Maborosi vs. Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker
Red Firecracker, Green FirecrackerThe dramatic conflict here is choosing between, on one hand, familial duty/loyalty and business and, on the other hand, love. The Cai family is a prominently wealthy family in the business of firecracker production. The lead character is the only heir to the business, a young woman, Chunzhi. Lest an outsider takes control, she is forbidden to marry. An artist is commissioned to work on the Cai family door, and during the course, they fall for each other.
I really don't have much to say about this film. At best, it's pedestrian, but, I, for the most part, think it's a poor film. For one thing, as portrayed, there's really nothing admirable about the love interest Ning Hao. If the point is that it's a strictly sexual attraction between the two, then okay, but if the intention was to have a substantial connection between the two, then this film failed, tremendously.
Moreover, I laughed hard a lot at serious moments. Pretty much all the love scenes where unintentional hilarity to me. Most memorably, the sounds Master (Chunzhi) made when she kept on resisting Ning Hao's attempts at kissing her, the moan she let out when he tried to take off her top...lmaoooo.
Still, I was never inclined to want to stop the film and quit. And there were two shots that stood out: 1) Ning Hao on the boat with fireworks blasting everywhere and 2) Master standing by the raging river.
MaborosiDeath is a recurring subject in the films in one of my favorite directors Koreeda. In this film, Yumiko loses her husband just 3 months after their son was born. Death got the magical realist, fantasy treatment in After Life and a Naruse-Ozu-like treatment in Still Walking. Here, it's a bare, extremely minimalist treatment. There are barely any medium shots (from the chest up) and close-ups. The majority of the time, the camera is set so that the people are in full figure and situated in the middle plane of the shot. (I can't take screen shots because my DVD drives can't read the scratched up disc.) Important emotional and narrative moments are rendered with no close-ups or medium shots. A distancing effect is made palpable. It's risky to make a film about strong emotional content like grief and render it in the style Koreeda does. This effect is intensified by Koreeda's use of ellipses. Important parts in the narrative are left out which makes the risk even bigger by providing a block to emotional connection for the viewer. Moreover, even at a basic level of narrative, it can make it difficult to follow. It's difficult to register facial expression (films like this play better on the big screen) and sometimes faces are completely unlit or turned away from us. We don't even get to see the face of the lead character Yumiko's new husband until about 7 minutes after his introduction and after numerous opportunities to have shown it earlier. But around the 50 minute mark of this 100 minute film, things start to open up for the viewer. Different camera setups (including moving the camera closer), more sun and outdoors, etc. Lest you get the impression that this is a gloomy film from start to finish, it's not. There are several moments of banter, wisecracks, singing, laughter, etc.
While I've gone over the riskiness of the film's style, let me go over successful strategies employed by Koreeda to counterbalance the possible negative effect of ellipses, the camera setups, and lighting. Koreeda uses repetition of camera setups for emotional effect. It highlights the absence of a person when we return to a place we've been and a shot from an earlier sequence is repeated. Koreeda also used repetition in dialogue as when Yumiko has a conversation with her new husband that is similar to an earlier one in the film with her first husband. The difference in tone between the conversations not only remind us and her of her first husband and the pain Yumiko still carries, but also that she has a ways to go in relating to her new husband and that their dynamic will be different. Objects are used to link Yumiko to her painful past. Even Yumiko's son is called a memento of pain by Yumiko's town mate. And the most effective technique was the sound design. There is a sound that only makes sense to the viewer when we hear it again near the end of the film. And related to this, the film's title will only be made meaningful to the viewer near the end of the film. Admittedly, while I think these are successful storytelling devices, things like the conversation and sound design can get overlooked because of the languid pace, the ellipses, the long shot durations, a rarely moving camera, and camera and lighting setups.
Verdict: Maborosi has two of the most memorable shots, which I didn't mention above, not just out of the films in this bracket but in all of the movies I've ever seen. While I no longer think Maborosi is a great film and don't think it's a contender to win the bracket, it has many moments of merit compared to none for its opponent. Maborosi moves on.