Japan Cuts 2012: The Woodsman and the Rain (2011)
Cast: Kôji Yakusho, Shun Oguri, Tsutomu Yamazaki
Director: Shûichi Okita
Country: Japan
Genre: Comedy
Official Trailer: Here
Editor’s note: The following review is a continuation of Rowena’s Japan Cuts 2012 festival coverage.
In his debut feature film Nankyoku ryorinin (2009), translated as “Antarctic cook,” Okita Shuichi presented an all-male scientific crew living and working together at the research facility Dome Fuji Station located on the Antarctic plateau (an actual research station established in 1995). The film traces the isolated day-to-day life of this crew, whose members are connected not only through their mission but also through other bonding and community rituals. Foremost among these rituals is having meals together prepared by the passionate chef Nishimura. If there is a special weapon with which the crew combats bouts of loneliness, dead time, and homesickness, it is the food lovingly cooked by Nishimura and the concomitant togetherness in eating that food.
The film traces the isolated day-to-day life of this crew, whose members are connected not only through their mission but also through other bonding and community rituals.
Though it has nothing specifically to do with Antarctica or food, Okita’s second feature The Woodsman and the Rain—screening tonight with actor Yakusho Koji in attendance—treads on similar themes of bonding, community, and belonging, also in an out-of-the-way setting (though still within Japan). This time, the group in question is a film crew that travels to a small mountain village to shoot a low-budget zombie flick. An unassumingly comical, charming film results from the point of view of one of the village’s woodsmen, Katsu (Yakusho), who gradually becomes involved with the film crew. Katsu is a middle-aged man, lives a rather tranquil life as a woodsman, and whose wife died two years ago; his unemployed son lives with him but they have a tense relationship. But the meeting between Katsu’s earnest, no-nonsense character and the alternative world of filmmaking produces unlikely consequences that on the one hand impact Katsu’s personal life and on the other hand draw out the festive and collaborative nature of filmmaking.
Little does Katsu know that the moment when a member of the film crew appears out of nowhere in the woods telling him to stop cutting a tree for the sake of the shoot, his daily routine will change. First, he gets roped into driving members of the crew around the woods to get them from one place to another; then he unwittingly helps to scout locations; and then he is recruited as an extra. When he watches the rushes, he is tickled by seeing himself on the screen. Such interactions between Katsu and the film crew are the primary source of the film’s comic and affectionate moments: the production assistant asking for one more favour, but stammering and unable to say what that favour entails, then cut to a close-up of Katsu with face paint on as a zombie extra; or Katsu zombie-walking towards Koichi as he gets upset about having to go home with the makeup on his face after his scene is finished.
Koichi is in fact the film’s director. On this note, another terrific aspect of The Woodsman and the Rain is its humourous and empathetic portrait of a young director’s debut experience and the overwhelming nature of trafficking through myriad voices involved in a production. So diffident is Koichi that Katsu initially thinks of him as a slacker gopher, speaking to him abruptly and ordering him about. Nevertheless, in spite the of the city vs. countryside, young vs. old tensions, a bond grows between them through the production, palpable when Koichi recounts to Katsu the film’s narrative; Katsu is enraptured, learning among other things what a zombie is. Significantly, Katsu’s son is also named Koichi, which obviously gives rise to the idea of a son substitute. But one can take this example of substitution on a more profound level that recalls the epigraph quoted in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le mépris (1963): “the cinema substitutes for our gaze a world more in harmony with our desires,” with “cinema” encompassing not only what is on the screen but the production process itself.
The evolution of Katsu and Koichi’s relationship is one of the film’s narrative strengths, with Katsu ultimately gleaning from Koichi a better understanding of his own son and Koichi gaining the confidence that he had been lacking at the beginning of the film. In short, they become each other’s ideal of a father and son for the duration of the shoot. The initial awkwardness and growing bond between them are captured nicely through several long shots in which Katsu and Koichi occupy the left and right sides of the frame, as when they eat lunch outdoors following the day’s shoot or relax in an onsen. Yet Katsu always inches towards the middle of the frame to physically and emotionally bridge the gap between Koichi and himself.
The evolution of Katsu and Koichi’s relationship is one of the film’s narrative strengths, with Katsu ultimately gleaning from Koichi a better understanding of his own son and Koichi gaining the confidence that he had been lacking at the beginning of the film.
The more Katsu becomes involved with the film crew, the more the village becomes intrigued and participates as well. Another great comic scene involves Katsu suspensefully recounting his “role” to his woodsmen colleagues, who react marvelously and excitedly. As Katsu and the village become more involved in the shoot, a potential by-product of this collaboration is the blurring of life and fiction. When Katsu’s relatives arrive in town one day, they are mysteriously greeted by zombies: at the ticket window at the train station, on the fields driving a tractor, on the road walking by. Are they part of the film-within-the-film or have zombies taken over the town?
Even legendary actor Yamazaki Tsutomu arrives in town to play a role in Koichi’s film—mirroring (or blurring) his own duties in The Woodsman and the Rain itself.
In short, The Woodsman and the Rain is a lovely film that captures the truly collaborative, community ritual of filmmaking, born from ideas of various, even random, people, encounters, and situations.
Related Posts
Review: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Review: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Review: Hara-kiri - Death of a Samurai (2011)
Japan Cuts 2012: The Woodsman and the Rain (2011)
Auteursday: Almayer’s Folly (2011)
