I really disliked the first Kobayashi movie on this Criterion Eclipse box set, but at least it was earnest. This… is a movie about baseball and baseball scouts?
OK, it’s a critical movie about baseball scouts…
This is brutally tedious. The cinematography is OK — the shots generally look nice — but it’s just so uninspiring.
Finally!
I guess the point of all this is to point out that sports is a business and that there’s money involved? I”M SO SHOCKED I CANNOT EVEN TYPE ANY MOR
Kobayashi wants nothing to do with that – his intentions are to strip away the masks and expose sports as just one manifestation of the human meat market that the economic status quo thrusts nearly all of us into, one way or the other.
Oh! That 30 year old guy is supposed to be a teenager? I guess that makes more sense.
So ironic.
I was almost right up there: This movie is distilled tedium.
Huh. This is about Japanese war criminals in prisons run by Americans? So we’re supposed to be sympathetic to the Japanese, I think? Because the American guards are portrayed as being kinda uncouth. Not much couth on display.
And whenever an “American” talks we get some side titles. Most of them don’t sound like they have English (or even American) as their native language… are all the non-Japanese actors from Russia or something?
*ssh*
Er uhm me too? Or not?
This movie seems to lack some context… but everything here was probably crystal clear to an audience when the movie was new? But at this remove, it’s pretty opaque.
And really tedious. I don’t know if I’m going to last the duration, because it’s pretty uninspiring: Quotidian cinematography, actors that aren’t really convincing, and a plot that doesn’t seem to be… there?
(I’m using the word “quotidian” here because Louis Malle talked “quotidienne” in last night’s movie and now it’s stuck in by brain.)
This is the worst kind of movie to watch — it’s well-meaning and heartfelt, but just isn’t very good?
It’s nice to have characters in the movie just state the premise of the movie, isn’t it?
It’s interesting that this movie isn’t trying to argue that these people are innocent or antyhing. It’s just about how unfair it is how there people are punished while their superiors are going free?
I realise that this was made in the 50s, and it took courage to even try to do a movie that criticised anything in the Japanese military… but having read more than my fill of Japanese autobio comics (and even some novels) from these years, this movie is really soft-pedalling everything. So there’s a kind of disconnect between the “here’s the truth!” stance of this movie and how much worse it really was.
But positing from the point of view of war criminals is original.
I think that’s an admirable goal.
This is the kind of movie I really want to love? Because it’s heartfelt and admirable? And I can understand what a struggle it must have been to make this?
This is supposed to be the last really hot day for the summer here (or something), so I thought I’d mix up a batch of batida de mango and then watch six hours about India, as one does.
This is a documentary TV series Malle and his crewed filmed over some months in India and was shown by BBC in 1969:
Many British Indians and the Indian Government felt that Malle had shown a one-sided portrait of India, focusing on the impoverished, rather than the developing, parts of the country. A diplomatic incident occurred when the Indian government asked the BBC to stop broadcasting the programme. The BBC refused and were briefly asked to leave their New Delhi bureau.
I had expected something more like Humain, trop humain — with is basically silent, with the camera just registering things. But this is very different. I don’t think Malle has shut up for more than a handful of seconds so far?
Catholics.
I kinda get the feeling that Malle haven’t really talked to er anybody about anything here, because he keeps saying odd stuff. It’s like… an India from first principles? (Which is another way of saying “without knowing anything about anything”.)
But on some subjects he seems insightful, but perhaps that’s just because I know nothing about it.
Dude. Rude much?
Ouchie.
I can see why people in Britain protested this series — it makes India seem like a really unpleasant place. I don’t think that’s Malle’s project, exactly? He’s flabbergasted by India? But critical, especially of all the particularly risible religious stuff.
As the series progresses, Malle’s narration peters out a bit, fortunately. The images are great and fascinating, and Malle’s narration is the least interesting bit.
I’m enjoying this rant against the caste system (and how hard it is to get Indian people to even admit that it exists).
I think some of this could have been edited down. The episode about the Bonda people was interesting, but seemed to have nothing to do with anything else. And now they seem to be just visiting some random ashram, and it feels like watching holiday snaps now.
The final episode is a bit like watching a news reel? Very different from the previous episodes.
This is a wildly uneven er film. Or TV series. There’s some gorgeous shots and some fascinating stuff in here, but there’s also a bunch of stuff that seems to be in here just because they’d happened to film it, and didn’t want to get rid of it. So it doesn’t really make that much sense as a film I mean TV series?
%3A+Supersaw)
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