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Spirited Away is a comfort watch for me at this point. I love Ghibli movies and this one was one of my first. I have seen this movie at least 10 times at this point in my life. I took a class at UF once about Japanese media and its connection to Western Literature. In this class, we talked about how Spirited Away is connected to Alice in Wonderland. I think this is a very interesting comparison and can be seen in a lot of ways. This story is defiantly a coming-of-age story for Chihiro. She must figure out a way to get her name back and leave with her parents.

I think control based on your name is a very important aspect. In many different prisons and death camps around the world, the first thing they do is strip you of your name. Your name is often your identity and how you can stay grounded. However, in this movie, Chihiro is stripped of her name which Is her identity. She must figure out how to get it back and in a roundabout way find her true self. This is a great setup for a fun coming-of-age story about finding your true self.

The bathhouse is my favorite part of this movie. It is beautiful and full of life. There are so many moving parts, and it feels like a real place. The more you learn about it the more you find yourself getting lost in this world. You find that these people are all entrapped and being controlled. They are trying to get money and figure out their own lives. It is also a great place for this movie to occur because it feels both friendly and hostile at the same time.

My favorite part of this movie is when they go to see Zeniba and she gives the group food and talks to them. It is such a cute part of the movie. It is very nice and quaint and connected with nature. Ghibli movies are known to be connected to nature and spirits. It takes a lot of reference from spirituality and Japanese culture. That is what sets this movie apart from so many other animated movies. There is a deep love and tradition within it. It feels so grounded yet so mystical at the same time. This is the mystique of a Ghibli movie.

I have no idea what to even say about this film. It was definitely a wild ride. Dr. Smith, why? Why did you pick this movie? 

Having read the Tale of Heike, I see the connections back to the war tragedy. The use of red and white leading back to this tale was a successful costume design choice. While all of the color symbolism is slammed in your face to where it is impossible not to notice, it did create a cohesive effect to the film and helped viewers keep track of who is who in the mess of a film.

As someone who hasn’t watched westerns, this film was just very absurd and bizarre and from what I’ve gathered from the class - even if you have watched westerns it still doesn’t make any sense. 

I’m already running out of things to say about this film… It honestly just seems like a drunk or high idea by both Tarantino and Miike. The choice to make the film in English almost made it more absurd. It definitely fits Tarantino’s genre, though I can say I am not as fond of this film as I am other films of his such as Pulp Fiction. 

Ben Ten was a fun little twist, though I do think it odd that if she was this powerful, why didn’t she do anything to save her daughter-in-law as she was dying for 30 minutes. Overall, I felt this film handled women terribly. While Ben Ten is shown to be a “cool heroine,” it only seems to appear that way so that Tarantino can get a few more scenes and so that everyone can end up dead. I felt like all the women shown in the film came from some old man’s sexist pipedream. It was weird and honestly kind of demeaning - definitely a film that makes me hate depictions of women written by men in media even more. 

One thing that I like to use to decide whether something is putting female character’s in is the “Hawkeye Initiative,” that came to use in comics for showing when art of female characters were overly sexualized. Essentially, artists replace the female character with Hawkeye and see the pose, clothes, and connotations of the final image are being used to over sexualize women. Here’s an example with Mary Jane: 

In regards to Sukiyaki Western Django, I’d like everyone to imagine all of the character’s genders as swapped. Now reconsider all the scenes of violence and rape against the women in the film and all the ways that the portrayal of the female characters as passive beings going along with such violence ultimately hurts women. I think if all these scenes were done to men that the audience would react even more grossed out, which is a shame that these gendered differences still exist in film media portrayals. However, I was quite happy that it seemed those who watched the film in class with everyone also found these scenes terrible and audibly reacted as such, which gives me hope that these issues will be solved in the future.

I was worried I would find this movie hard to watch due to its slow pacing and minimal dialogue. I watched it at like 12 am and I was really afraid I would fall asleep. But this movie actually managed to not only to not put me to sleep but it actually kept my interest the whole way through. I don’t think I would have wanted the pacing to change or for there to be more dialogue, it fit perfectly that the movie felt shorter than it really was once I finished. I also think that despite me being able roughly guess the plot within the first 15 minutes of the film, the emotional impact was still strong.

