おとうと Ototo Her Brother 雪之丞変化 Kon Ichikawa Yukinojo Henge Producer Hiroaki Fujii
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الوادي Al-wadi 철원기행 Cheol won gi haeng בן זקן Ben Zaken フタバから遠く離れて第二部 Futaba kara toku hanarete dainibu ダリー・マルサン Dari Marusan ثمانية وعشرون ليﻻً وبيت من الشعر Thamaniat wa ushrun laylan wa bayt min al-sheir Чайки Chaiki مادرِ قلبْ امتی Madare ghalb atomi 水の声を聞く Mizu no koe o kiku מכיוון היער Me’kivun ha’yaar המכה השמונים ואחת Ha'makah ha'shmonim ve'ahat 炎上 Enjo © Kadokawa Corporation おとうと Ototo Her Brother 雪之丞変化 Kon Ichikawa Yukinojo henge Producer Hiroaki Fujii. Production company Daiei Film (Kioto, Young Gen and her brother Hekiro live with their father and stepmother. Japan). Director Kon Ichikawa. Screenplay Yoko Mizuki. Due to the stepmother’s severe rheumatism, it’s Gen who does most of Director of photography Kazuo Miyagawa. Production de- the work around the house. She’s also unceasingly loyal to her brother, a sign Tomoo Shimogawara. Sound Mitsuo Hasegawa. Music good-for-nothing rebel incapable of avoiding trouble. Their mother, a pi- Yasushi Akutagawa. Restoration/director Masahiro Miyajima. ous Christian who feels the rest of the family doesn’t really accept her, of- Restoration/sound Mototsugu Hayashi. ten laments her poor health. The father never really listens to his family’s Cast Keiko Kishi (Gen), Hiroshi Kawaguchi (Hekiro), Kinuyo troubles, content to dole out platitudes when not remaining silent. The Tanaka (mother), Masayuki Mori (father), Noboru Nakaya (po- family’s fragile relationships only begin to heal when Hekiro becomes seri- liceman), Jun Hamamura (doctor), Kyoko Kishida (Mrs Tanuma), ously ill. Kon Ichikawa is as non-judgemental as one of the songs playing at Takaya Hijikata (Nakata), Sho Natsuki (detective), Kyoko Enami the hospital, its lyrics referencing “The sins of the parents, the sins of the (nurse Miyata). children…”. The film is narrated exclusively from Gen’s perspective, who oscillates between obedience and defiance, yet is still unable to escape the DCP, colour. 98 min. Japanese. family which determines her life. Ichikawa chose a muted colour palette World sales Kadokawa Corporation for this family drama, in which the stifling atmosphere of the family home is contrasted with the promise of freedom offered by nature. Annette Lingg berlinale forum 2015 1 The range of reds Distance and decency Ototo is a film of surprising beauty with memorable compositions The ‘home’ is said to be comprised of paternal love, maternal love, that engage eye and sympathy. Ichikawa has said that he sup- marital love, sibling love. But no matter how much love there may pressed the colour scheme to ‘evoke the dark feeling of Taisho’, be between family members, a person is ultimately alone. Because but that undersells the visual impression of the film. Whilst the of this premise that people are lonely beings, showing kindness range of reds, russets, and clarets might not have been quite as and consideration to one another while living together makes this opulent as those in another Taisho-era film in the season, Seijun love beautiful. And while there may be a difference in situations, Suzuki’s Zigeunerweisen (1980), the richness of the range of deep the troubles a young soul carries or the way it leaps logic is the reds constantly enlivened interest and helped to emphasise the same now as it was in the distant past. This film’s story is about leading character’s emotional sympathies. For this film has to be the home of the human spirit. read through the thoughts of Gen, the daughter, played by Keiko It’s important to convey that you lead a lonely existence. I feel Kishi. Gen is one of the two named characters in the film along sorry for those who live out their lives without ever recognising with her brother Hekiro, played by Hiroshi Kawaguchi. It would be their loneliness. However, it’s also not enough to just realise this tempting to slip ‘titular’ in front of ‘her brother’, but it shouldn’t inherent solitude. Every one of us builds a family and lives within be; the film – and the book on which it is based – is entirely fo- it. From the outside, most of these families may look like an aver- cused on the standpoint of Gen and the title of the film should age, happy household. But one step inside reveals a web of com- more emphatically be translated as ‘My Brother’. plex, contradictory human relationships. Each lonely existence is strongly bonded by blood to live together An emotionally cold father in one home as a small group. Some may say it’s only natural that There was one aspect where Kon Ichikawa seemed to take plea- blood relations should be able to love one another as a matter of sure in retaining his sardonic streak. ‘Father’ was played by one of fact. But