‘Mohican’ endearingly loud dramedy – ‘Mad Tiger’ colourful docu
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LOS ANGELES, April 21, (RTRS): A Leningrad Cowboy lookalike returns to the boondocks to cheer up his dying dad in “The Mohican Comes Home”, an endearingly loud dramedy which reminds one that not all Japanese family dramas are gentle and restrained. Helmer-scribe Shuichi Okita (“The Story of Yonosuke”) gives viewers no downtime with characters who bond through brawling and wear their hearts, as well as bad hair days, on their sleeves. Thankfully, comic-timing is off-beat and the character-driven gags seldom feel glibly contrived. Considering how well Okita’s previous works traveled the fest circuit, “Mohican” should spike up interest among audience-friendly fests.
Okita’s fourth feature may be more high-pitched than his other low key comedies, but he still demonstrates a knack for sketching life in isolated outposts with quirky, sad-but-funny strokes, as he did in “The Chef of South Polar” and “The Woodsman and the Rain”. This time, he sets the yarn on Tojima, a fictional island off the coast of Hiroshima, and celebrates the simple joys and down-to-earth temperament of island folk.
Eikichi Tamura (Ryuhei Matsuda) is the frontman of a hopeless death metal band in Tokyo. When he knocks up his g.f. Yuka (Atsuko Maeda), he reluctantly takes her with him to Tojima to announce their upcoming wedding. Although he hasn’t been back for seven years, he plans a quick in-and-out. The family reunion sets the tone for the film’s wild mood swings. First, Eikichi’s dad Osamu (Akira Emoto) wallops him for being a deadbeat. Next thing we know, he throws an impromptu party to celebrate becoming a grandfather.
Osamu collapses in a fit of drunken revelry and is taken to the hospital, where he’s diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Eikichi and Yuka have no choice but to postpone their return. Instead of turning into a full-blown meller, the knockabout farce keeps coming. Far from wallowing in grief, the Tamuras up the ante in well-meaning but bumbling antics, typified by an episode in which Eikichi tries to satisfy Osamu’s sudden craving for pizza with a gonzo gesture. Other more affecting scenes include those of Eikichi’s mom Haruko (Masako Motai) bonding with Yuka, as when she showers her with gallons of noodle-dipping sauce. Though not an attention-grabbing role, Eikichi’s timid younger brother Koji (Yudai Chiba) serves as a foil for his brash sibling.
Eikichi’s punk-rocker attire, so out-of-place in his hometown, generates some wry visual gags. As his Pompadour hairstyle outgrows itself like a slowly toppling pyramid, it symbolizes his blending in with the local lifestyle again. Without building up to some back-patting reconciliation, audiences can gradually recognize that Eikichi is a chip off the old block: Osamu is a hardcore fan of 70s rock star Eikichi Yuzawa, and his aging rockabilly suits are just as garish as his son’s Mohican hairdo. However, his musical ambitions take a different form — as the coach of a tone-deaf school brass band.
Elusive
The moment father and son stop belittling each other and realize they’re chasing the same elusive dream, Eikichi hits on the best way to give his dad the perfect send-off. Ultimately, “Mohican”, like most family drama, extols two generations accepting each other for who they are; just not via sentimental soul-baring reconciliations. Notwithstanding gaffes and misunderstanding, the Tamuras come to terms with loss and reaffirm their appreciation of blood ties in their own kooky manner.
Personifying likable losers who take themselves dead seriously even when everyone else treats them as a joke, Emoto and Matsuda try to upstage each other with bawling, shouty perfs. Thankfully, Maeda’s there to tone them down with the same laid back charm she displayed as a slacker in “Tamako in Maoratorium”. With twinkling eyes and an unguarded smile, her Yuka is the kind of girl at ease in the most awkward situations, and her unruffled acceptance of motherhood gives the whole family hope and strength to get through their crisis. Usually an overly methodical thesp, Motai’s perf is also one of her most spontaneously emotional.
Shooting by Akiko Ashizawa, who shot Okita’s “Wood Job” and several of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s works, took place on four small islands off Seto Inner Sea (Setonaikai), yielding radiant visuals of blue skies and sunny beaches. Shoji Ikenaga’s lively score references but does not overplay Eikichi’s or Yuzawa’s music. Other tech credits are smooth.
