Castelo de Areia

I just saw this movie for the first time last night at the Japanese Film Festival held in Melbourne. It was a re-mastered print and on the huge screen it was magnificent. The flashback scenes with the father and son set to the stunning musical score seemed like a completely different movie to what had preceded. But to me, final scenes are important - a skillful movie ending turns a good film into a great film. A bad ending turns an average to good film into a piece of rubbish. As far as Castle of Sand is concerned, what started out as an interesting detective story ended as a sweeping piece which left me walking out of the cinema thinking "That was incredible!!".

Japanese cinema rarely fails to impress me. I keep discovering more and more gems, usually from years gone by when I was too young to experience them at the time.

There's a lot to like about this film, mostly because of the beautiful cinematography and the picturesque Japanese countryside. The unraveling of the police investigation of the central murder has interesting moments, but by the end it becomes too strung-out and torturous. The last 45 minutes or so had me tapping my toes waiting for it to end, as every plot point and every shot was prolonged far past the limits of my patience.

Lovers of classical music will be amused by what passes for the output of the "genius" composer. While composing in the early stages in his home at the piano, he plays quite awful nightclub music. It would never get him an invitation to perform with the New York Philharmonic, as the plot requires. In the last section, with him performing on stage, intercut with scenes of the police concluding their investigation, he plays a pretty forgettable late-Romantic piano concerto, apparently written by a real Japanese composer, Yasushi Akutagawa.

This film CASTLE OF SAND expands on genre conventions and is cinematic in the best sense. YOSHITARO NOMURA takes what was presumably a best selling novel in Japan, and creates a fascinating mystery with all the requisites: the pairing of a veteran and a rookie detective; a murder with a minimum of clues; an unidentified victim; a journey of discovery for both detectives when the investigation seems to have come to a dead end; the seemingly arbitrary introduction of a key figure on which much hinges, and so forth.

The director tells a story with voice overs and the requisite dialogue but as often as not his camera tells the story.

I have seen any number of Japanese films in my 50 plus years, but I still felt I was undergoing the journey and the search that the two detectives take, through the rural regions of Japan that are in stark contrast to their operating base, Tokyo.

The story has elements that take it beyond the realms of the mystery and police procedure genres, and the conclusion is worthy of the time the director has spent in weaving his tragic tale.

The film is now available on DVD via Panorama; it is in the original Japanese with Chinese and English subtitles. It is a SINGLE LAYER DISK, LETTERBOXED and in STEREO, which is paramount because music is central to the whole affair.

Unfortunately my copy had a sequence when the senior detective is addressing his colleagues and no subtitling is provided (you simply see the same line for an awkward length of time). However the viewer should be able to extrapolate what has been said. All in all, a film and DVD worth seeking out!

CASTLE OF SAND is an engrossing, laid-back police procedural that captures your attention even when the plot seems fairly ordinary. A Tokyo cop (Tetsuro Tamba) is troubled when a retired cop is found brutally murdered, with no evidence save the vague recollections of a few townsfolk. At times, the story is reminiscent of a regional travelogue, but in learning more about Japan, Tamba hones in on a small set of likely suspects, but everyone is so agreeable that uncovering the truth becomes like rooting out the one hidden evidence of violence in a sea of potential data.

Regrettably, the film unravels in the final forty or so minutes, when the remainder of the story is told with musical accompaniment of a famous pianist. The plot becomes frankly loses credibility and even becomes rather nonsensical. The movie changes mood and style, and dripping with melodrama.

This movie has three stories which are skillfully merged together at the end. One story is about a determined detective who is searching for a murderer. The second story is about a composer with social aspirations who is preparing to perform the debut of his piano concerto. I won't spoil it by describing the third story which is a flashback 30 years into the past. The third story has very little dialog and shows what silent movie fans have always known: you don't need much dialog to tell a good story.

The English subtitling on the dvd version I saw is not great, but passable. As a minor quibble, the subtitles are not present to translate written documents when a newspaper article or arrest warrant is shown on the screen.

There are some nice visual scenes which are quite effective. I last saw this movie in the 1970's and although I forgot the movie title, I never forgot the scene where the two detectives ride silently on their way to arrest the murderer. When I viewed this movie again recently, I was surprised to see how brief this scene actually is.