Hana

A film that redefines the falling cherry blossoms' association with the samurai tradition. What Kore-eda does here is examine the validity of the samurai philosophy of revenge, violence and associated monetary/financial outcomes. A pacifist film, where education dominates over swordplay. The lead performers are endearing, so is the Renaissance type music composed by Jun Kawabata. The production design is laudable. A film that parallels William Fraker's oft forgotten "Monte Walsh" (1970) which looked at the Westerns and the lifestyles of its heroes. Kore-eda adds wistful comedy, while Fraker dealt with wistful nostalgia. Both deal with changing values and economies.

This film was produced by Shochiku, a studio that I'm told is renowned for it's middle-of-the-road part-comedy/part-pathos films. Hana fits squarely in that territory and is Kore-eda's most commercial film to date.

Set in the slums of 1702 Edo (now Tokyo), the cinematography and attention to period detail were excellent. The story itself is fairly lame. A young samurai, incompetent with a sword seeks revenge for his father's death, but finds himself unable to carry out the act.

There's no doubting the competence of the director and the film's visuals are a joy to behold. It's not something that particularly engages me, but is the sort of film I would love to take my six year old son to. The blend of humour and almost slapstick action would certainly be enjoyed by him. Mind you, this is not really a children's film, even though it has the appeal of a Japanese version of a Disney film. Many adults would enjoy it, but it's not my thing.

In 'Hana' Koreeda has turned from modern times to make another samurai-going-out-of-style movie, set in 1701 when "sword fighting has flown out of fashion with the wind." The film focuses on the cute Soza, played by boy-band singer Junichi Okada, who's supposed to avenge the death of his samurai father (embarrassingly, in a fight over a go game rather than any battle), but would rather play go himself, soak in a hot tub, or teach neighborhood kids writing than practice his swordplay. Hana questions the very validity of revenge and war but unfortunately does so with an inept fighter and even a coward as a hero. Why this isn't a good way of presenting alternatives to warlike philosophy is obvious: a hero is needed who can say "I can do it but I choose not to," rather than one who must say, "I can't, so I better not." Despite the film's considerable charm in presenting a variety of colorful characters and incidents -- abetted by excellent acting, a realistic period tenement setting, and fresh-sounding western renaissance music -- its main character becomes an embarrassment and a disappointment rather than a revelation. Unfortunately the young star's appealing sweetness seems a mockery. As Mark Shilling of Japan Times has commented, Okada is "too handsome and cool to be a sympathetic coward. Too bad Bill Murray isn't 20 years younger -- and Japanese." Moreover (as Shilling also says) 'Hana's' lively incidents are rather meandering, don't interact very well, and don't add up to climactic moments: the story line "lacks anything major." The natural impulse is to want the climax of a real revenge, the one Sozo is supposed to enact. Defeating such conventional expectations, the film feels longer than it is.

It may be that Koreeda, whose films have created a unique mood, means for 'Hana' to make us uncomfortable, and the colorful characters and rude toilet jokes are an intentional effort to put us off our guard. Certainly when the moment first comes when Soza is beaten up by a local punk in pink, Sodekichi (Ryo Kase), it's horrifying and demoralizing because Soza up to then has been not only immensely simpatico, but a guy with a worthwhile function in the tenement house (nagaya) village -- which Koreeda has departed from film tradition in making realistically rickety. Soza says he's in the shabby place because (as introductory titles have told us) samurais are frequently undercover in such locations at the moment. When he learns his revenge-object, Kanazawa Jubei, is living nearby, it turns out one of his informants and café-pals knew it all along and the latter advises him to say nothing. "This samurai revenge thing is out of style," he adds. Besides, "with your skills" (i.e., the lack of them), "you're doomed." 'Hana' makes this sort of point too bluntly and repetitiously.

The setting, which compares (as Shilling notes) to that of Kurosawa's memorable flop 'Do-des-ka-den,' is a lively but pathetic community where people live selling scraps -- and their own excrement, sold for fertilizer to a landowner, is worth more than the fruit of their labors. It's a world where indignity is a constant, in which Soza's humiliations seem almost normal.

The interest of 'Hana,' despite its not being Koreeda at his best, is that it reflects contemporary Japanese demoralization -- a deep sense of the loss of traditional values as well as an equally strong sense of personal uncertainty in the old areas of machismo that once were strong. And it does this in a deceptively traditional-looking framework that shows how seductive and unavoidable Japanese tradition still remains. In that way, the director has been able to manufacture the same troubling unease that made his more powerful 'Nobody Knows' so riveting and disturbing. This still feels like a distinct misstep for the filmmaker -- but he has seemed capable of doing something completely different almost every time -- and no doubt what comes next will be a surprise, perhaps a more exciting one.

Shown as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2007.

I think the first reviewer misses the point of Kore-Eda's work. He has an almost documentarian's way of showing human behavior. It's decidedly not theatrical. His characters are flawed, real people. Soza-sensei's abhorrence of violence is not undercut by his fear of being sliced up. He discovers the strength to be a real human being amid what he comes to recognize as counterproductive posturing.

The 47 Ronin subplot is not a distraction. It's a mirror of Soza's choosing life over revenge. Susumu Terajima hits just the right note as the surviving Ronin. If you don't know Japanese history and myth-making, it might seem like a distraction, but it is the point of the whole story, that a slavish devotion to the ideals of Bushido is in conflict with living an authentically human life.

Besides, Rie Miyazawa is a total hoot in the play within a play. It is a pleasant surprise that Kore-Eda can do comedy and still keep it real. I was beginning to think that he was only good at grimness, but I was reminded of the small comic touches in "Nobody Knows" and "Afterlife." I can't remember if there was anything funny in "Mabarosi." I just remember how depressing it was.

The subtext of this novel, entertaining period film comes from a unique treatment of the famed story of the 47 Ronin (itself the source for history texts, dramas, movies, and plays). Instead of showing the flowering of the Japanese spirit of revenge, HANA YORI MO NAHO takes a more pacifist point of view. In fact, for many of the characters, the main virtue of revenge may lie in its commercial exploitation; for the remainder of the cast - nearly all of them living in a dusty slum on the outskirts of town - revenge breaks apart families, instills instinctual hatred, and only promises generations of promise unrealized.

The screenplay is understated and loosely plotted. relying for the most part on light comedy to given texture to its potentially tragic subject matter. The story of the 47 Ronin has been told too often without offering any background on the common people hidden in the background. Sometimes ignoble, it's the people who rise above the violence who seem to have achieved something great - like the failed samurai who ignores his father's dying request to kill a rival.

The film's visuals are dusty and dirty, but always arresting,helping to make for a realistic but appealing narrative. All in all, HANA YORI MO NAHO is a much needed corrective on an oft- told story.