I also live laugh love a found family based story. I think often this is done with father figures, so having Tokue become a mother figure was a welcomed change for me. I think the dynamic between Tokue and Sentaro is fleshed out well, showing how both of them were the missing piece of human connection they needed. But the inclusion of Wakana is what made it more interesting to me. It wasn’t simply a man who lost his mother finding his mother in Tokue, it was a whole family that each helped one another grow in a way that couldn’t have been achieved with just 2 of them. Wakana I believe did look up to Sentaro as a sort of father figure as well, given that we never saw or heard about her father, I think she was looking for that in him. They all 3 were misfits, though Tokue suffered the most from societal pressures, and the only place they were safe from judgment was with one another. This really showed through when Sentaro refuse to fire Tokue and when they visted her at her home, both Wakana and Sentaro did not seem to be afraid of the patients.

This movie goes into the sadness of ostracization, Tokue was outcasted since she was young. The times she seemed the happiest was when she was serving people, talking and interacting with them. It is a small thing we do every day, but we can easily take for granted. This contrasted with Sentaro’s character who had the shop and in the beginning was wanting customers to hurry and leave. I think that’s why the dorayaki shop was a great place for the film to be based around. Small shops like that are known more so for their customer service, and social nature. Everyone usually knows and loves the people who work there. It is an inherently social and more intimate space than larger establishments or even small shops that sell more goods.

A lot of freedom symbolism in this film as well. The bird in the cage which represented all 3 of the characters. Wakana who could not go to high school and work toward the future she yearned for, Tokue who was outcasted her whole life, and Sentaro being in debt and stuck working for someone he seemingly hates. In the end they found love and compassion with one another and freedom once Tokue died, they both began to take steps toward a life they could enjoy.

The nature establishing shots were stunning and after we find out that the leprosy patients have trees planted over their graves, these long nature shots make more sense in the film.

Hoo boy, did I find Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s film Pulse to be quite a boring film. I am honestly not sure if this is a hot take or not but I find this to be the movie that has dragged on the most of all the films we have watched these last 2 - 3 months. Although I can openly say that I would probably not watch this movie again, I think I can be open towards the things that were decent and maybe things that I simply didn’t catch that would have made the viewing experience a better one for me.

For starters though I found the plot to be somewhat dull I would be lying if I said some of the scenes in the film were not pretty creepy. The first creepy scene in the film is when we witness the hanging of Taguchi and the placement of the camera as well as the lighting did make that scene in particular pretty eerie. Speaking on the lighting I will also appreciate the mise-en-scene in the film because a lot of what was very interesting. The use of darkness made a lot of the figures or “ghosts” appear like silhouettes just inching closer to the audience. This absolutely is a much better approach to me as opposed to cheap and undeserved jumpscares. Another design aspect that I found myself appreciating was the sound design. In particular I was a huge fan of the soundtrack where some of the scarier parts were accomponied by this operatic singer that would remind me of the soundtrack of the 1990’s video game Parasite Eve. The use of silence is also done well which has made me realize that I found that tactic to work much more over the slowly building violin right before a jump scare.

My biggest issue with the film was the plot and the pacing of the film. Even while reading through my notes I found myself becoming more and more jaded with the film as it went on. Pulse really did feel like it was dragging so much more than it needed to and towards the end I found myself so frustrated with some of the decisions made by the characters. I am always open to the idea that there was something that I missed that gives the film more meaning but for this film in particular I really do not want to watch it again. I appreciated the theme of depression and this fear of being alone, but I just don’t think the plot really did much with it in my opinion, and if it did I was just so drained about an hour into the movie that I was unable to process anything.

Final Verdict:

Well… that was scary. I thought it would be worse but it was still quite scary…

I don’t really want to look up photos of this movie and accidentally run into frightening screencaps, so no pictures in this blog post. However, because I wasn’t looking at the scary things, I was instead focusing on the use of numbers in the film which ended up being quite interesting. 

Numbers:

B4

Let’s start off with the first number in the film: B4. Honestly, this number has two interpretations - one in English and one in Japanese. In English, the hidden meaning is quite clear: B4 = Before. Yet, it isn’t until the end of the movie that the viewer realizes that this is a hint into where the body is since it is found under the building labeled B4. The Japanese meaning takes a bit of thought but, I believe it could be a play on the number “24″. In Japan 24, is considered an unlucky number because it sounds like “two deaths” (ni-shi). 4 will come up a lot in this film since it is the most unlucky number since it sounds like “death.”

54-4226

Breaking the numbers into parts, 54 is the first combo in this sequence. While this is technically a stretch, this could be a multilingual joke on “go die” with 5 = go and 4 = shi. 

