Ryuhei Kitamura gets fed up of beautiful girls

[Mulboyne]

[floatl][/floatl]ComingSoon.net have a rare interview with Ryuhei Kitamura, director of films like Godzilla: Final Wars, Versus and Azumi among others. He has one comment on finding an actress for Azumi which puts the fuss surrounding the casting Memoirs of a Geisha in a different perspective.

...The other thing is the actress problem. Who's going to play Azumi?" It's impossible to find an actress who can move in Japan. It's not like Hong Kong or China or Korea. Most of the Japanese actors and actresses, they can't move...Someone famous is easy to find, but it's a different thing if she can move, so I had to find somebody who I can train as Azumi, maybe famous or maybe becoming famous. Me and the producer auditioned 200 beautiful girls. We just called every beautiful girl from 14 to 23, all over Japan, but we couldn't find one...It's only fun for a day or two talking with beautiful girls...

The rest of the interview is worth a look.

[Mulboyne]

Hoga Central carries another interview with Kitamura.

It is difficult to make action movies in Japan in general, because the budget is usually limited and there aren't many action-trained actors. So what was your motivation to do this film?

K: That is exactly the purpose of this movie. When I made my first film "Versus", I did not know Mr. Yamamoto and nobody else in Japan agreed with me. They all said 'such a theme has to be animation, because we don't have a huge CG or explosives like Hollywood, or kung-fu stars like Hong Kong.' But if we keep avoiding this genre, we will not catch up with them forever. I felt that the important thing is how you fight. Azumi's budget is considered very low in Hollywood level, but that is not the point. I have a pride on my way of directing. I have my own style. So I made 'Versus", very edgy film, and brought it to international film festivals. International industry people and press told me it was a great Japanese action, the first one they saw since 'Lone Wolf'. I was happy, but at the same time, I was sad to realize nobody tried to make this type of film for 30 years. Because it is too risky. For actors, it is much more secure to do TV dramas, so the feature films have become TV-like, and lose the scale and entertainment factors. I wanted to do differently, and got the chance to direct 'Azumi', so I felt destined to do it. For example, people were surprised to see the 360-degree rotation scene. I saw it in U2 music video 15 years ago, but nobody in Hollywood would do it. They would not try. I have always thinking how to do it, and this time we developed the method to do it with our staff members.

I was not trying to revive the old style. I wanted to make the film which can be enjoyed 10, 20 years later. Now it is released in the U.S. 3 years later than Japan, but I don't think it got outdated. I wanted to make the mainstream entertainment film like Japan used to make, with a little edginess here and there.

That comment in bold seems so obviously true to me and yet it is rarely acknowledged in the film world. It was a big reason why Hollywood couldn't find Japanese actresses they believed could carry a film when they were casting Memoirs of a Geisha.

[AssKissinger]

I kind of think of it as TV becoming more film like. Can you give some example of what you mean?

[Mulboyne]

I kind of think of it as TV becoming more film like. Can you give some example of what you mean?

One example I noticed at the time was the film Whiteout starring Yuji Oda. The story is a straightforward copy of the Die Hard scenario and was produced in an attempt to capitalize on the action film market that the Korean film Swiri (aka Shiri or Shuri) found so successfully. Swiri is a decent action film and cinematic in its ambition but Whiteout feels small-scale and is awash with sentimentality. Film is a visual medium but there are far too many "moving speeches" which only serve to drain the film of any tension.

SPOILER

Oda's character is racked with guilt at losing his rescue team partner in a blizzard in the opening scenes. A few month's later, his partner's fiancee gets caught up with a terrorist raid on a dam and that gives the hero added motivation to foil the plot. But the film doesn't trust us to make that blindingly obvious connection so we get subjected to a dialogue over the walkie talkie where his commanding officer says things like "So...you are struggling against the odds, with almost no hope, in the faithful memory of your old partner?" to which Oda replies "Uhn" and everyone at base camp listening to the transmission goes watery-eyed. In case we didn't get the point, this is reworked three or four times.

END SPOILER

One of the reasons for these kinds of speeches in Japanese film, often backed with some maudlin background music, which is a typical TV convention, is that production companies often prefer to back scriptwriters rather than directors. Particularly writers who have a hit TV drama or two under their belt because their fan base can go a long way to recouping the initial outlay. TV provides stable revenues compared with film and the financiers are massively risk averse currently.

Writing for television and writing for film are two different skills and not many seem able to step up to the larger canvas. Perhaps they just settle for what they know but another part of the problem is that actors tend to bring all their TV acting tics along too which reinforces the feeling of claustrophobia. Telling a story in 90-120 minutes also requires a different pacing than you'll get in a serial or mini-series. Sometimes you do get a film that does take advantage of the different medium and it makes the difference all the more apparent. Shimotsuma Monogatari (aka Kamikaze Girls) is a small-scale story but quite witty and inventive. The director, Tetsuya Nakashima, comes from a promo video background which places a higher value on visuals so that probably is a factor.

[Mulboyne]

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Trailer for Kitamura's new anime feature "Baton".