Jonathan Yi and Michael Haertlein’s tchronicles a tumultuous period in the career of Peelander-Z, a cartoonish conceptual punk band of NYC-based Japanese expats. The high-energy silliness of their stage act becomes a contrast to offstage drama as the group’s ongoing existence is threatened by a couple personnel departures. This aptly colorful documentary doesn’t provide all that much insight into the act’s history, and the human conflicts aren’t fully illuminated, either. But it’s fun entering these performers’ universe even with a less than all-access pass. The film’s April 8 LA launch kicked off a US theatrical release that will unfold somewhat in tandem with a live tour for the band’s current incarnation.
An initial sit-down interview with leader Kengo (aka Peelander-Yellow) establishes some basic “facts” (and input from other personnel soon reveals how skittishly unaccustomed they are to speaking out of “character” or without his permission). In its elaborately ridiculous mythology, Peelander-Z is a “Japanese Action Comic Punk Band” that somehow came from Planet Peelander to make Earthlings “happy happy”. They have color-coded costumes/personas, a la Power Rangers, and sing songs like “Ninja High School”, “Panda Punk” and “Do the Laundry”.
Odyssey
An all-too-rapid-fire montage charts their odyssey since 1998 as industrious nurturers of a modest cult following on the indie rock scene. Though they’ve released several CDs, their live shows are clearly the main attraction, with antics including “human bowling”, mock superheroic battles, a squid costume for bassist Peelander-Red (Kotaro Tsukada, who sometimes rides a unicycle while wearing it), and much audience participation.
“Of course we practice song, but we don’t really care about song. Music is kind of 10 percent, and 90 percent is kind of theater style”, says Kengo, who further admits he’s not much of a guitarist. Asked if she’s bothered when the band’s humor is dismissed as “stupid”, keyboardist Peelander-Pink (Yumiko Hioki) further defines their raison d’etre by shrugging “‘Stupid’ is a compliment. People don’t often get the opportunity to be stupid”.
It’s noted that the band’s showmanship owes much to Red, who is glimpsed hanging off a lighting rig by his legs (while still playing bass); their levels of popularity and musicianship were boosted by the 2008 arrival of drummer Peelander-Green (Akihiko Naruse). Thus it’s a major crisis when one, then the other announces they will be leaving the act — largely, in both cases, because the newly-married men no longer want to live the barely-scraping-by lifestyle of endless van tours and living in an under-heated rehearsal space.(Yellow and Pink have bypassed this conflict by marrying each other, though there’s no insight whatsoever into their relationship here.)
But we also glean that beneath the manic public persona, Yellow is a somewhat sour, difficult taskmaster who may not be nearly as much fun to work with as the stage hijinks suggest. (There’s a particularly interesting passage where he relates first coming to NYC as an art student, and becoming so frustrated that he “killed” 300 finished canvases by painting them over in white.) He’s particularly put out by the departure after 12 years of Red, whose designated role as “the crazy one” now means 45-year-old Yellow must step up his own game (and risk of potential injury). His resentment grows even as the group imports a new bassist in genial Peelander-Purple, aka Akiteru Ito.
These conflicts are somewhat murkily explored, limited by personalities unused to stepping out of “Peelander” character — let alone expressing their personal feelings — in public. Eventually Yellow takes a trip home to Japan that the film intends to have a cathartic impact. But it’s not clear whether it really has any such impact on him, or is just played that way to provide some sense of resolution. Fade-out leaves viewer to guess how the band worked out a viable future for itself.
These somewhat downbeat turns of fortune are tonally countered by the anarchic merriment of Pee-Z’s shows, even after we’ve realized there’s a certain amount of backstage stress and strain behind them. Both veteran cinematographers, co-directors Yi and Hartlein revel in the absurdist visual flash of this music-slash-performance-art entity, and Hisayo Kushida’s editing likewise keeps things lively. The band’s songs are primarily limited to concert sequences, with a rather more conventional original score by Daniel Salo underlining the gradual shift towards more earnest content.
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