42 is actually a restricted number in japan since it sounds like “to die” and is never used as the last numbers on a license plate (note that these numbers appear in the middle to make it plausible)

26 is an interesting last number combo to appear since 26 in numerology is typically associated with doomsday. This is because 2+6=8 and 8 is thought to be the number of disaster. 

7:01 (some time after seven)

The main protagonist’s time of watching the film and predicted time of death is tied to the number 7 for the number days of the week, which are also the days she has left.

77-3265

Swallowtail Butterfly by director Shunji Iwai  was an interesting movie to watch, it had many aspects that I was a fan of and other parts of the film I was just a bit confused by. I think most of the confusion stems from the fact that the film appears to have so many different plot points that putting it all together took some effort on my mind. There was the obvious main plot 

of Glico and Ageha and the bond that they built, both coming from what seems to be difficult pasts. However, throughout the film there seems to be other plot points which carry the same amount of importance which made the movie seem like it had multiple genres all at once. There was the journey of Ageha and Glico, then there was the band that was built which made Swallowtail Butterfly appear to be one of those films about a band going through the trial and tribulations that bands go through, and then there was the Yakuza like issues when it came to Ryo Ranki in which I felt was never really touched up on. It was clear that there were these groups of gang members who really wanted this cassette that had this tape which allowed them to make counterfeit money but I would have liked to see Ryo Ranki have more time in the film and maybe a scene where he connects with the rest of the cast.

   A major part of the film that I found really interesting was set in this near future environment where it seemed there was a blend of cultures all placed in Japan. I thought it was really interesting how it seemed the general consensus was that English was spoken by everyone so there could be a means of communication between everyone. I will say I think this made it a bit harder for the actors to act a bit more naturally. I don’t think the acting was bad at all by anyone but I did think there may have been a few moments where they came off a bit awkward, but it was mostly due to the language. This is totally fine of course, speaking a non native language is already not an easy task so I can only imagine having to juggle acting and speaking in a different language is not any easier. 

For this discussion post I will be discussing the movie Hanabi (Fireworks) by Takeshi Kitano. Hanabi was an interesting movie that revolved around ex-police officer Nishi, as he struggles to accept the fact that his wife is dying, the trauma of his comrades dying, and his misadventures in the criminal underworld.

The first thing I noticed in the movie was the fact that Nishi was almost always wearing sunglasses. He would even be wearing them inside sometimes, which is just really weird. My guess is that they had some kind of symbolic meaning, perhaps when he is wearing his sunglasses he is putting on a persona or is hiding his true self.

You can always feel this kind of weird dissonance when watching the relationship between Nishi and his wife. The fact that he planned this trip and spent a bunch of time doing things with her shows that he cares for and loves his wife, but on the other hand you can clearly see the distance between Nishi and his wife. This culminates in the scene where it is implied that he shoots his wife and himself with the last two bullets in the revolver he got from the yakuza thug. You can tell something bad was going to happen for two reasons, one was the suicide painting that the guy in the wheelchair drew, and the other was that he was wearing sunglasses while spending time for his wife for the first time. When looking back through the film I checked to see where he was wearing his sunglasses, and he never wears them with his wife until that day, so you knew something was up. This really built up the tension in a subtle way, and since the day goes on for so long it just prolongs this uneasy feeling.

You also get this feeling when he is talking to his old coworkers, as the interactions with them just feel really awkward. Things must have not been the same after the death of Tanaka, and it broke the social dynamic between Nishi and the crew. The dissonance may also be due to Nishi’s violent streak, where they mention being scared of him when he lost his temper and unloaded his gun into a dead body. In the past when he’s at the sushi restaurant with one of his coworkers, Nishi still has the glasses off, so he is still his true self at this point. You can tell by the fact that his interactions still seem genuine at this point.

Nishi also does not were sunglasses when he is preparing for and carrying out the bank robbery, and when he confronts the yakuza for the final time. I think this is because the excitement and thrill of it helped him to feel alive and brought him out of his sadness and disillusionment. This and the time spent with his wife were the only times he felt like himself, so they show him without sunglasses.

The fact that no one comments on Nishi wearing sunglasses pretty much all the time leads me to believe they are symbolic, and that Nishi isn’t actually really wearing any literal sunglasses. They are just a way that Kitano communicates to the audience that Nishi isn’t his true self at that moment, and that he is putting on a persona.

I also really liked the scene where the guy comments on Nishi’s wife watering dead flowers since his quote, “It’s no use watering dead flowers”, pretty much sums up the problem Nishi found himself in with his wife. That’s probably why it made Nishi so mad, to the point that he beat the guy up for saying it.

