Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

 Ma Rainey by Sterling Brown

I've been thinking of what James Baldwin once said about artists being in-service to the people they represent. It is something that is often taken for granted, but such a responsibility exacts a great toll. This toll is even greater for black artists in the United States where one is so much more exploited and looked down upon than others. This play is about a black artist and her band coming to grip with this apartheid-exploitation, while at a recording session. The play takes place 100 years ago and was written in 1984, but all the complaints and debates of the band have been in the news for the last decade. 

The band is made up of a very diverse group of characters: a devout trombone player leads them, a philosophically-minded intellectual piano player, a nihilistic trumpeter that is convinced that he is the greatest artist of all of them there (including Ma Rainey) and the bass player who is the audience-surrogate and just wants to get this day over with. They are the backing band for Gertrude "Ma" Rainey one of the first professional blues singers and mentor to Bessie Smith. They spend the day of the recording session engaging in dialogues about their fates as black musicians and Rainey and her hot-headed trumpet player duel back-and-forth over everything including a chorus girl that Rainey is involved with (Rainey was bisexual). The setting of the play is Chicago rather than Pittsburgh where August Wilson's Century Cycle usually takes place. The setting does a great job at adding a layer of claustrophobia to the tensions that unfold at the recording session and the tensions between the trumpeter and everybody else ensures what type of play this will be (Chekhov would've been proud of how well Wilson executed everything). Historical fiction is always going to have its own complications, but I think August Wilson does an excellent job at it here.

 Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (The actual song.)

As to the film itself: it was a very vibrant film given the tension in it. Every single actor nailed it and the costume designer is to be commended. I expected the adaptation to be well given that this movie was produced by August Wilson acolyte Denzel Washington.  Viola Davis, Glynn Turman, and of course the late-Chadwick Boseman (in his final film performance) give spell-binding performances here. Though I can only imagined what this would've looked like on the big screen, I am still glad to have seen it.

Princess Mononoke (1997) directed by Hayao Miyazaki

 "I am not attempting to solve the entire world's problems. There can never be a happy ending between humanity and ferocious gods. Yet, even amidst hatred and carnage, life is still worth living. It is possible for wonderful encounters and beautiful things to exist. I will depict animosity, but that is in order to show the fact that there is something more precious. I will depict the bondage of a curse in order to show the joy of liberation. What I will show is the boy reaching an understanding of the girl, and the process of the girl's heart opening up to the boy. In the end the girl may say to the boy, 'I love you, Ashitaka. But I can't forgive human beings.' The boy will smile and say, 'that's alright. Won't you live together with me?' 

This is the kind of film I want to make." – Hayao Miyazaki's April 19, 1995 pitch for Princess Mononoke

 

How The Sun First Rose on "Japan"

This film is neck-and neck with Castle in the Sky (1986) for my favorite Hayao Miyazaki film. This film was the first of many of Miyazaki's "final films." This film has one of the fiercest female protagonist of his his movies up to that point and along with Miyazaki's environmentalist themes, had a strong look at Shinto spirituality and an amazing allegory of the founding of that country that we call Japan.

An Emishi boy, a civilization of Yamato settlers and iron workers led by a female warlord who is an amazing call-back to the female antagonist of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), and the various forest kami–especially wolf kami–that have taken a human girl dressed in Jōmon-era clothes as their own interlock with each other over the land and each other's existence during the early Muromachi period. From these three mutually-hostile groups will be the creation of we now call "Japan." San aka the titular Princess Mononoke represents not simply the natural world but, pre-historic Japan at it's roots—symbolized by her Jōmon clothes; the antagonist Lady Eboli represents represents the contradictions of modern civilization and the brutality of the Yamoto conquest of the islands that they would call Nippon: she's kind to all the outcast of that era of society, but she takes all her rage on the land and the kami that live in it. In the middle is the co-protagonist Ashitaka who represents the Emishi not so ancient as the Jōmon, but one of the ethnic groups that resisted easy assimilation or subjugation to the Yamoto hegemony: they were until the end (or beginning depending on how you look at it) of the Muromachi period offering an alternative to what we now think of as "Japanese culture" on the main island of Japan—much closer to the land than the Yamoto, but still a human civilization. This movie reminds me of Maya Angelou's On The Pulse of the Morning, but in a Japanese context. Nobody has a reason to trust one another—and all the reasons to destroy each other. But it is shown in  the little moments that when they do work and relate to each other with compassion, they can make great things happen. Tragically greed, prejudice, and a simple lack of understanding means that history will eventually play out…as tragedy.

It is amazing how beautiful the artwork is here—95% hand-drawn (this was the first Studio Ghibli film to use CGI). Miyazaki closed out the 20th century (and what he thought was his career) with this film: Princess Mononoke is a true masterpiece of not simply anime, but animation cinema as a whole. There wouldn't be another film of this caliber for me until Your Name (2016) almost 20 years later.

Twenty-Four Eyes (1954) directed by Keisuke Kinoshita

 Hotaru Koi by Sekiya Toshiko

This is the first film I have seen by film-maker Keisuke Kinoshita and as far as first impressions go, this is a good one. I knew that Kinoshita was a contemporary of Akira Kurosawa and like Kurosawa made propaganda films for the Fascist government of WWII-era Japan. Also like Kurosawa, he turned decidedly leftward after the war and made many films criticizing the fascist government including this film. While Kinoshita would never find the same popularity outside of Japan as Kurosawa, he was massively popular inside of Japan during and after the war. If you asked any cinephile outside of Japan what the best Japanese film or film in-general of 1954 was you would certainly get Seven Samurai, yet Twenty-Four Eyes was the consensus pick by Japanese critics for 1954.

