Asian movies

Friday, 25 Nov 2005 | Miscellaneous

I’m flying back to Amsterdam as I’m writing this and have 5 movies to choose from. Although there are Hollywood productions playing that I have been meaning to see, instead I’ve decided to watch the Asian movies available - Peach Blossoming and The Gift. I find myself watching more and more Asian movies. I also regularly watch Asian Screen on MTV Europe, instead of the normal Hollywood movies that we all tune into on the weekends. Asian Screen is on every Friday and Saturday in the late evening, usually the movies are about gangs or other types of action movies.

“The Gift” (Japanese title: “Yokkakan no Kiseki”) by the way is worth watching. Directed by Kiyoshi Sasabe, one of Japan’s leading directors and starring big names of Japanese cinema it is every bit a major production. It is a beautiful story of sacrifice and reward. In the movie, there is a weird twist where a womans’ soul after a tragic accident enters the body of a child. But I’ve seen that in Asian movies before, weird things happen in otherwise completely ‘real’ movies. Once you just accept those as is (I mean, after all, how real is Star Wars?), it usually supports the story in some way or the other. In this case, it allows Mariko (the woman) to see how much she means to the world while she actually believed she was useless and to push Keisuke to persue his dream. The end is set to Dvorak’s “From the new world” symphony and are the final minutes of Mariko’s life. Keep the tissues close!

Asian movies are interesting for me personally, because they are a window to Asia. They are a lot less polished than Hollywood productions and depend on the story and the acting much more. Ofcourse there is a lot of garbage, but in general I find what I see to be really cool. Perhaps for reasons similar to why I want to move to Asia - it is different from what I am used to.