There were also all the paintings done by the guy in the wheelchair, which some were obvious representations of what was going on in the movie, others were predictions of what would happen (such as with the suicide painting), and there were others where I was not sure what they meant. There were a lot of paintings of ‘flower animals’, I’m not sure if they were supposed to mean something? I’m not super familiar with flowers and what they represent, so this part kind of just went over my head.

As for my thoughts on the film, it was honestly very interesting. I was constantly on the edge of my seat, trying to figure out Nishi as a character, understand the symbolism, and anticipate what crazy thing would happen next. The soundtrack for this movie was great, and had this kind of jazzy feel to it. Nishi was also just pretty cool, the fact that he was able to take down the thugs with no effort was so awesome.

­­­­­­­I loved this movie!! It was such a fun watch and I also felt it presented the absurdity of the discrimination that “non-Japanese” populations face in Japan, and did not really hold back in making its message clear. I thought it was going to be a Romeo and Juliet adaptation, but was very pleased with what it was actually about.

Being a Zainichi

The issue of identity and nationality are the main focus of this film, despite Sugihara occasionally reminding us that this is a love story. Sugihara’s status as a Zainichi affects everything he does and almost places limits on what he can and can’t do. He says he has dreams of becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but he also immediately says those are impossible when talking with Sakurai. He and Jong-Il talk about college and reaching high places in the workforce, but Sugihara just simply doesn’t believe in it because he feels he’s not in a position where those dreams are attainable. He also attributes his inclination to fight and to be a delinquent as attributes of being a Zainichi.

However, Sugihara eventually realizes that his status within Japanese society does not represent something tangible, or rather, that the box he has been put into doesn’t define him or have any real meaning in the grand scheme of things. He breaks himself out of this box in many different ways, sometimes without realizing it. For example, when his old classmate asks him to help get revenge for Jong-Il, Sugihara refuses because violence (something he associates with being Zainichi) is not necessary and is just a mindless, unnecessary choice to make. He also decides to go to college, which he previously saw no point in. The only thing holding him back from doing all of these things was the internal prejudices he had towards himself, and by the end of the film, he was able to overcome these obstacles.

I also liked that he had a lot of other characteristics than just being violent and boisterous. He was so focused on being a Zainichi that he didn’t really focus on how he enjoyed reading and learning, or how he liked music and was really excited to go to the opera. Considering how he was reading at a club, these characteristics were pretty obvious to the audience, so it was really nice to see him decide to go to college. (It was also nice to see him decide to pursue higher education because Jong-Il believed that he could… This is slightly off topic, but I gasped when he was stabbed and was very upset.)

Being a Boxing Referee

My favorite scene is probably when Sugihara gets horribly beaten up by his father near the end of the film. However it is not because of the beating, but instead the pure enthusiasm of the taxi driver going above and beyond to celebrate the father’s win.

It’s just so funny, I mean look at him. I love how excited he is that his generation’s representative was able to just overpower the younger generation.

The table was probably the most important element of this film. Throughout the film, we see the family deliberately sitting in such a manner that they cannot see each other - living in ignorance of one another. This directly contrasts the other family we see in the film - the older brother’s crush’s family. The girl’s family sits at a square table where everyone is visible at all times. There is a comedic scene where the older brother hides a present behind his back at this table and immediately people notice - you can’t hide things when you are actually being seen. The main family’s refusal to acknowledge one another in any meaningful way shows the core of their issues with one another.

It isn’t until the end of the film when the tutor flips the table, that the family comes face to face with one another for the first time. At first, it appears that no major change is evident. But then we see that the brothers have become closer since they have fallen asleep in the same room. This not only shows the brothers growing closer together, but they are also defying the expectations that they should be hard at work studying. Instead they are doing what they clearly need to do: sleeping. Likewise the mother has also stopped ignoring her surroundings as we notices the helicopter sounds from outside. Then, the mother decides to actually do what she wants to do and not what her husband or society says she should do as a “good housewife” and dimply falls asleep. 

In order to make the family actually interact with each other, the tutor uses overly close contact physical touch to get into their spaces - forcing them to take notice. I noticed that this effect worked both for the family members on screen as well as for our viewing class. Everyone was very uncomfortable - but that was the point. 

One thing that particularly stuck out to me was the disconnect between the mother and father. He was so cold and constantly shut down everything she had to say or any wants she even minutely expressed. I also found it frustrating how much both parents desperately wanted to shrug off their parental duties and give them to someone else - in this case the tutor.