Two very different films viewed at the 2023 Hong Kong International Film Festival (Film reviews)

  

Film fans waiting in line to get into a Hong Kong International

Film Festival screening at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre

 

The Last Dance (Japan, 1993)

- Juzo Itami, director and scriptwriter

- Starring: Rentaro Mikuni, Nobuko Miyamoto, Masahiko Tsugawa

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's The Complete Juzo Itami Directorial Retrospective program

 

Juzo Itami had a life that was full of experiences that just called to be made into a movie or more.  Five years before his death (which was made to look like a suicide but many people reckon came from his being murdered by Yakuza) in 1997, and after he made Minbo: the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion (1992), he was attacked by Yakuza angered by the way Yakuza were portrayed in Minbo.  The experience caused him to contemplate death, and come up with The Last Dance: a dramedy about a director-actor (and remember, Juzo Itami acted as well as directed!) who ends up spending a not insignificant amount of time in hospital.

 

Rather than take on the leading role in the film though, the then still-recovering Juzo Itami had Rentaro Mikuni play Buhei Mikai, a filmmaker who becomes ill with cancer while acting in and directing a movie about a helmer who is seriously ill with cancer.  Adding to The Last Dance's meta quotient: Buhei's wife is played by Nobuko Miyamoto, who happened to be Juzo Itami's wife as well as regularly the leading lady in his movies!      

A good part of the first half of The Last Dance has Buhei on film sets and, in the hospital scenes, skewering the medical system which emphasizes saving lives to such a great extent that it can lead to the destruction of patients' quality of life.  It also contains scenes of Buhei having sex with his leading lady (played by Haruna Takase) and thus cheating on his wife: something which can feel awkward to watch given the understanding that Buhei is Juzo Itami's alter-ego in this film!

 

Still, this is nothing compared to how weird it can feel to view much of the second part of the movie -- which shows Buhei realizing that he has cancer, that his cancer is terminal and effectively preparing for death.  Watching this substantial portion of The Last Dance with the knowledge of how Juzo Itami died makes it so that it all makes for uneasy and even downright sad viewing indeed; and one can but hope that before his death and before his wife was widowed, Juzo Itami and Nobuko Miyamoto were able to have a significantly happier marriage and be better at communicating with each other than the main couple in this work!

 

My rating for this film: 6.0 

 

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (U.S.A., 2022)

- Laura Poitras, director

- Part of the HKIFF's Cinephile Paradise program 

Like with The Last Dance, death looms large over this documentary by Laura Poitras.  All the Beauty and the Bloodshed begins, in fact, with artist-activist Nan Goldin talking about her older sister, Barbara, who commited suicide when Nan was 11 years old.  And over the course of chronicling both Nan's artistic and activist careers, mention is made of a number of people (including good friends of hers) who have died: some from AIDs, others from other diseases, and still others from Opioid overdoses.

 

As All the Beauty and the Bloodshed makes clear, Nan Goldin herself has not had an easy life.  Determined to not end up the same way as her sister (and also her parents -- who do not come off well in the film), she left home in her early teens, took drugs (and became addicted to Opioids), entered relationships that were not only unconventional but, in one case, put her life in danger.  

 

As this documentary also shows though, Nan Goldin's a fighter and survivor.  In addition, she had the good fortune to be introduced to photography early in life and gained fame as a photographer who produced uncommon, striking visuals: some of which can be seen in All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, and some of her video art too.

 

I have to be honest and say that Nan Goldin's art is not particularly appealing to me, and what I admire more is her activism. After overcoming her addiction to Oxycontinin and surviving a near fatal fentanyl overdose, she founded the advocacy group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) in 2017.  She also set her sights on the company (Purdue Pharma) that mde Oxycontinin and the family behind that company (the Sacklers) and sought to make them pay for their pushing Oxycontinin on millions of people.

 

As it so happens, the Sacklers are known for their arts patronage.  And as a famous artist as well as an activist, Nan Goldin found herself in a position to shame art museums and galleries into cutting ties with the Sacklers by not accepting further funding from them and also removing their names from spaces within prestigious institutions like the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Louvre.  

 

In the course of her activism, Nan Goldin commendably put(s) a lot on the line. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed also shows that a lot goes into her art too and there's much to admire to that.  Still, Laura Poitras' work could never be accused of glossing over its subject's less attractive aspects.  But it's in Nan Goldin's willingness to reveal so much of herself, warts and all, that this documentary derives so much strength and, yes, beauty too.       

 

My rating for this film: 8.0