Le vase de sable

One thing to beware of with this police procedural is that it's 143 minutes and very drawn out. Director Yoshitaro Nomura has a tendency to explain everything, such as the logistics of the cops as they travel around rural parts of Japan, which he does frequently via words on the screen, to the cops re-stating things that we've already seen or figured out. Also, while there is value to understanding just how much leg work goes into solving a crime, there were times I thought it was overdone, or at least, that the "slow burn" payoff better be high.

Mercifully, the beautiful cinematography offsets some of the issues with pace. Nomura often zooms out back from his characters to show not just wonderful scenery, but I think also to give us a sense for how small these lives are in the grand scheme of things. The past has a tendency to be quickly forgotten by the world, as if it were swallowed up in forests humming with loud insects, but not by individuals. No matter how successful someone may become, no matter the number of years that have gone by, the past is always with us, and trauma can come bubbling to the surface in a heartbeat. This is the main payoff to the film, not a surprise twist in the murder mystery itself, which never really has more than one suspect. There is real emotional power in seeing how the past fits together and affects people in the present. Nomura unveils this quite well via flashbacks set not to dialogue, but soaring music, and the result is a feeling of empathy for a callous man who has killed the kindest of persons. It's melodramatic for sure, but enlightened at the same 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.

At first, I thought this was going to be a standard murder-mystery story. A police detective doggedly pursues slim clues all over the map to find a murderer. However, when the events which led up to the crime are revealed through flashbacks, the story takes an emotional turn which even brings tears to the detective's eyes. Like most Japanese movies, it starts slowly but comes alive at the end. I recommend it.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center Presents

A Special Retrospective of The 43rd New York Film Festival

The Beauty of the Everyday: Japan's Shochiku Company at 110 September 24 – October 20, 2005

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

This year's New York Film Festival Retrospective— The Beauty of the Everyday: Japan's Shochiku Company at 110— is virtually a pocket history of Japanese cinema. While some fifteen of the forty-five films in the retrospective are devoted to Japanese filmmaker masters, such as Ozu, Naruse, and Mizoguchi, more than two dozen of the films are by directors far less well-known in the West.

The Castle of Sand / Suna no Utsuwa Yoshitaro Nomura, 1974; 140m Two detectives, Imanishi and Yoshimura, are assigned to the murder of a 60-year-old man whose body was found dumped in a railroad yard. It turns to be that of a former policeman, Miki; the murder now seems even more mysterious, as Miki was well liked by all and had been on holiday when he was killed. The detectives visit all the places to which Miki has traveled, with little luck, but then they read an account buried in a lengthy report of how Miki years before had befriended a destitute, leprous man and his young son. Amazingly, that boy had grown up to become Eiryo Waga, a rising star in the music world. Could such an eminent figure have anything to do with the murder? Sadly, Yoshitaro Nomura passed away this past April; for years one of Shochiku's most popular and reliable directors, he worked successfully in a variety of genres but especially made his mark with The Castle of Sand, based on a best-selling novel. A real delight, the film contains many of the classic features of the detective film — the pairing of a veteran and a rookie, the investigation as a voyage of discovery, wonderfully eccentric supporting characters — but under Nomura's sure direction they take on a whole new life.

ONLY ONE Screening: Sun Sept 25: 9:00pm

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.