2017 ‘花筐’ Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
Spring, 1941. Sixteen-year-old Toshihiko attends school in the coastal town of Karatsu, where his aunt cares for his ailing cousin. Immersed in the seaside's nature and culture, Toshihiko soon befriends the town's other extraordinary adolescents as they all contend with the war's gravitational pull.
Shunsuke Kubozuka Shinnosuke Mitsushima Keishi Nagatsuka Tokio Emoto Honoka Yahagi Hirona Yamazaki Mugi Kadowaki Takako Tokiwa Takehiro Murata Tetsuya Takeda Wakaba Irie Kiyotaka Nanbara Yuriko Ono Taiyo Okamoto Toshie Negishi Shinnosuke Ikehata Takahito Hosoyamada Kayoko Shiraishi Ryunosuke Okawa Tsurutaro Kataoka Masahiro Takashima Yujiro Hara Tôru Shinagawa Takao Ito
HANAGATAMI, 화광, Cesto di fiori
Journeys in Space and Time: Nobuhiko Ōbayashi
HANAGATAMI
"Was I truly alive back then?"
Hanagatami is an unbelievably unique Japanese war period drama only Nobuhiko Ōbayashi could have made. Like no other film before! Ōbayashi is a director that most of the even slightly more active moviegoers know - after all his debut film, the absurd horror comedy Hausu, enjoys from its worldwide cult status. However, how many has seen much else from the director's long career? Only the most committed. Each of us should promise to see more and more from this fascinatingly special Japanese voice, because not only Hanagatami is one of the best works of art I've ever experienced, but also…
Obayashi makes movies that simultaneously feel like the first movie I’ve ever seen, and the last movie I’ll ever see. How fitting for a supposed self-eulogy that has been so clearly been dotting its own t’s straight from the womb.
A funny, sad, messy, unwavering, retrospectively telegraphed and always unexpected odyssey into the self and thy country.
Deeply moving in its reflection to claim back power in times of strife, permanently scarring in the very same inabilities. All the while moving like a tranquil dart through the still bleeding heart, in forever squaring the human edge of our wildest, and ultimately equally-as human squiggles.
I feel awash with reason to embrace who I am, and twice as wary of what will unravel once I let those floodgates open. I have both seen so much, and have so, so much left to learn. Good director if you ask me.
Japanuary #10/???
Completely knocked me flat. Even from Obayashi this is just masterful work. It feels less like a summation of his career and more like a maturation. It's so clear that this is the film he's been waiting to make his whole life. Every scene feels like it's been sitting in his mind for years, just waiting to be composed. Honestly I don't even know what to say. I'll need to watch it again, and again, and then a couple more times. Just utterly staggering work.
Life-changing cinema. A colourful reverie turned into an increasingly dark fever dream. An idyllic town and its people pulled into a war without having any say in it. Why must wars happen? The fragile egos and destructive ambitions of a few men in power can lead to thousands and thousands of utterly useless deaths. And all for what? A shot at glory? A chance to expand the geographical borders of a country? Bullshit.
Hanagatami is evocative cinema at its absolute finest. The town of Karatsu comes alive in front of our eyes; the place looks gorgeous. How Nobuhiko Ōbayashi uses green screen so generously without making the film look cheap is beyond my comprehension. He has this untainted love for…
*no spoilers*
What is this strange, unique, beautiful film? I am crying whilst writing this and I don't know why. The final entry of Obayashi's war trilogy will haunt me forever, and I cannot say why. There is an unspoken power to be found here, something bigger and deeper than anything else that has ever been witnessed. I will not call 'Hanagatami' the best film ever made (although it is really, really close), however of every film that I have seen, 'Hanagatami' is the best representation of what cinema can do. If the Lumiere Brothers could have sat down to watch 'Hanagatami' back in 1895, they would realise that cinema is more than just an attraction, more than a charade.…
Your going to die, I’m going to die, all your friends are going to die, all of your family is going to die, all your enemies are going to die, all of the people you’ve ever met are going to die, all of the people you haven’t met are going to die; slowly everything you’ve ever known is going to slip away from you and all you’ll have left is memories that will slowly start to distort and then even disappear themselves. Most of Obayashi’s movies are dreamlike but this is an old mans romanticized memory of a time long gone. Of all the people he knew, things he experienced, thoughts he had, beauty he saw, they’re all gone now…
Everyone is always so beautiful just before a war.
One of the greatest pop-artists that ever lived working at the top of his formal control while dying of cancer. Operatic, swelling, maximalist. Nobuhiko Ōbayashi’s aesthetics perfected.
If Jodorowsky can live to 92 years old surely we could’ve gotten another ten years out of Ōbayashi.
“Maybe you love me because I’m so ordinary.”
After having wrestled with this film for days, written over 1000 words on it and deleted them and started again, I still can’t pin down anything in a way I’m happy with. I think a lot of people here consider this to be Obayashi's masterwork - a case of the filmmaker at the end of their career churning out one final artistic statement that serves as a culmination of their life's work (though it turns out Obayashi in fact had one more epic in him before he died in April of this year). And in all honesty, one would be hard pressed to disagree. He takes all the key elements of his films - nostalgic youth, the loss of innocence,…
A crowning achievement. A three hour trance. A whirlpool of emotion. A chaotic fever dream of memories, longing, and death. What can we do when the world is seemingly about to end? The words Pearl Harbour, Japan, and America echo throughout this film in an extremely uncomfortable fashion, and yet right alongside those hints and temptations of war are the mentions of Edgar Allan Poe and Osamu Dazai; however the allusions and references to these two authors feel rather different to the feelings of when the words of Japan and America meet each other.
"Art should have no borders."
And yet can this art exist freely even in the chaotic, useless act of war? We see Toshihiko and his group…
Obayashi #7
Perplexing does not even begin to explain it. So strange at times, I was unsure if the people who had rated this five stars had watched the same film that was unfolding before my eyes. However, so many things about it kept pulling me back to watch it again, to think about it again, to ponder over why Obi implemented the techniques he did. Having now digested this swan song, having contemplated its meanings, and having rewatched the final 30 minutes three additional times over—I think I finally “get it” (yet its callings still persist in my mind).
In a bizarre estimation, 2017 really brought us two amazing pieces of surrealist film from two of the best auteurs…
scattered images: a soldier solemnly playing cello against a vivid red sunset. the moon, always bright and full, seen through small round windows, almost portholes. young men idling nude against a backdrop of shooting stars and fireflies. lush fields full of singing children and scarecrow soldiers, both doomed to war.
