do that? What is our flaw in our own human nature, that makes us take advantage of others, that sees us as superior? Being one of them too, European American, of course, I come from a southern climate, Sicily, a little different from northern climates in Europe and Scandinavia. So many people came over as as immigrants, as settlers. And there was an ethic of you sow and you reap. You work, and then God blesses you with rewards. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, and no one could convince me that we shouldn't do [“Bottle Rocket” ], my confidence was the highest, then. When we finally made it and showed it to an audience, they hated it. I was so shocked, it was a disaster. But that changed me: Had I known that before, I probably wouldn't have made that movie, and I'm glad of that, because the blind confidence you have when you're young, you need it! In a panel I was on with you, you said that a film-maker should not be a “fly on the wall”. Rather, a film-maker should be a wasp, and sting! Could you expand on that idea? And how best can a film-maker “sting?” We need allies. Native people are used to having anthropologists coming in, curious about everything that we do. These artistic souls ... cared about telling a story that pierces the veil of what society tells us we're supposed to care about. Who else is going to challenge people to acknowledge their own complicity in white supremacy? We're speaking of the 1920s Osage community; we're talking about the Tulsa riots. Why the hell does the world not know about these things? Our communities always have. It's so central to how we understand our place in the world. Well, we are complicit. But we are. We simply are. So… It's really about everyone. We're all the killers. The European white comes in, Western civilisation comes in. We are the killers, and we have to understand that. We have to confront it in ourselves. I'm interested in the ancient world because of the nature of what they thought. It's a hundred and eighty degrees from the world I know, which is Christianity. It's the closest you can get to, I guess—this will sound funny—but it's the closest you can get to what we would think of as extraterrestrials. Pre-Christian. I guess ‘Alien' depicts that. Or, a better example, the closest we've come to the alien persona on film is Fellini's ‘Satyricon,' which depicts a sense of a world gone awry, crazy, a world in which you can be a victim any second, a dangerous place.
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