Film
Seitz, Michael H.
FILM Michael H. Seitz Japan Now, Germany Then We watch what seems to be a typical Japanese family—lively pubescent daughter, studious son, homemaking mother, conscientious, hardworking...
...Unexpectedly, Grandpa moves in and reveals himself to be quite as peculiar as his progeny...
...This is an original and perversely humorous work...
...The mother embarks on an impromptu striptease...
...Although it is unmistakably Japanese, especially in the style of acting, its use of imagery and sound suggest a modernist instability quite foreign to classic Japanese cinema...
...Though it assumes some understanding of traditional Japanese life, it should be more accessible than most Japanese films to Western viewers...
...rare shots of the aftermath of the Nazis' murderous Kristallnacht...
...He drinks too much, breaks down, and confesses that he has not been stationed on the Eastern front as they all supposed, but has been working in a death camp in Silesia...
...As they celebrate the holiday, it becomes clear he is suffering from a troubled conscience...
...FILM Michael H. Seitz Japan Now, Germany Then We watch what seems to be a typical Japanese family—lively pubescent daughter, studious son, homemaking mother, conscientious, hardworking father—move from cramped urban quarters into a suburban dream house...
...His wife wants to hear none of this, and complains, "I went to such trouble for a little bit of Christmas, and now you've spoiled it all...
...This is not a film about headline events or major personalities...
...The dramatized portions are in black and white, with period costuming and staging, so the transitions between nonfic-tion and drama are relatively seamless...
...The mother installs her collection of house plants and revels in her spacious new kitchen...
...These sequences, showing cynical acquiescence, mindless conformity, and pervasive bad faith, benefit from the performances of actors known for their work with the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder, notably Gottfried John and Armin Mueller-Stahl (who plays the engineer), but the quality of the dramatizations is uneven, and they tend to be rather static and talky in the manner of early television drama...
...In one of the more memorable episodes, an engineer goes home on leave toward the end of the war to spend Christmas with his wife and family...
...It depicts everyday life as it was lived in Nazi Germany and the complicity of ordinary people in the crimes of the regime...
...The daughter spends most of her time preparing to be either a pop singer or a professional wrestler...
...manipulation of camera focus, odd-angle perspectives, flash editing, and process shots, and sets these images to a driving rock score...
...But at a time when neo-Nazism is gaining new adherents in various parts of the world, this film—despite its weaknesses—can serve as an important warning and reminder to us all...
...The distinction between reality and reenact-ment is further blurred by the fact that Nazi showmanship caused actual rallies and pageants to appear staged, and the careful editing of propaganda newsreels gives them the look of fiction...
...All vestiges of restraint and accommodation break down, the father announces "the final solution," everyone takes up arms, and the family, reduced to a Hobbesian state, is caught up in a war of all against all...
...The documentary footage includes much rare and fascinating material: an almost unbelievable depiction of a Nazi Christmas pageant in which a cast of hundreds, in sequential tableaux, presents a progression from the birth of Christ to the triumph of National Socialism...
...The daughter delights in having a room of her own...
...It is a work that probes the dark underside of the Japanese economic miracle and the tensions created when social tradition comes into conflict with wrenching cultural and technological change...
...He returns to this subject, though with a different focus and format, in the recently released Following the Fuhrer...
...In its mode of expression and its exploitation of cinematic resources, the film itself exemplifies the changes it depicts...
...Whether deliberately or not, The Crazy Family draws upon such diverse motion picture sources as Mr...
...The father finds a termite and embarks on a maniacal campaign of extermination...
...Ishii, who plays with a rock band and has directed rock videos, makes unusually expressive use of extreme close-ups, slow motion...
...This is the action of The Crazy Family, a terrifying yet hilarious social comedy by Sogo Ishii, a twenty-eight-year-old Japanese filmmaker...
...Following the Fuhrer seems to have been addressed primarily to young Germans who took no part in the horrors of the Third Reich and want to understand how all this could have happened...
...But this, it soon becomes clear, is a peculiar household...
...footage never seen before of the destruction of German cities by Allied bombing...
...Photo stills and newsreels, most of them unfamiliar, are intercut with related dramatized vignettes written by Oliver Storz and directed by Ebhard Itzenplitz...
...The material is accompanied by voice-over narration, and serves to establish the historical context for the personalized vignettes...
...The son can now study without interruption for his university exams...
...Twenty-six years ago, Erwin Leiser made Mein Kampf, a seminal documentary film on the rise and fall of the Third Reich...
...And the father believes he has dis- ¦ charged his most essential familial obligation at long last...
...The son rarely leaves his high-tech chamber, where he studies 'round the clock, keeping himself awake by plunging a carpenter's awl into his thigh...
...I have nothing to give you except my body," she tells her husband in gratitude for "this wonderful house...
...Blandings Builds His Dream House, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and samurai movies...
Vol. 50 • March 1986 • No. 3
