Le retour des trois ivrognes

I liked what Nagisa Oshima was trying to do here, which was to condemn Japanese treatment of Korean immigrants and the horrors of the Vietnam war. Unfortunately, how he went about it was too silly for me, starting with the casting of The Folk Crusaders, whose music and antics ala the early Beatles or Monkees were more grating than funny. The series of misadventures they find themselves in are light on both humor and biting political commentary. At one point one says, "It'd be nice if a couple of bodies just fell from the sky," and another replies, "Damn, if only this were Vietnam. There are corpses all over the place there." It's not exactly deep.

The long history between Japan and Korea is complicated to say the least, and I'm sure the skits and absurd tone held meaning for the counterculture in Japan at the time that I can't fully appreciate, but I didn't get the sense that there was a lot of nuance here. About halfway through, the film resets itself and we start seeing the same inane scenes all over again, identically initially, and then gradually diverging. Let's just say, it was painful both times through.

What really made me hate the film, however, was its treatment of the execution of Nguyen Van Lem, a moment caught on film that shocked the world. As that occurred on February 1, 1968 and this film was released March 30, 1968, it gives you an indication for how quickly it was slapped together, and it shows. The film opens with the trio play-acting this execution on a beach, trying to get the aiming of the gun and the facial expression of the victim just right to goofy music, which I thought was in incredibly poor taste. Imagine some other war atrocity from history being made light of in this way; it's mind-boggling. At the end of the film Oshima tries to restore a sense of gravitas by showing a mural of this image repeatedly and equates it to Japanese officials executing Korean immigrants in the process, which was heavy-handed and far too simplistic besides. Overall, just an irritating, tedious film, and I say that despite being aligned to the director's anti-war, anti-xenophobia positions.

Second of all Oshima never worked for him.

Most important of all this film stars the great Japanese pop group The Folk Crusaders. Imagine The Beatles making an experimental film. it would look something like this.

Oshima is concerned here, as he was in "Death By Hanging" made the same year, with Japanese anti-Korean prejudice. Socio-political events too complex and multi-faceted to discuss in a forum of this kind are the basis of this film -- which end with the recreation of the most indelible image of the Vietnam war.

The result is a baroque masterpiece that foreshadows Rivette's "Celine and Julie Go Boating."

DICK STEEL posted that during the mock interview segment, "we realized who outnumbers who – the result which has to be taken with a pinch of salt." I think he missed the point of that segment. The point was not that Koreans outnumbered Japanese in Japan; it was that Japanese ARE Koreans! Oshima makes this same point (in a more direct manner) in Sing a Song of Sex. Japanese are descended from Koreans, and therefore they are the same people and discriminating against Koreans is discriminating against your own people ("Koreans don't kill other Koreans").

Tackling racism on film is a tricky thing. It can often sound too didactic and preachy, as in Crash or even Oshima's own Sing a Song of Sex. But Oshima found the right balance with Three Resurrected Drunkards.

I also wanted to add that I, too, checked to see if the DVD had somehow restarted at the halfway mark!

And the lineup of films that appeals to an acquired taste continues, so far with Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, Shohei Imamura's A Man Vanishes, and now Nagisa Oshima's Stranger in Paradise. While it's aimed to tackle themes like racism which seemed to be shunned at the time, there's a pretty good mix of humour that takes the mickey out of a number of events, and really requires some patience as well because everything seemed to have turned over its head and started afresh at the mid way mark, so don't be looking to walk out of the screening hall, or eject that DVD just yet.

Stranger in Paradise opens in a bizarre fashion, where three students (Kazuhiko Kato, Osamu Kitayama, Norihiko Hashida) strip down to their underwear at a beach and monkey around as if after watching Bloody Thirst and got inspired by the character's iconic image of having a gun pointed at his head. Eventually they do hit the sea proper, and a hand emerges from under the sand to swap two out of three of their clothings. All this played out over a very kitsch song that seems like chipmunks on steroids. It turns out that two Korean soldiers (Kei Sato and Cha Dei-Dang) had AWOL from Korea and found themselves wanting a new life in Japan, and with the Japanese authorities hot on their trail to repatriate them back, they need to find some scapegoats to pose as them, hence the sitting duck students.

