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Thoughts: Aoi Haru
I remember when Aoi Haru (Blue Spring) came out in Japan; it was in Tokyo right before I went back to Canada, and I really, really wanted to see it. A typhoon kept me in Nagasaki an extra day, so I never got the chance, but it turns out that's a good thing; I don't think I could've taken it.
I still like Ryuhei Matsuda, but so far, the roles I've seen him in have spanned the emotional range from beautiful stoicism to stoic beauty.
Ugly, industrial concrete block of a Japanese all-boys' high school. Desperately destructive and self-destructive students, engaged in a power struggle that's all the more intense because it's completely pointless. They have no real dreams, no ambitions, for when they graduate, if they graduate at all--or else their dreams have been crushed. All of this is presented bleakly, brutally, without the slightest hint of romanticism.
I guess it was well-made, and the ending was certainly powerful, but what a depressing movie.
Quibble: the subtitles. I can agree that sometimes, you've got to put swearing in where there isn't any in Japanese to preserve the emotional tone, because there's so much less swearing as such in Japanese. But every sentence? That's a bit much, even in a movie that is about delinquent high school students. In any case, it would take a great deal of talent and expertise to do a decent translation of a movie that has conversations like:
-Saaa.
-Saaa?
-Saaa.
Japanese schools really are that ugly, incidentally--some of them, at least. Though much, much cleaner. Which is good, because eeeeww.
I still like Ryuhei Matsuda, but so far, the roles I've seen him in have spanned the emotional range from beautiful stoicism to stoic beauty.
Ugly, industrial concrete block of a Japanese all-boys' high school. Desperately destructive and self-destructive students, engaged in a power struggle that's all the more intense because it's completely pointless. They have no real dreams, no ambitions, for when they graduate, if they graduate at all--or else their dreams have been crushed. All of this is presented bleakly, brutally, without the slightest hint of romanticism.
I guess it was well-made, and the ending was certainly powerful, but what a depressing movie.
Quibble: the subtitles. I can agree that sometimes, you've got to put swearing in where there isn't any in Japanese to preserve the emotional tone, because there's so much less swearing as such in Japanese. But every sentence? That's a bit much, even in a movie that is about delinquent high school students. In any case, it would take a great deal of talent and expertise to do a decent translation of a movie that has conversations like:
-Saaa.
-Saaa?
-Saaa.
Japanese schools really are that ugly, incidentally--some of them, at least. Though much, much cleaner. Which is good, because eeeeww.