last of the film reports:

i'll call this one Into The Picture Scroll as i can't remember the proper title. it's a regular hazard of going to the film festival that i see films that are technically good and interesting, yet completely fail to hold my attention. you could blame this on movie-fatigue, on the film itself, my cultural ignorance (which i think was my mum's favourite reason) or the fact that someone near me was eating fried food, and i spent large sections of the film thinking about food (mostly if i can modify fish cakes to be steamed rather than fried, and if i can adapt that to pass on to my friend whose husband doesn't like fish).

basic outline part one: there's a scroll (or series of scrolls) called the Yamanaka Tokiwa. these things are an art form unto themselves, combining beautiful painting with calligraphy. the movie basically follows the scroll/s through to tell the story, with the story sung in joruri (kinda like a ballad, folk music) style.

basic outline part two (the story): is a folk tale telling of a historical character. basically this young man runs away from the shrine where his mother sent him, his mother worries, then sets out on an interminable journey (if you've read Fellowship of the Ring, this was reminiscent of the bits where the hobbits are just walking around occasionally breaking out into godawful poetry and Tolkein describes every fucking step in loving detail), she and her maid stop at an inn, they get robbed by some evil blokes, oh and then killed, then the boy turns up, finds out what happened, catches the thieves and kills them all, then goes off to kill some better dressed people, but not forgetting to come back later and give gifts to the innkeeper and his wife for their help in the bloody slaughter of the robbers.

basic outline (bits that i forgot): there's also a bit of background stuff about the story, the characters, the scoll and the form it's in as well as the odd bit of live action to cut to.

because i did go and see this with my mum, she left me in no doubt that i would have enjoyed it more if i knew more about japanese history and about the forms of japanese narrative. i could get that and appreciate it. i also appreciate the ambition of the piece, to film a scroll for an hour and a half documentary/movie is quite an achievement, and there is a wonderful interplay between sound and image and camera movement.

and i did enjoy the bit where the innkeeper's wife told him off, and of course the bits with the robbers and when they all got killed. those were good. (oh, did i mention that i think the robbers just stole the women's clothes? i realise that kimono fabric would have been expensive, but i prefer the idea that they were cutthroat cross-dressers).

but i can't help but think there was some mistake in format. perhaps a shorter documentary series? or a little more active editing? personally, if i were going to get scissor-happy, i'd probably cut out a lot of the mother character altogether. actually i've seen this sort of thing work really well as an exhibition installation, or as a multimedia add-on to a catalogue. when i was researching in that area, i found a really good exhibit somewhere on the internet that did pretty much that.

and a bit weirded out as i was waiting for my mum to finish her survey in the foyer area and a bloke who'd been trying to make eye contact came up and complimented my hair. i was a little worried as a) my hair was actually looking fairly appalling, b) he was looking at it a bit fixedly and it made me start thinking about scissors and voodoo, c) not many people clock me as asian, but we had just some out of a Japanese film and there are ethnic-specific lechers out there, and d) he looked between 15 and 20 years older than me and might have been trying to chat me up in front of my mum. i was a bit weirded out, saying "oh, what a nice thing to say, thank you" before moving away quickly. he was probably just trying to be nice, hope i wasn't too rude as politeness is a bit tricky when your skin is crawling.

a slightly disappointing way to end the festival, but i feel very clever for having given it a go. and probably glad that i didn't push my luck going to see the movie about female genital mutilation.