Bavel’s Book (バベルの本, 1996)

In many ways, Koji Yamamura’s animated short Bavel’s Book (バベルの本, 1996) marks the beginning of his maturity as an artist.  In terms of technique, Yamamura very early became a master of the craft of animating frame-by-frame by hand, but from Bavel’s Book on his films start to engage more deeply with literary and philosophical themes.  Inspired in part by the short story “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges, Bavel’s Book is reminiscent of Michael Ende’s novel The Neverending Story (Die Unendliche Geschichte, 1979) in its depiction of the magical world of a book come to life.

One winter's day, a young boy and his little sister race to catch the bus but are disappointed when they miss it, despite the fact that an older bald man boarding the bus spots them approaching.  They sit down on the bench to await the next bus, panting from the exertion, and discover that the man has left a large leather-bound book on the bench.  Upon opening the book, the children are blasted with hurricane force winds that shoot out of it.  To the children’s wonderment, when the wind abates the ancient tower of Babel grows out of the pages of the book.  Peering inside a hole at the top of the tower, the boy sees a hexagonal library with hexagonal galleries.  This is Yamamura's interpretation of Borges’ famous Library of Babel:  

“The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.   .  .  From any hexagon one can see the floors above and below – one after another endlessly.  .  .  In the vestibule there is a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances.  Men often infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite – if it were, what need would there be for that illusory replication?  I prefer to dream that burnished surfaces are a figuration and promise of the infinite.  .  .”  

- Borges, “The Library of Babel”, Fictions (Penguin Modern Classics),  p. 65

A miniature figure of the bald man is sitting at a large desk in the centre of the lowest level of library reading a book.  As he turns the pages, strange figures and shapes seem to come out of the book as if by magic, and just as mysteriously disappear again.  When the man leaves the library, the boy reaches down to grasp the tiny book.  Opening it he finds that he and his sister are transported to the sea where they fish from a pirate ship and drag their giant catch up the sand of a desert island.  They roast and eat their fish peacefully, unaware that danger lurks underneath them in the form of a giant sea monster.  Can the children use their imaginative powers to save themselves from the monster?  You must watch the film for yourself to find out!

The layers of depth to the story are mirrored in Yamamura’s trademark layering of the image using an animation table.  He employs a variety of techniques including drawn animation, cutouts, ink splotches – Yamamura is never a purist – he uses whatever materials he needs in order to get the visual results that he desires.  Bavel’s Book is complemented by an inspired soundtrack composed by the microtonal pop group Syzygys (Hitomi Shimizu + Hiromi Nishida), who frequently collaborate with Yamamura (Pacusi, Atama Yama, Kafka Inaka Isha, etc.).  The film brought Yamamura widespread acclaim including awards at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival and the ’97 Seoul Animation Expo.  It was featured in the Panorama section at Annecy 97 and is one of ComicBox’s picks for the 30 Treasures of World Animation that did not make the Laputa 150 in 2003.

*** A note on the title:  In Japanese, “Babel” is written in katakana バベル.  The character ベ (be) is also often used to represent “ve” in Japanese as they do not have an equivalent to the “v” sound in their language.  For example Venezuela is written ベネズエラin katakana which would be rendered “Benezuela” in romaji.  Thus the “Bavel” in the official English title is likely the result of the word “Babel” being translated to katakana and back to romaji again. Confusingly, the compound ヴェ is also sometimes used for “ve” as in the city of Verona (ヴェローナ). Transliteration is not an exact science. ***

cmmhotes 2012

The film is available on the following DVDs:

Order from Japan via cdjapan:

Atamayama - Koji yamamura Sakuhinshu (JP with EN subs)

Order from the USA:

Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor and other Fantastic Films by Koji Yamamura

kingyo (2009)

The young female protagonist of kingyo (2009) is dressed in a maid’s costume and wanders the streets of Akihaba offering maid tours of the district for ¥10,000.  Business is going slowly except for an odd request by a creeper, but then the woman (Luchino Fujisaki aka Rukino Fujisaki) encounters her former university professor (Takao Kawaguchi) who pays for a tour in order to enjoy an hour of her company.

Sensei looks tired and haggard and we soon learn that the pair were once lovers.  When the woman broke it off, she gave sensei the parting gift of a pair of goldfish which he took home and gave to his wife (Amane Kudo).  Affairs, even when both participants are single, more often than not create an emotional mess when they go sour but when a spouse is cheating it adds the pain of deceit and disloyalty into the mix.   Visual cues suggest that sensei loved both his wife and his lover and is torn apart by the fact that in caring for the beautiful goldfish his now recently deceased wife was unwittingly nourishing his memories of his former lover.  The man’s dilemma is eloquently expressed not only in the face of the talented performance artist Takao Kawaguchi playing the sensei, but also in director Edmund Yeo’s innovative use of the split screen technique. 

Split screen is a technique that goes back a long way in cinema history, but in my opinion it has not yet reached its dramatic potential.  It has been used for comic effect – as in the Rock Hudson/Doris Day romantic comedy Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959) and these days is often used to liven up music videos or concert footage.  A number of directors have used it successfully for dramatic effect such as Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and Bruce McDonald’s The Tracey Fragments (2007).  Yeo’s use of the split screen is similar to that used by Roger Avary in The Rules of Attraction (2002): showing two actions that are happening simultaneously.    It works both to build tension (such as the parallel actions of the sensei and the student in Akihabara) and to add atmosphere to scenes (two shots of same scene: the wind blowing the curtains gently as the wife observes the goldfish in their bowl. It also adds suggestive story information as in the brief split screen of the wife and the lover.

