Japanese cinema seminar

Like every Tuesday i opened my day with 90 minutes of Japanese cinema. I take this seminar at university, so at the end of the year we must write a 20 pages essay about any issue we choose from the very wide spectrum of Japanese Cinema.

Today we discussed the japanese family, and how it's presented in various films. As in every Japanese film, also in family matters the Giri (the obligations one has) are an issue. In Tokyo Story of Ozu (me and Jim Jarmush love this talented director very much) you can see how the children try to get rid of their parents, refuse the Giri. Ozu put the son in Osaka and the daughter in Tokyo - spread all over the country. In the traditional Japanese family children and parents continued to live under the same roof their entire lives. You see the younger sister still respects the Giri, and the widow of the son is the one who takes the most care for the parents. She, of course, doesn't have to take care of them - but she does it because she wants to.

I'm not sure what this means. Perhaps not only gap between children and parents, but also something deeper - the real obligation starts from the inside, not from outside rules that fade with time. At the end, Giri or not Giri, we all make our choices as individuals.

The second film we talked about today was Family Game of Morita. I didn't know this director until today but the film was interesting both in theme and style, and quite extreme. A stranger enters the life of a family, and though he change it a bit, at the end all is the same. The ending dinner scene is great, very original and full of...food.

The last film discussed was Visitor Q. This one is real extreme piece, not realistic and was very hard for some students to watch. A daughter fucks with her father (and then laughs about him for being an 'early bird' and taking money from him), a mother who is a whore and a drug addict, a son who hits his mother with a belt, a father that takes video shot of his son being beaten by his friends on the street. All this untill Visitor Q enters their life (in a violante way, of course) and becomes part of the family. After filling a room with the mother's milk everything starts to change. I guess this film is a must see, if your eyes and guts can take it.

Besides that, I'm still working on my script. Long night ahead.