Always Sunset on This Blog

So, there's this pair of Japanese films called Always: Sunset on Third Street and Always 2: Sunset on Third Street, a couple of nostalgic comedy-dramas set in working class Tokyo in 1958 and 1959, respectively.

Here's the opening of the second film (the clip unfortunately cuts out just before the final gag, where it's revealed that struggling writer Chagawa is writing what we've just seene):


(There's another version on the youtubes that doesn't cut out so quickly, but it's not in the correct Tohoscope aspect ratio).

And here's one of those youtube tribute things for the first film. Music from the score, combined with a lot of scenes:


A sucker for sappiness am I.

Anyhoo, shocking though it may seem, I didn't post that stuff just because of the Godzilla connection. (Okay, maybe a little. Also, that would be a good song: "Someday we'll find it / The Godzilla connection / Mothra, Ghidorah and me...")

As you can see, one of the things these films are all about is the reconstruction of a bygone era through a combination of intricate sets, CG, and kick-ass art direction. The director, Takashi Yamazaki, is known as a special effects guy, and previously did that Returner flick with Takeshi Kineshiro and the transforming robots from the future and shooting and motorcycles and stuff:


And he and his company do video game cinematics as well.

Now, here's something cool he says in a Midnight Eye interview with Nicholas Rucka, after the first but before the second film.

After saying that he realizes that actors' performances are vital, and that his current goal is to combine both good performances and good effects in his films ("...if you make only one aspect like 'color' or 'effects' or something what people are supposed to see, well, that isn't enough to make a good film. Just using VFX for the sake of VFX isn't going to make the item on screen any more interesting..."), he then also points out that the lower costs of contemporary CGI (did I just write that?) put some interesting tools in the hands of filmmakers, which "therefore allows filmmakers of modest means to achieve their vision, I think that we're just heading into a very exciting time." Which, at first blush, sounds familiar, especially nowadays.

But then, immediately after, this little exchange occurs:

Rucka (no, Jake, not Greg): I can understand where you're coming from with that opinion, but in Hollywod and the US filmmaking world, as witnessed by George Lucas' work on the new Star Wars films, ehat is actually shot on location just doesn't seem to be as important as it once was. The fact that it can be changed in'post,' it's all starting to look more like a form of animation - but one where the shooting script isn't as important as it once was since it can be rewritten in 'post.' What do you think of this?

Yamazaki: That's why you got those new Star Wars films then isn't it? [Laughs] The original film was shot in England there was a vision and something was being made. With the new films, well, that's not there. Because you get the feeling that it was now possible to make anything and that the location shooting just wasn't as important as a result of this. But let's be honest here, what the audience wants to see is an actor's performance and a person's performance isn't technology. Sure you can be wowed by an effect but what people really want to see is what happens to a character and how they ar feeling; that's why they come to the movies. Because these things are no longer there, you get the recent Star Wars films.

Rucka: It doesn't seem to have life...

Yamazaki: It doesn't have any feelings you can relate to.

Now, I haven't seen the Always films, so I can't say how successful he is in this, but isn't it nice to see someone who makes these sorts of films say this? Del Toro gets this. Jackson did in Lord of the Rings, and did in the best parts of King Kong. And for those who could handle the weirdness, it's one reason why Rygel and Pilot, on good ol' Farscape worked so well and so vividly as characters. And, of course, Yoda, in the original cut of The Empire Strikes Back.

It's totally absent from the Star Wars prequels, but it was there in the originals which is one vital reason why they were able to achieve greatness, and why they were diminished by the CG additions - we know right away that the actors are reacting to something that didn't even exist when their performances were filled. And while, logically, one could argue that even in the original versions of the original films, the actors were at times acting or reacting to things that were fake or weren't there, you need that little moment, that little Schroedinger's Cat moment where you can entertain something other than the logical certainty that what you're looking at isn't real. (I really need to get that thought down with greater clarity at some point. It connects to what does and doesn't work in horror films as well, which leads to...)

Yamazaki's statement also puts me in mind of something said by actor Robert Johnson, who played Dr. Markway in Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963, natch), one of the, let's say, three or four best horror films ever made. This is from the excellent commentary track on the DVD, which also includes comments from Wise, Claire Bloom, Julie Harris and Russ Tamblyn.



(Sidenote: It's Johnson, as Markway, that you hear saying "Look, I know the supernatural is something that isn't supposed to happen, but it does happen" near the beginning of White Zombie's Astro Creep 2000 album.) Anyhoo:

I was a tremendous film fan when I was a boy, and it always impressed me how, well, great acting often takes place on the back of a horse, because the actor is in point of fact controlling the horse as much as he's saying his lines. And, well, a horse is a notoriously unpredictable creature, and to get it to stand still, to stop tossing its head around, and to gallop when you want it to do, all those things take quite a lot of your concentration, and in the meantime, you're talking to the posse about, ooh, he went that-a-way, you know, and all that sort of thing, going on at the same time.

But it's the action of the, the physical actions that are the camera's real preoccupation, and what makes it alive. And, you know, the way Humphrey Bogart opened the door is as important as what happened in the scene before, because then is when you sometimes feel in his action what he's really feeling. Maybe not what he was saying, but he was feeling something, and it comes out in his body actions. There are people, I think, well-advised to study that, carefully.

This is what Lucas did to his actors when he pursued the kind of filmmaking he did in the prequels: he took all their horses away.

How you gonna ride when they take your horses away?