In a jiffy we see the three students get sent to Pusan, then to jail, then to an American camp in Vietnam, then dying out there at the warfront. Only that this happens in so comedic a fashion that you'll begin to question the legitimacy of it all the moment it begins. The film consists of countless of surreal moments such as this one, including one involving life and death, repetition in a cycle, and as mentioned, having everything repeat itself almost all over again, though the second time round it marked some attitude changes, where the students take their knowledge of what's to come, and goes along with the game from the onset. Other surreal moments will involve character motivation and design changes especially that of a husband and wife team, and an interview segment out of the blue where (I believe it's staged) people on the street are asked their nationality, and we realized who outnumbers who – the result which has to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Somehow there are a few common threads, ideas and elements that run through the films so far. For starters, the music – they're all infectious and take some time to get out of your head, and then there's the shared dream landscapes the characters often find themselves in, like that in Sing a Song of Sex, and now Sinner in Paradise, where they seem to "wake up" from time to time yet unable to find themselves in what is deemed to be reality. I'm not even sure if there is one in the film to begin with, and wonder if paradise the title alludes to, is just that – a place without a proper beginning, or end.

Perhaps one of the key pointed moments that address the issue of racism head on involve the Korean soldiers being terribly insistent that the Japanese students wear the former's military clothing. In the midst of a policeman, the Japanese students, through a series of questions, realize that the authorities simply have no idea what the soldiers looked like, and are only following orders to look for anyone wearing those recognizable togs. It's quite clear that it alludes to how we are quick to judge others on the basis of appearance and from what we see on the outside, rather than to spend time to look into something more deeper and meaningful than appearances. The ending also saw that realization and reconciliation coming too little too late, and has something it wants to say about the Vietnam war with the use of a recognizable motif. The notion of Koreans not killing Koreans can also suggest a larger picture that we shouldn't be killing ourselves. OK, I think I've gone overboard in desperately trying to spot some meaning in the film.

It will probably take repeat screenings to truly appreciate the ideas that are put forth in an oblique fashion since with each scene comes more things that are curiouser and curiouser. At least it's peppered with comedy that you can laugh at while perplexed at the more stranger things that unfold.

There are some directors I just have a hard time engaging with, no matter how beloved they may generally be. Between Jean-Luc Godard, Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, and even Ingmar Bergman I've loved some of their pictures, and hated others; worse, I've felt decidedly indifferent toward some, or at best liked them, but didn't get anything from them. Much the same goes for Oshima Nagisa. I've loved some of his films ('Empire of passion'), and others ('Double suicide: Japanese summer') just didn't leave much of a mark. Add 'Three resurrected drunkards' to the latter group. I appreciate the suggested commentary, the skills of all involved, and the intended comedy. I simply don't believe any of these qualities actually meet their potential, and the resulting viewing experience is at best just rather middling.

To the extent that the movie carries a message with its examination of the poor treatment to which immigrants are subjected - represented in the core idea of the Japanese protagonists being mistaken for Koreans - the premise is countermanded in part by all the other bits and bobs that are casually tossed in along the way, and definitely by the inclusion of a Korean character who is more or less antagonistic. In its very last minutes that messaging comes to the fore, but in a manner so heavy-handed as to break with what the piece has been doing for the entire rest of its length. There are some clever ideas in here that may have been ripe for comedy, but by one means or another they fail to evoke the desired reaction: because the tone is too soft, because the comedic timing is off, or often because the bit just isn't clever enough to earn a laugh. The nearest this comes to being funny is at various points in the latter half as the same sequence of events plays out in a more absurd way, but that's still not enough, especially as the whole begins to feel overlong and tiresome. Other odds and ends are clearly of a more somber nature befitting a "comedy-drama," but the attempted comedy works against these beats. Meanwhile, though I recognize the capabilities represented in the acting, cinematography, music, sound, costume design, stunts and effects, and so on, I just have a hard time caring about these facets when the substance of the feature falls flat.

Oshima has been included in a group of filmmakers pinged as the "Japanese New Wave." Like the "French New Wave," however, and other art movements - Impressionism, Expressionism, Modernism, Romanticism, Parallel Cinema, Neo- or Hyper- or Post-Whateverism, and so on ad infinitum - the label is meaninglessly non-descriptive. Oh yes, I discern some similarities of "New Wave" style, but it's a style that in my view is extraordinarily hit or miss, and in and of itself carries no special influence or importance. As the title fails to impress in any other capacity, that label is just an empty word.

No doubt this hits all the right notes for some folks, and some viewers will find 'Three resurrected drunkards' to be riotously funny or deeply impactful. I'm not one of those viewers. I don't specifically regret checking it out, but it's my belief that the flick fails to say, do, or be any of what it was meant to, and the sum total is ultimately very so-so and undistinguished. By the time the end credits roll, it feels like we've been sitting for longer than eighty minutes, and my already humdrum favor is further diminished. Watch if you want, and may you find it more valuable than I did; I think my time would have been better spent elsewhere.