The most difficult section to shoot and edit must have been the dialogue between sensei and the student during his “tour” of Akihabara.  Yeo used a two camera set-up and it all looks very minimalistic and graceful, but having worked on film shoots in Toronto, I imagine it must have been technically very challenging to get the lighting and camera positioning right.

Like Love Suicides (2009), kingyo is another adaptation of a short story by Yasunari Kawabata.  The original story “Canary” (1924) featured canaries instead of goldfish.  Yeo informed me that he thought goldfish were more Japanese than canaries, and they certainly look stunning in close-ups.  The choice of fish reminded me of Kuniko Mukoda’s short story “Mr. Carp” which involves a former mistress giving her married lover a koi fish.  If I remember correctly, the starring fish evokes feelings of guilt on the part of the man.   

It  is a beautifully shot and edited film.  Yeo has a delicate touch when it comes to creating atmosphere in his films.  I was particularly taken with the actors’ performances – particularly Kawaguchi who has an extraordinarily expressive face.  kingyo made the short list for best short film at Venice in 2009 and won awards at the Larissa Mediterranean Festival of New Filmmakers and the Eibunren Awards 2009.

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This is the third in a series of reviews of the short films of the award-winning Malaysian filmmaker Edmund Yeo (b. Singapore, 1984).  A graduate of Murdoch University in Australia, Yeo has been based in Tokyo since 2008 when he moved there to pursue a Master’s degree at Waseda.  His films have received wide acclaim at international festivals including Cannes, Pusan, and Rotterdam.

Edmund Yeo Filmography (homepage)

Chicken Rice Mystery (2008)

Fleeting Images (2008)

Love Suicides (2009)

kingyo (2009)

The White Flower (2010)

Afternoon River, Evening Sky (2010)

NOW (2010)

Inhalation (2010)

Exhalation (2010)

Tada’s Do-It-All House (まほろ駅前多田便利軒, 2011)

The fictitious town of Mahoro in Kanagawa prefecture is one of those inbetween communities framing the edges of Metro Tokyo.  Not a major city center in itself and with most people commuting to jobs in Tokyo, there’s really not much of interest going on.  It doesn't even draw tourists as it’s too far from the sea and not in the mountains.  The people who live there don’t really have much ambition to leave, and if they do, they usually come drifting back. 

At least, that is how it seems to Keisuke Tada (Eita), who runs a benri-ya (do-it-all-house) near the train station.  He advertises himself as a jack-of-all-trades doing everything from babysitting a chihuahua to working as a handyman.  He’s handsome and seems intelligent, so it is a bit of a mystery as to why he is doing such low paying work instead of working for a company in Tokyo. 

Order from cdjapan:

Mahoroeki Maetada Benriken Standard Edition

This mystery is the main element that creates tension in the film and awakes our curiosity to learn more about him.  The mystery deepens one evening when, after finishing up a job spying on bus drivers for their suspicious boss, Tada discovers that the chihuahua he is babysitting has gone missing from his truck.  He finds the dog sitting on the lap of a guy who looks a bit down on his luck at the bus stop.  It turns out that this man, Haruhiko Gyoten (Ryuhei Matsuda), went to school together with Tada, and that Tada had been responsible for Gyoten seriously injuring himself on a table saw during shop class.

Gyoten uses this old injury to guilt Tada into letting him crash at his place for the night.  One night turns into several days, and before long Gyoten is a permanent fixture at the benri-ya tagging along on jobs as Tada’s semi-reluctant assistant.  Although he seems like a deadbeat, there are many clues that Gyoten too may have once had a regular job.  He chastises Tada for not marketing himself properly and wonders why Tada, who seemed to have a promising future in front of him, is stuck in a dead end business.

Both men also seem determined to stay on the fringes of life, but they keep getting pulled into sticky situations due to their natural desires to help others.  They are drawn into action by a young boy called Yura (Kota Yokoyama) whose mother (Manami Honjou) has hired them to pick him up from cram school.  They start to realize that Yura’s strange behaviour is more than just insolence but is hiding the fact that someone is using him and they decide to help him get out of his predicament.  This subplot is tied up with another subplot about a “Columbian” prostitute called Lulu (Reiko Kataoka) and her fellow prostitute and house mate Haishi (Anne Suzuki) and the dodgy men in their lives.

The film is adapted from Miuri Shion’s bestselling novel of the same name which won the Naoki Sanjugo Prize in 2006.  It starts out well, and the relationship between Tada and Gyoten evolves in an interesting way.  Both Eita and Matsuda are excellent actors and the mystery surrounding their circumstances generates interest in what little plot is retained in this adaptation.  Unfortunately, the film has trouble sustaining interest and has many moments that just don't make sense at all (yes it's great to rescue a prostitute from a stalker but throwing her onto a train without belongings/money/somewhere to go/telling her friend is a bit odd to say the least).  One could argue that the directionlessness of the plot mimics the directionlessness of the two main protagonists, but the there are just too many head-scratching moments that lessen one’s enjoyment of the film.  The film’s biggest flaws are the one-dimensional female characters who would be laughable if they weren’t so disturbing.   

Director Omori Tatsushi won international acclaim for his avant-garde directorial debut The Whispering of the Gods (2005). While Tada’s Do-It-All House shows that he is quite good at getting great performances out of his male actors, the film just suffers from a problem quite prevalent in contemporary Japanese films: weak editorial decisions.  With a few nips and tucks to the second half of the film, this could have been a great star vehicle of Eita and Matsuda.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

This film screened at Nippon Connection 2012: