Violence. Despair. Repeat.

Turning Sogil Yan's autobiographical novel Blood and Bones into a feature film was clearly a passion project for director Yoichi Sai. His determination to have Takeshi Kitano play the lead role led to his waiting nearly seven years for the actor/director's schedule to free up. And why not, for who better to play an angry, violent, sadistic monster than the man who spent a better portion of his career playing corrupt cops, fearful gangsters, and one horrific schoolteacher? Yet for all the time and dedication Sai gave to the project, it's a shame to report that the resulting film is a tremendous disappointment. Based on the life of author Sogil Yan's father Kim Shunpei, Blood and Bones is set amongst the first generation of Koreans that migrated to Japan in the early 20th century. Spanning the period from approximately 1920-1980, much of the film's action takes place on a single street within the ghetto-like community that was home to the Korean immigrants. When we first meet Kim (Kitano), he rapes his wife in front of her young daughter, the first in a series of seemingly endless violent acts he will commit for the following 144 minutes. Members of Kim's immediate family aren't the only victims of his violent behavior. He becomes the neighborhood bully, wreaking havoc (including single-handedly destroying somebody's home) on anybody who crosses him. Given his hair-trigger temper, this basically means everybody. Nothing changes over the decades, and his reign of terror continues unchallenged well into his elderly years. Whether running a successful fishcake factory, or working as a loan shark, the threat of Kim's violence is ever present. Unfortunately, the film becomes trapped in a repetitive cycle of a) violent act, b) despair over said act, followed by c) yet another violent act. While some (unsuccessfully) fight back, others look for a way out -- from the daughter who enters into a loveless, abusive marriage as means of escape, to those who find suicide preferable over life under Kim's thumb. Structured as an extended flashback narrated by Kim's son Masao (Hirofumi Arai), the film fails to follow through with the premise of its opening sentence: "All my life, my father blocked my path like a solid wall." The expected father-son dynamic takes a backseat to what ultimately becomes little more than a series of set pieces for Kitano. Sai tends to lose narrative focus as well, and the film feels less like the individual recollections of a son growing up in the shadow a tyrannical father than it does a director fashioning a screenplay around its leading man. There isn't a single moment of levity to be found in the film, nor even the slightest reprise from the endless misery; even a quiet memorial scene ends in a violent fracas. The litany of tragic events is such that it begins to approach the absurd, and by the time the narrator tells us, "And then Kiyoko suddenly collapsed from a brain tumor", I honestly had to stifle a chuckle. Though one of only a handful of films that depicts the lives of Koreans living in Japan, Sai fails to sufficiently address issues of national identity and growing up as an 'other' in Japan. We do get a sense that they were all but ignored by the Japanese, and that there was little in the way of progress within these communities. (If it wasn't for the appearance of a new model car, or an airplane flying overhead, we'd have no idea that a decade had passed.) However, any and all individual struggle is between the characters and Kim, and not with their adopted nation, save for some brief moments where they flirt with communism, much to the dismay of the Japanese. Like his characters, Yoichi Sai is also a Korean who grew up in Japan, which is why it's somewhat surprising that, given his own experiences, the film opts for a relatively straightforward situational approach rather than applying the realism of, say, Shohei Imamura, who also created cinematic portraits of outsider groups in Japan. Much has been said of Kitano's performance in the film, and while he (as always) gives himself fully to the role, the character as written lacks the often contradictory elements found in many of his best roles. Here he's purely a monster, incapable of expressing any emotion other than rage. Yet the film never delves into the reasons behind his anger. Has it to do with his lack of national identity, or some other socio-political factor? It's never made clear. It is a pleasure to watch his performance though, particularly his ability to say so much with mere body language or even the slightest of physical gestures. Ultimately, and somewhat ironically, it may be Takeshi Kitano's presence that prevents Blood and Bones from being a better, or more compelling film. After waiting seven years, Sai clearly wanted to take full advantage of the great actor's skills, but he does so at the expense of his other cast members (who are all quite good) as well as the story itself.

Comments

[nkw88]

some Korean filmmakers made films about Resident Koreans in Japan: Family Cinema (Park Cheol-Soo, 1997), Rikidozan (Song Hae-Sung, 2005) and Fighter in the Wind (Yang Yun-Ho, 2005)

Among them, Family Cinema is based on the famous novel of the same title, written by Yu Miri, a third generation Zainichi female writer. In this film, Yang Seok-Il took the role of father who abused his family. The theme of the story is the trauma of Yu's family members who suffered from domestic violence, poverty, and internalized self hatred which came from Japanese social discrimination againt Zainichi Koreans.

Though I did not read Yang Seok-Il's original novel, I guess that the domestic violence and self hatred are the main theme and issues for second and third generation Zainichi Koreans who are rather interested in their personal story and experience of abusement and trauma than publich history and politics.

For comparison, here're some films and books you can compare with Sai Yoichi (Japanese Pronunciation) aka Choi Yang-Il (Korean pronunciation)'s films.

films
Death by Hanging (Oshima Nagisa)
Go (Yukisada Isao)
Pakchigi

books
North Koreans in Japan (Sonia Ryang)
Koreans in Japan (Sonia Ryang)
Japan's Hidden Apartheid: The Korean Minority and the Japanese (George Hicks)

[colinr]

I've been wanting to see this film for ages. It was advertised last year as coming from Tartan Video in Britain, but never appeared - I wonder what happened to it?

[colinr]

"Unfortunately, the film becomes trapped in a repetitive cycle of a) violent act, b) despair over said act, followed by c) yet another violent act."

It occured to me that perhaps the best recent film to deal with this kind of strange self-destructive cycle was the Australian feature Chopper.