Fires on the Plains "Nobi"

Director: Kon Ichikawa
Starring: Eiji Funikoshi
Year: 1959

Summary: In February, 1945, during last days of the Battle of Leyte, elements of the Imperial Japanese army have been abandoned by their leaders and deprived of food and supplies. Command and control has disintegrated, leaving individuals and small groups to their own devices in order to survive the rapidly deteriorating situation. Shuttled between his unit and a field hospital, a tubercular Private Tamura is forced to strike out on his own, hoping to avoid starvation and the tightening siege by American forces. Seeing his fellow soldiers slaughtered while trying to escape or surrender, the increasingly desperate Tamura bonds with Yasuda and Nagamatsu, two opportunists who barter tobacco for food and other provisions. While they live on "monkey meat," Tamura is confronted with the price he must pay in order to survive.

Comments: This film is the consummate anti-war movie. What is remarkable is that this film was even allowed to made in post-war Japan. There are no heroes, no patriotic causes, no moralistic overhang - just the reality of what men do to survive in extreme circumstances. Excellent movie that haunts you for a long time.

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Strangers ("Zarim")

Directors: Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor
Starring: Leron Levo, Lubna Azabal
Year: 2007

6 days in the lives of Eyal , an Israeli living in a kibbutz, and Rana, a Palestinian living in Paris, which starts with an accidental meeting in the Berlin Subway during the World cup finals, will change them completely. Eyal, who came to meet his accidental girlfriend, and Rana who came to cheer the French team, are forced to share as apartment and spend three intensive days together. As the final match approaches, their relationship tightens and they fall in love. Towards the final game, Rana is forced to leave Eyal who remains in Berlin on his own. Things get complicated as the Israel-Lebanon war breaks, and Eyal full of hope, decides to search for Rana, in spite of it all. An intimate encounter of two strangers in a strange city during World Cup and the second Israel-Lebanon war. A Story that touch's the profound wounds, created by years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of a young generation asking to reconnect and even reconcile.

Comments: The most interesting part of the movie is how it was made. The directors had no script, only a general outline of a plot. The actors first actual meeting was during the first take on the first day of shooting. At the start of each day of shooting, the actors were separately given bits of background on the characters, which they worked into the dialogue for that day's shooting. The two lead actors actually had a relationship offscreen -- which was evident from their obvious chemistry on screen. Shown at the 2008 Boston Jewish Film Festival.

Recommended.

Surfwise

Director: Doug Pray
Starring: Dorian Paskowitz
Year: 2007

Summary: The inspiring and tumultuous story of 85-year old surfer, health advocate and sex guru, Dr. Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, his wife Juliette, and their nine children who were all home-schooled and raised in a small camper on the beach, where they surfed and had to adhere to the strict diet and lifestyle of animals in the wild.

Comments: The story is extraordinary on its own -- an 11-member family living in camper on the beach in the 1960s and 1970s. But is more than that. The film is very revealing about the relationships between a father and his children, and raises some interesting and fundamental questions about child rearing. At the end of the film, whether you think Doc is a hero or a tyrant, you have to respect him for following his own path. The film does have a Jewish angle. Doc Paskowitz, who was raised in a religious Jewish home, insisted that his children share his own brand of jewish identity. Interesting fact: Doc Paskowitz is considered to the father of surfing in Israel, after introducing the sport there in the early 1960s.




Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Mon Uncle Antoine

Director: Claude Jutra
Starring: Jacques Gagnon
Year: 1971

Summary: Young Benoit learns about life very quickly from his uncle Antoine who serves as everything from notary and shopkeeper to undertaker in a depressed region of Canada's backwoods. Set in 1940s in cold rural Quebec at Christmas time, MON ONCLE ANTOINE is an alternately tender and haunting coming-of-age film that came to be recognized as one of Canadian cinema's greatest works.

Comments: On its own, this is a powerful film and well worth watching. For us, it had held some additional interest. The film was shot in a small mining town called Thetford Mines, about an hour and a half from Quebec City. Thetford Mines is known as the asbestos capital of Canada, since its primary mining product is asbestos. Zhanna and I stumbled upon this town by accident on a recent trip to Canada.

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

The Bad Sleep Well ("Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru")

Directors: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshiru Mifune, Keiko Nishi
Year: 1963

In Kurosawa's HAMLET-like story of corporate scandal in post-war Japan, a young man attempts to use his position at the heart of a corrupt company to expose the men responsible for his father's death, who was was driven to suicide by jumping out of the seventh floor of corporate headquarters. His illegitimate son exchanges identity with an old friend in order to marry the handicapped daughter of the corrupt industrialist he holds responsible.

Comments: The moral clarity of Kurosawa's other films is much more subtle in this film. Very good performance by Mifune.

Recommended.

Fear and Trembling ("Stupeur et tremblements")

Directors: Alain Courneau
Starring: Sylvie Testud, Kaori Tsuji
Year: 2003

Based on a novel by Amelie Nothomb, the movie shows the trials and tribulations of a Belgium-born woman (Testud) raised in Japan as she attempts to enter the Japanese working world.

Comments: Testud plays the role with sublime reserve and bewilderment, as she navigates through the clash between modern-day Japanese and western work place cultures. Note that office scene which depicts the boss's desk positioned facing all the desks of the subordinates in an open floor is shockingly similar to the Tokyo office of Steve's company.

Recommended.