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| Blue Spring (Toshiaki Toyoda, 2001) - Movie Club 2018 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 11 2018, 04:56 PM (378 Views) | |
| Holymanm | Apr 11 2018, 04:56 PM Post #1 |
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moats n groats
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"No regrets for our youth" Yes!!! I am giddy to show one of my favourite movies ever, and one that I feel is far and away the one work of art of all time that really represents my taste - and to an extent, my views, and myself. It's a languid, meditative display of Japanese aesthetics and philosophy - that's also simultaneously a short, explosive, revoltingly violent rebellion against the world one has to be born into. True to its national art tradition, it contains none but the most obvious possible symbolism, but rather has a painfully rich subtext of raw, desperate emotion struggling and pleading to break through the surface - just like its characters. And the soundtrack! The editing! The cinematography! A masterclass in each, and a deceptively complex permeation of the oscillatory pace of the movie into each and every facet of it. Everything is like the Geysir, still and serene, bubbling anxiously, erupting into horrible violence. But more than anything, this movie just represents life, for me. Everything in it is achingly alive; everything is a desparate grasp at life - even all the death. What a flick! I've seen it four times now, and every experience has been completely different, and each one more rewarding than the last. And what terrific performances by Arai Hirofumi, one of Japan's most underrated actors, and by Matsuda Ryuhei, one of Japan's both most underrated and prettiest actors... anyway, I hope some people (NRH?) might see some of the same stuff I do in this. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
Edited by Holymanm, Apr 11 2018, 05:28 PM.
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| Holymanm | Apr 11 2018, 04:57 PM Post #2 |
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moats n groats
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movie's already up in resources - expires in a week, but i'll re-upload it around then |
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| rischka | Apr 11 2018, 05:23 PM Post #3 |
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nazi trumps fuck off!!
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looks interesting. and i'm a sucker for wasted youth tropes
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"covfefe" -- dj cheeto letterboxd + tumblr + twitter | |
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| Holymanm | Apr 11 2018, 05:30 PM Post #4 |
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moats n groats
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you've reminded me of the quote i was gonna put! and i'm a huge sucker for that too (though i think this flick holds up even aside from that... i think) |
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| Lencho of the Apes | Apr 14 2018, 01:04 PM Post #5 |
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Let's go do some crimes
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Pet peeve: when a filmmaker (or other artist) seems to say "I can get away with this, because the audience won't notice."![]() ![]() ![]() Richard Hambleton, 1952-2017. His art was inescapable in NYC in the early 80s. Still parsing out how I feel about the movie, but stealing a central metaphor from another artist isn't a good start. I probably shouldn't let that weigh too heavily on my opinion, and I probably won't. |
| "The four cardinal points of the compass? In reality, there are only three: North and South." | |
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| Lencho of the Apes | Apr 18 2018, 03:50 AM Post #6 |
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Let's go do some crimes
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No-one else has given any thought to this'n? NRH does indeed like it -- good call. But all he really singled out for praise was its formal adroitness. It looked "like" it was about school-pressure anxiety, and then it looked "like" it was about baby yakuzas building a new hierarchy just as stifling as the old one, and it seemed to oscillate between the two conceptual poles and it never seemed to really throw in with either one of them. The "transgressive teen movie" has become almost a genre unto itself, and his is certainly a good example of what those movies do, but I wouldn't say that recreating the qualities that give a genre its identity and coherence was creative work of a very high order. (Right now I reread Holyman's intro, and it sounded like the purest hyperbole, start to finish...) Maybe it's just me. |
| "The four cardinal points of the compass? In reality, there are only three: North and South." | |
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| mesnalty | Apr 18 2018, 08:08 PM Post #7 |
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g legs' flame
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I didn't read it as being either about school anxiety or the replacement of one stifling hierarchy by another... the actual schooling is barely present in the film, after all. For me it's just an examination of how nasty, brutish, and short these people's lives are, though there are lots of possible readings. I think it's a pretty canny decision to minimize the external context, actually - I can see how Holymanm manages to get something different out of the film each time he watches it. |
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| Lencho of the Apes | Apr 20 2018, 03:05 AM Post #8 |
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Let's go do some crimes
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It might be interesting to think about Blue Spring in conjunction with Lindsey Anderson's If... |
| "The four cardinal points of the compass? In reality, there are only three: North and South." | |
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| Holymanm | Apr 24 2018, 05:40 PM Post #9 |
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moats n groats
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Sorry, I've been away a bunch (and I'm just about to be away for another week), so I haven't been able to discuss/defend/apologise for the curiously acronymed B.S. too much... but briefly: - Not sure I see a big problem with the shadow stuff - there's tons of imagery in BS with black... everything (uniforms to flowers to face), that culminates in him turning into a mere shadow, an insignificant memory, rather than a person. Maybe it borrows the idea from that artist I've never heard of, but it also just seems like... what happens when you spray paint your shadow. It turns out like that. Not inconceivable that it's a coincidence, but even if it's not, it still works out pretty well imo! - And yeah, as mesnalty says, I don't really think about any external context in it. If the movie is a 'protest' of any kind, it's an extremely general one. A protest against being an outsider? A protest against the general concept of living a painful life? It's certainly a burst of anger, but I don't think it's really something like Hands Over the City, the movie I picked a while ago, which is a pretty specific indictment of political corruption in housing development in Naples in the early 60s... yeah. Anyway, that's why I like Blue Spring. It's like a great big scream against, for, in celebration of, and in denouncement of, life. Ain't that what art's all about. Really, for any of my thoughts on the movie itself, just listen to [url]the song at the end[/url] - and what an incredibly appropriate, and fortuitous, soundtrack throughout the movie in general! Of course, mileage for this sort of movie may... vary. If you don't like movies about young people being angry at life, it probably won't take you too far. But that's just like how some people don't like 60s-80s European movies about young people sitting around in apartments smoking and talking idly about the difference between sex and love; it all depends on the viewer... (and "hyperbole" certainly might be right, but again, depending on the viewer - for me it really is all that!) |
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| Holymanm | Apr 24 2018, 05:44 PM Post #10 |
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moats n groats
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And I really like If..., but it has a much more specifically focused dissatisfaction, I feel - in Blue Spring it doesn't really even matter (for me) that they're in school. Could be anywhere else. But the school is just - like a battlefield or downtown or a festival or anything - where things happen. Very convenient for making a dramatic movie! |
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