Twenty-Four Eyes is an interesting historical epic because it documents The Great Depression and World War II not through the eyes of famous Japanese figures or even politically-active dissidents like Akira Kurosawa's No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), but a school-teacher and her first 12 students on the eve of the Depression. It follows them as both the economic downturn and the rise of fascism hits there rural island. All of them would suffer during this time and the war would be the ultimate disaster for them all. The film is a typically 1950s melodrama, but the way it handles how these larger historical forces affected this little area is what admire about this film. While it is a bittersweet film, it still has some hope for tomorrow and contains a possible jab at Bicycle Thieves (1948) of all things at the end. 

1954 was a big year for Japanese films—seriously. The fact that Kinoshita has two critically-praised releases (along with Kenji Mizoguchi) tells how good he was. This film also is more of what I consider a true feminist film as oppose to the films of Mizoguchi which I consider proto-feminist.

Sounder (1972) directed by Martin Ritt

 I wasn't planning on reviewing this movie before February, but with the death of Cicley Tyson (1/282021), I changed plans. This movie is a beautiful almost-mystical film about love and endurance. It's a Hollywood neorealist film that looks at a family that endures in rural Louisiana during the worst of The Great Depression and American apartheid. Paul Winfield plays a father living under a blatant kleptocracy who decides to go to desperate measures to feed his family and is thrown into prison. This leaves his wife played by Tyson in one of her greatest roles hold the family down through crooked-bosses, the police, and the judicial system that was blatantly rigged. As she keeps the family together on this front her son, played by Kevin Hooks, goes in search of his father as the white officials have refused to tell them where he was taken to. He goes on this journey that really becomes more about his future than simply searching for his father accompanied by his dog: the titular character Sounder.

The dog becomes the symbol of the families struggle and triumph. Despite the hardships and brutal struggle that is dished out to them all, they somehow survive and overcome it. The ending of this movie is one of the most beautiful and moving in cinema; Sounder is a film that becomes a rewarding experience to watch each time. All the praise given to it is well-earned and few films have been made with the same genuine earnestness.

Boy (1969) "少年" directed by Nagisa Oshima

 This is the most "accessible" of Oshima's work and was my introduction to the Japanese New Wave proper. Osima's work totally destroys the line between New Wave and Exploitation cinema, but this is his most tamed work. This is a film about a Japanese couple that fakes car accidents to scam people and get their son, the titular "Boy", in on the job. It is a crazy look and commentary on the paradoxes of Japanese families at this time using an actual incident as the model. While this film is no 400 Blows, it is decent for what it is.

It Must Be Heaven (2019) directed by Elia Suleiman

 After the ending of The Time That Remains (2009), I thought that Elia Suleiman had said everything he wanted to say in regards to the fate of Palestinians in The Holy Land. I mean despite the brief optimism of the Arab Spring, things got much worse and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its blockade of Gaza have been total. With the majority of Arab states no longer ignoring it diplomatically or opposing it, Israel can now treat the Palestinians any way they want with no threat of recourse. It seems Suleiman has recognized this too, so after 30 minutes of the audience catching up with him after 10 years (his mom has died―the last recognizable person of his first 3 films), and with his Palestinian neighbors looking like characters from The Iceman Cometh, he decides to leave. Suleiman's first feature film sees him come into Palestine from exile in New York City and Europe and now he is taking the reverse journey.

We first see him, after an interesting plane ride, in Paris just in time for Bastille Day celebrations. He finds Paris intriguing and very welcome change of pace (we find out interestingly that Suleiman, like Akira Kurosawa, is an ass man). We then see how the charm of Paris quickly fades to bewilderment at the culture change takes him by surprise (this is an actual thing called...Paris Syndrome). It should be noted that Suleiman is still playing his actual-self, so people recognize him as a film-maker throughout the film and he is often doing things concerning his film projects in this film (in this way, this film bares a big resemblance to Chantel Akerman's The Meeting's of Anna (1978)). We also can't miss the commentary of a man inspired by Jacques Tati making a film in Paris. But of course we have to move on to New York City.

Well, upon reaching Trump-era America...it is a trip. Besides being treated as invisible or passive aggressively-like in Paris his first interaction after not being in the USA since the 1990s is a taxi driver who is amazed at actually meeting a Palestinian (his second as we learn). He goes to a grocery store and is shocked that everyone in the store has a gun (this is not something you'd see in New York City, but if he was down South it would certainly be accurate) and it is a hilariously over-the-top scene. Once we get to Central Park the tone for this section of the film is set. The diversity of the city is unlike anything seen in Nazareth or Paris; the mania is also very uniquely NYC. After seeing all the folks with their weapons in the earlier scene we see a Palestinian woman engaged in a protest and is immediately swarmed by NYPD: the scene is very reminiscent of Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996). More call backs from 'Chronicles' come when we see his various speaking engagements in an art school and a Palestinian-American conference. We get a brief meeting of Suleiman with Gael García Bernal and a meeting with a fortune teller over the destiny of Palestine. 

After he finishes his stay in NYC, he goes back home a little happier and a little wiser, he realizes that at this point-in-time, there is no point leaving Palestine, because the world has become Palestine. It is a bittersweet realization, but a hopeful one for Suleiman.

New Year

 I decided my first post on here of this new year would be a non-review. New government in power in here in the United States, but the plague has been going as strong as ever. We've gone a step closer to the end of the republic, but these things never happen all at once. I have no idea what more I'll be doing with this blog beyond what I've been doing, but I'll see as I go along.