Film ReviewsDance, Die, and Cut!
Dec 25, 2015 Anchorage Press
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The art of dying is dying in Japan. Before Spaghetti Westerns, before Bruce Lee and Hong Kong action movies, there were samurai dramas. Samurai cinema was around before the Second World War, but it was after the war that Akira Kurosawa brought to the screen epic movies stylizing and focusing on sword fighting and the samurai way of life. Samurai sword fighting or tate became an integral part of chanbara, defining samurai cinema into its own genre. The most important part of any samurai film is, of course, the samurai-but what's a samurai without the kirare-yaku? Kirare-yaku are the actors whose specialty is dying at the hand of the samurai. Uzumasa is Kyoto's Hollywood, which has been delivering films, TV, and live shows for decades.
Uzumasa Limelight ("Uzumasa Raimuraito" original title), directed by Ken Ochiai, tells the story of this dying breed of actors for whom there is no work since this particular film genre has dwindled. Uzumasa Limelight stars Seizô Fukumoto, one of Japan's most prominent kirare-yaku. When Fukumoto started his career, there were over 400 kirare-yaku, now there are but a handful, and at the age of 73 Fukumoto is still the most prominent. Practice makes perfect-Fukumoto has been killed on screen over 50,000 times, giving him the opportunity to perfect iconic dying moves such as the "prawn bend." The prawn bend is an infamous move that creates the illusion of a person dying in a painful, contorted way while falling back. The extreme back arch and twisting motion gives viewers the sense that the body is suspended in midair for a notable moment.
Uzumasa Limelight has beautifully orchestrated battles and training scenes that give viewers the sense of the art of fighting, which is part performance, part dance, part acting and part storytelling. The choreography in Uzumasa Limelight, as in many other samurai films, is so captivating that no one bats an eye at the fact that despite all the killing, there isn't an ounce of blood on the blades.
Ochiai uses Charlie Chaplin's 1952 movie Limelight as a template for Uzumasa Limelight. Ochiai's film recreates some of the Chaplin scenes at key moments in its own plot so that it is both familiar and also a little annoying. The Chaplin story is about an aging clown and young ballerina who develop an emotional bond while picking each other up from difficult circumstances. Uzumasa Limelight is about Fukumoto's character, Mr. Kamiyama, and Satsuki Iga (played by Chihiro Yamamoto) who is a young woman seeking out the old kirare-yaku to learn tate. One of the key differences between Kamiyama and Chaplin's clown is that Kamiyama is reticent and quiet, while Chaplin's clown is pontificating to the extreme. This in itself creates enough of a difference between the two works, making Ochiai's version of the story more in line with Chaplin's quote about the limelight (the concept, not the film) when he said, "The glamour of limelight, from which age must pass as youth enters." Thus, Uzumasa Limelight focuses on the team of aging kirare-yaku seeking an opportunity for a last hurrah as their bodies give out and industry values change to a more western type of business model.
The historical information and ideas in Uzumasa Limelight are interesting and the battle dance is beautiful so at the beginning the film is brimming with the possibility that Ochiai will deliver a unique film worthy of Kurosawa. But alas, maybe Uzumasa is now too similar to Hollywood and as a result, Ochiai can't help but fall into the Hollywood formulas, predictable outcomes, and narrow emotional breadth.
Uzumaza Limelight shows at Bear Tooth on Monday, December 28
Uzumasa Limelight ("Uzumasa Raimuraito" original title), directed by Ken Ochiai, tells the story of this dying breed of actors for whom there is no work since this particular film genre has dwindled. Uzumasa Limelight stars Seizô Fukumoto, one of Japan's most prominent kirare-yaku. When Fukumoto started his career, there were over 400 kirare-yaku, now there are but a handful, and at the age of 73 Fukumoto is still the most prominent. Practice makes perfect-Fukumoto has been killed on screen over 50,000 times, giving him the opportunity to perfect iconic dying moves such as the "prawn bend." The prawn bend is an infamous move that creates the illusion of a person dying in a painful, contorted way while falling back. The extreme back arch and twisting motion gives viewers the sense that the body is suspended in midair for a notable moment.
Uzumasa Limelight has beautifully orchestrated battles and training scenes that give viewers the sense of the art of fighting, which is part performance, part dance, part acting and part storytelling. The choreography in Uzumasa Limelight, as in many other samurai films, is so captivating that no one bats an eye at the fact that despite all the killing, there isn't an ounce of blood on the blades.
Ochiai uses Charlie Chaplin's 1952 movie Limelight as a template for Uzumasa Limelight. Ochiai's film recreates some of the Chaplin scenes at key moments in its own plot so that it is both familiar and also a little annoying. The Chaplin story is about an aging clown and young ballerina who develop an emotional bond while picking each other up from difficult circumstances. Uzumasa Limelight is about Fukumoto's character, Mr. Kamiyama, and Satsuki Iga (played by Chihiro Yamamoto) who is a young woman seeking out the old kirare-yaku to learn tate. One of the key differences between Kamiyama and Chaplin's clown is that Kamiyama is reticent and quiet, while Chaplin's clown is pontificating to the extreme. This in itself creates enough of a difference between the two works, making Ochiai's version of the story more in line with Chaplin's quote about the limelight (the concept, not the film) when he said, "The glamour of limelight, from which age must pass as youth enters." Thus, Uzumasa Limelight focuses on the team of aging kirare-yaku seeking an opportunity for a last hurrah as their bodies give out and industry values change to a more western type of business model.
The historical information and ideas in Uzumasa Limelight are interesting and the battle dance is beautiful so at the beginning the film is brimming with the possibility that Ochiai will deliver a unique film worthy of Kurosawa. But alas, maybe Uzumasa is now too similar to Hollywood and as a result, Ochiai can't help but fall into the Hollywood formulas, predictable outcomes, and narrow emotional breadth.
Uzumaza Limelight shows at Bear Tooth on Monday, December 28