Japanese Story

Spoilers - hopefully kept to a minimum, but you are duly warned !!

Thanks to the summary line 'The less you know about this film, the better', I curbed my urge to find out more about this film before watching it, something that I'm often tempted to do. If I had known the full plot, I would have been deprived of the dramatic experience of fully empathising with the emotions of the characters.

As others have said, this film is in three parts, call it three acts if you like plays or three movements if you like concertos. The first part is rather cliché, even banal, perhaps by intention. The scene of being stuck in the sand with the wheels spinning feverishly but going nowhere does strike a chord with those of us who have had similar experiences, on sand as well as on snow. The second part starts to intrigue and has all the necessary build-up. It's the third and final part, however, that has given me a cinematic experience that I've never had before. 'Powerful' will be an understatement. 'Powerful' however is not a fair description, because the word conjures up an image of being hit by an abrupt emotional blow. It's not quite like that. There's a sustained drive of waves of emotions, layer after layer. I know I'm getting myself into a lot of trouble saying this, but I think that it needs a woman director to pull this off. It also needs an actress in the caliber of Toni Colette.

Can't finish without mentioning the music. There are in fact a lot of scenes with absolutely no sound, not even the ambiance noise of the vast outback. But when there is music, they're the best. One good example is the love-making scene. But that is soon dwarfed compared with the hauntingly beautiful piece of music that is the background, sometimes just noticeable, sometimes coming forth, throughout the last twenty minutes of the film. Essentially, it alternates between a simple phrase of 8 notes on a plucked instrument and a haunting soprano chorus, blending in perfectly with the mood of the film.

"Japanese Story" is a fascinating exploration of gender and cultural roles, with a more incisive take on the contrasts than "Lost in Translation," let alone than in the simplicity of "The Last Samurai."

The Australian outback is a harsher but beautiful landscape of blokes and sheilas than the Manhattan of "Sex and the City" but it brings into relief similar questions of expectations of guys and gals in life and sex.

Toni Colette's "Sandy" is one tough geologist required to guide Gotaro Tsunashima to his father's company's environment-destroying mining businesses. Each suspiciously views the other through narrow stereotypical lenses that block out the complexities of their real lives and potential.

They very gradually adapt to each other, opening each other up to new experiences in quite unexpected ways, even though their language and life communication is still limited. She is the shaggy, physical, confident one; he is the smooth, intellectual, diffident one. "Sandy" is aggressive in a way much more typical of males in U.S. movies, while "Tachibana" is redolent of the farm wife in "The Bridges of Madison County."

The third act is even more startling in its catharsis for "Sandy" as she finds inner strengths and vulnerabilities to deal with her responsibilities across the cultural chasm.

I think it's one of those memorable movies you'll think about for a long time, but it also seemed to go on for a long time while you're watching it. I think Americans aren't all that comfortable with the very leisurely pace of a lot of foreign films, and that may have been part of the problem -- but there's only so long you can watch someone expressing an emotion before you want to say "I get it, I get it -- can we move on to what happens next?" The plot involves a headstrong young Japanese businessman's visit to the most desolate part of Australia -- a rather tough geologist played by Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding) is his tour guide. He doesn't quite understand how different Australia is from Japan, and Collette has her hands full trying to chauffeur him around. The movie centers around the relationship that develops between these two very different people, set in the mind-bogglingly desolate Australian outback.

If your idea of a great movie involves car chases, this is definitely not the movie for you. If you like slower and more nuanced movies, then this one is definitely worth seeing.

The best thing about `Japanese Story,' an Australian film directed by Sue Brooks and set almost entirely in the Outback, is its unpredictability. Just as you begin to think that the story, written by Alison Tilson, is headed in one particular direction, it does an amazing about-face and leads us down an entirely different, utterly unexpected narrative path.

The movie starts off as a fairly standard romantic comedy, involving two strangers who don't like each other very much yet who are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time together. Sandy is a geologist whose company, against her will and better judgment, has asked her to escort an important Japanese businessman through the wilds of the Australian desert on a sightseeing tour. The film even begins to seem a bit like a landlocked `Swept Away' for awhile, as these two headstrong people – he a Japanese traditionalist with male chauvinistic tendencies and she a no-nonsense, freethinking, independent woman (but both filled with doubts and insecurities beneath the surface) – find themselves stranded in a hostile and remote environment, fighting for survival. But then the first of the film's numerous plot reversals kicks in and we find ourselves in an entirely different situation altogether.

I certainly don't want to spoil anyone's experience of this film by revealing just what those plot twists are, so I will merely state that the film, in the second half, becomes a fairly profound meditation on the precarious nature of life and the almost lightning-paced speed with which tragedy can intervene to bring our worlds crashing down around us. Toni Collette is heartbreaking as the feisty yet warmhearted Sandy and Gotaro Tsunashima is both tender and stoic as the man from an exotic culture with whom she eventually falls in love.

That, of course, is the predictable part. But if you think you know where this story is going, you will be pleasantly surprised at how wrong you will be.

This is as much an Australian story as a Japanese one. We are not about to turn Japanese, but our close economic relationship over the last 50 years has to some extent transcended the cultural gap that divides us, and the bitterness of World War 2. On one level, this is a very personal story of two people from different cultures who become closer than they might have imagined. On another level it examines two very different cultures tied together by economic necessity. These themes are played out in a truly awe- inspiring ancient landscape, which, as others have remarked, is a character on its own.

I've not been to the Pilbara, but I've been to places like it elsewhere in Australia, and they tend to have the effect of reminding you of the fragility of your existence. The Aborigines (represented here by only a gas station attendant) regarded themselves as belonging to the land and here you can see why. It's not clear what Tachibana Hiromitsu, the rich businessman's son, is looking for in the desert, but he certainly feels its power. Just why Sandy the tough female geologist comes to harbour tender feelings towards him is not evident either; perhaps it's the mothering instinct at work- he's not an adaptable kind of guy and perhaps she senses his vulnerability.

Apart from the firm refusal to turn this film into a romantic comedy, despite some `When Harry Met Sally' moments, there are several other things going for it. First there is Toni Collette's entirely convincing performance which overcomes some weaknesses in the storyline (and improbabilities in her character). She has a lot of ground to cover, from boredom to hilarity, from dislike to intimacy, and from terror to melancholy.

Second, the cinematography fully exploits the scenery without detracting from the story. Much of `Japanese Story' was filmed around Port Headland in the Pilbara, but it's not a tourist brochure. Third, even the minor parts are played with precision (eg John Howard as the BHP man and Yukimo Tanaka as Tachibana's wife). It's difficult to judge just how effective Gotaro Tsunashima is – you'd need to be Japanese, I guess, and anyway the script is from an Australian, Alison Tilson. To my eyes he seems real enough, if we accept he's from a very privileged and sheltered background. It's interesting that Sandy seems to be the initiator of their intimacy (he doesn't resist!).

I think this film would hold up well anywhere. It has more than the usual emotional content for an Australian film, an intriguing and poignant story, good acting, and it's not too long. The admission price is also considerably cheaper than an air ticket to Port Headland.