Kon Ichikawa

Summary from yesasia – “It has been three years since pop auteur Iwai Shunji’s last film Hana and Alice, and his latest offering may seem a bit surprising. In a marked departure from his previous youth-centric works, his new film is a documentary about legendary director Ichikawa Kon, whom Iwai cites as one of his greatest influences. In a momentous career spanning over fifty years, 91-year-old Ichikawa Kon has long established himself as one of the great masters of Japanese cinema. A lifetime his junior, 44-year-old Iwai Shunji has, through acclaimed films like Swallowtail Butterfly and All About Lily Chou-Chou, emerged with a distinct voice and language of his own amongst the current generation of filmmakers.Read More »

Quote:
Fires on the Plain opens to a harsh and unexpectedly cruel act, as Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) is struck in the face by his commanding officer for returning to his under-provisioned and demoralized regiment. Suffering from tuberculosis, Tamura had been sent to a field hospital in Leyte in order to avoid taxing their limited supplies. Tamura is sent away again – this time, with a handful of tubers and a hand grenade. If the hospital still refuses to admit him, the officer explains that it is his duty to serve the Imperial Army by committing suicide. As Tamura makes his way towards the field hospital, he is unnerved by the appearance of smoke emanating from isolated, contained fires along the Filipino countryside, and changes his route in order to avoid them.Read More »

synopsis
The day before her wedding, a young woman goes out one last time with an old boyfriend.
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Quote:
Yukio Mishima’s acclaimed 1956 novel Kinkakuji (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) was inspired by an actual incident in 1950 when a disturbed monk burned down one of Kyoto’s most beautiful temple buildings. The temple requested that the name be changed to Shukakuji for this adaptation, which opens out the book’s internal monologue, structuring the anguished protagonist’s progress towards final conflagration through flashbacks as the police piece together their investigation. Raizo Ichikawa’s central performance attracts sympathy for this stuttering temple acolyte from a broken family, who sees in the Golden Pavilion a purity of beauty in direct contrast to his own imperfect existence. It’s a purity in danger of being defiled, however, as post-war occupation and reconstruction open the site to tourism, so he resolves to destroy pavilion in order to preserve it. Ichikawa’s fragmented direction draws together this awful logic, leaving the audience dangling exquisitely between understanding and outright horror as flames obliterate a priceless cultural monument. The director’s favourite among his own films.Read More »

I gaze on the moon
As I tread the drear wild,
And feel that my mother
Now thinks of her child;
As she looks on that moon
From our own cottage door,
Thro’ the woodbine whose fragrance
Shall cheer me no more.
Home, home, sweet sweet home,
There’s no place like home,
There’s no place like home.
—”Home, Sweet Home”
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Quote:
Set in the 16th century, an ambitious young samurai is adopted into a noble household, thereby attaining the necessary status to marry the daughter of the castle warden. Plans for the marriage are jeopardized, however, when a beautiful young woman, claiming to have lost her memory, appears. The enamored samurai marries her instead, but lives in constant fear that she will recover her memory.Read More »