Originally posted at the DL April 2016
To this day this movie amuses me on a conceptual level. Probably the greatest Christmas Miracle movie ever made comes from a Japanese man who, so far as I can tell, was not among the ~2% or so of Japanese folks who adhere to any variation of that faith. Satoshi Kon's fingerprints are all over the movie in terms of visual design and story focus, but the actual story told here stands out a lot from the rest of his work and the degree it resembles western works (apparently it borders on adaptation of a John Wayne western, although I'm not familiar with that film) and the less-than-ubiquitous-in-Japan Christian faith is a bit uncanny.
Actually, I want to focus a bit on that. The film in question is 3 Godfathers, and purportedly draws some inspiration from the tale of the three magi and their journey to (or flight from, a lot of magi stuff is in Orthodoxy which I'm substantially less familiar with) Judea. But the sense that the film is drawing from some older story, and has a more mythological/folkloric arc definitely jumped out at me. Like, the cycles each character goes through, how they get drawn into new trials by the whims of fate, the lessons they all receive while separated, just create an undeniable sense that this is not a modern story told in a modern format, despite the contemporary setting. I can't be any more specific than that because I'm just not learned in those older storytelling forms, and maybe I'm completely fucking wrong here? But it's definitely something I kept thinking of.
The Christmas Miracle aspects, and the movie's understanding of Christian values, are a bit more straightforward. The first time I watched it I wasn't paying that much attention, but the characters remark a lot throughout about just how unlikely some events of the film are. But it's delightfully low key until the very end. It's pretty danged unlikely they'd happen along a yakuza boss trapped under his own car, or that Gin would run into a dying bum who just wanted to share a last bottle of saki with a kindred spirit before he passed, but hey, it'd been a weird ass day and stuff happens. But it makes the end where a divine wind sweeps in to let Hana and Kiyoko float down to saftey really satisfying in its way; yeah, misfits you may be, but you did good. Let all ye assembled know this woman and this child are blessed.
One of the things Kon was renowned for is the diversity in character models. This stands out even more as time goes on and anime descends further down the rabbit hole of moe and creepy otaku milking, but many anime have two main faces, cute and ugly. Kon's characters are to a much greater extent real people, instantly distinguishable however you dress them or change up their hair or what have you. And while that ties into the philosophies behind all his work as I understand it, it seems especially prominent in Tokyo Godfathers because for all that every character in the film has a lot of complexity, the greater focus of the movie is really on... exposing the aspects of life and society a lot of Japan likes to pretend isn't there. Apparently the scene where Gin is beaten up by a gang of college kids was a well-known news story at the time, and that's completely unsurprising just watching the thing. "Oh, we're just cleaning up the park". Miyuki had such a distant/strict relationship with her father she cracked and stabbed the man. Hana...
...okay actually Hana's story is a common one throughout most of the world. So we should all be pretty ashamed we ignore it. It's telling she unwaveringly and to her detriment is the most moral character in the entire movie.
I don't think Satoshi Kon was super subtle guys.
But that's sorta the point. You can't cope with the world and help the people in it without acknowledging the ugliness within it.
Rating- 8/10
No comments:
Post a Comment