that would never be my opinion. I believe that actively the most renowned of all Japanese actors, Masayuki Mori, in surely accepting the fact that each family member is lonely enables the one of his least flattering roles. (…) He’s emotionally cold (un- love between parent and child, husband and wife, sister and broth- til the last moment of the film), he’s lax even when confronted by er, in their mutual life, to be unrelenting and irreplaceable, and his family, damagingly indulgent of his son, and callous with his therefore, that much more precious. This issue regarding loneliness daughter. And despite working from home, he’s simply not there. and love makes up the fundamental form of the soul and it hasn’t But this ‘Father’ is not any old father. Japanese viewers would have changed. No, perhaps we need to face this problem even more so all known at the time that the film was made from a highly topical at present. Without question, the environment surrounding us novel by Aya Koda, clearly autobiographical of her own life and, in in modern times is much more relentless compared to the Taisho particular, of her very famous father. Rohan Koda is as renowned in era. And people easily use the word ‘solitude’ in a convenient, very Japanese literature as, say, Charles Dickens, but much more high- abstract sense. It’s almost like an escape from the harsh modern brow. Rohan was sufficiently famous for his writing (and his drink- times or a passive armour of self-righteousness. I dislike this kind ing), that Aya could find herself in the papers just for working in of use of the word. I believe loneliness is a personal issue within a sake shop. It was only after Rohan’s death that Aya could begin each human’s soul, and that one of the bigger influences that con- to write, and eventually write her masterpiece, Flowing, memora- nects an individual with others is ‘decency’. bly made into a film by Mikio Naruse. By all accounts (and I rely I decided to express this decency through the woman called Gen. heavily on Alan Tansman’s book for information), Aya gave a more Kon Ichikawa nuanced account of her father than Ichikawa and scriptwriter Yo- ko Mizuki allow. I fancy that either or both of them still resented spending time in school reciting his storm description from The Kon Ichikawa was born in 1915 in Ujiya- Five-Storied Pagoda. mada (now Ise) in the prefecture of Mie, But as the film’s title suggests, at least in Japanese, it’s the rela- Japan. He spent much of his childhood tionship between elder sister and younger brother that lies at the drawing and painting. Ichikawa has named centre of the film. Mother, as in real life, is long dead. Kinuyo Tana- the Disney cartoon series Silly Symphonies ka has to act the role of a struggling stepmother who cannot find as one of the most important influences on her role in the family and gets no support from Rohan in checking his artistic development. In 1933, he began little brother. Apart from the beautifully recreated opening scene, Corporation Kadokawa © working as an assistant in the animation Gen and the other women are nearly always filmed inside, whereas department of a film studio. He became Ichikawa uses highly contrasted outdoors scenes to convey the an assistant director for feature films in 1935. He made his first driven, impetuous character of little brother. short animated film,Musume dojoji / A Girl at Dojo Temple, in 1945. I had never previously thought of Kon Ichikawa and Mikio Naruse Ichikawa then directed numerous feature films and documenta- as sharing the same muse, but in Aya Koda they certainly did. And, ries, many of which were based on screenplays by his wife, Natto even as a Naruse devotee, I’d have to concede that Ichikawa’s Ototo Wada. He started his own production company in 1973. In 2000, he is, visually and aurally, a much more advanced film. Both directors’ received the Berlinale Camera award. Kon Ichikawa died in 2008. reputations rest strongly on their literary adaptations. Like Naruse, it’s tempting to speculate how much Ichikawa’s career was boosted with close association with female scriptwriters. Films Roger Macy, http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/her-brother/ 1945: Musume Dojoji / A Girl at Dojo Temple (short film). 1948: Hana hiraku / A Flower Blooms. 1949: Ningen moyu / Human Patterns. 1950: Ginza Sanshiro / Sanshiro of Ginza. 1951: Ieraishan / Nightshade berlinale forum 2015 2 Flower. 1952: Wakai hito / Young People. 1953: Pu-san / Mr Pu. 1953: Aoiro Kakumei / The Blue Revolution. 1953: Seishun Zenigata Heiji / The Youth of Heiji Zenigata. 1954: Okuman choja / A Billionaire. 1955: Kokoro / The Heart. 1956: Biruma no tategoto / The Burmese Harp (Berlinale Retrospektive 1990). 1956: Shokei no heya / Pun- ishment Room.