I felt the acting was mediocre, the “shaky camera” technique used annoying at times, and the background music rather primitive, but there were also many strengths to the movie. It had some excellent scenes that capture the Polish dilemma with remembering this pivotal event of 1940 or—as the Soviets would have them believe until official admission to the crime in 1990— 1941.

One thing that particularly impressed me was the portrayal of the process of the massacre itself. Most of us are familiar, desensitized even, to portrayals of massacre in the many films on the Holocaust or World War II in general. There are certain aspects of these scenes that seem almost required: images of angry shouting soldiers herding a crowd of helpless victims, the evil officer given ample chance to fully personify the diabolical, and so on.

Katyń initially passes the point of the massacre without any depiction of it whatsoever, letting it instead hang over all the scenes to follow and allowing the audience to only imagine what has transpired. We then return to the actual scene of killing at the close of the film.

I thought the depiction of the killing was done wonderfully, if one can use such a word to comment on the cinematography of massacre. With the exception of Soviet officers confirming the identity of some high-ranking officers, the perpetrators hardly speak and are generally without expression. Instead, the soldiers simply carry out their terrible task in a quiet and methodical fashion. The killings proceed smoothly and as part of a highly mechanical procedure. Instead of sacrificing an opportunity to vilify the Soviets who carried out Stalin’s orders, this approach, I believe, adds to the horror felt by the viewer, and reminds us of how this process may have been seen by soldiers for whom executions of reactionary elements were thought a natural and necessary component of the revolution.

One after another, we are shown the Polish officers taken to the killing grounds in a truck, individually unloaded, tied, shot, and finally covered with others in the mass grave. In the case of some officers killed separately, the rapid procession of killings in an abandoned forest house is interrupted only by the splash of a bucket of water upon the blood covered concrete basement floor, the expulsion of the corpse through a shoot into a waiting truck outside, and a newly loaded gun being handed to the executioner.

I’ll close these comments by sharing one of the fragments of dialogue which describes the dilemma of collaboration in the postwar Soviet dominated Poland and in so many other places seen, as it was at the time, as a stark choice between silent acquiescence and open resistance. It takes place in a graveyard between the wife and a sister of the slain. Magdalena has a gravestone for her brother made with the forbidden 1940 death year carved on the stone, while the other, Róża, the wife of a dead general, keeps her mourning to herself, finds work as an art teacher, and tries to plead reason with Magdalena:

Magdalena: You’ve found a place in this new world of yours, whereas I am whole in that where Piotr is. If I must choose, I stay with him.

Róża: You choose the dead, which is morbid.

Magdalena: No. I choose the murdered, not the murderers.

The creator of this video podcast is Michael Hurt, who writes at one of the best Korea weblogs out there, the Scribblings of the Metropolitician. He is especially good discussing issues of race and identity in contemporary Korea.

これが、この物語の主人公である。しかし、今この男について語るのが退屈なだけだ。なぜなら、彼は時間を潰しているだけだから。彼には生きた時間がない。つまり、彼は生きているとはいえないからである。

“This is the protagonist of our story. However, to tell his story now would simply be tiresome. This is because [at this point] he is simply passing his time. He has no time to live. That is, you can’t even say that he is alive.”

Of course there is lots of borrowing the other way as well, and much of it to great effect. The beautifully filmed Korean movie “A Tale of Two Sisters” (which I highly recommend despite many contradictions and loose ends) borrows heavily from US movie plots, and comes off as a combination of “Sixth Sense“, Japan’s “Audition“, “Identity” and a few other psychological thrillers. This sort of mixing and matching of ideas is what creating culture is all about.

Some of the stuff coming out though is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. The Korean version of the Japanese “Ring” was really awful. The Japanese mini-series version of the story also sucked. The sequels got a bit too scientific and Darwinian in their message. Other Japanese and Korean movies coming out recently are also trying to capitalize on the bizarre but terrifying example of the “Ring” have made ridiculous versions of a similar concept.

Many of these movies involve some kind of object (like a cellphone, or a stereo and its white noise) being cursed or otherwise being connected to the world of the dead. Today I saw one example of how bad it can get. A horror movie showing on SBS here in Seoul this evening is clearly a knockoff of the same idea. In the “Ring” (I know this sounds stupid but the Japanese movie is really a classic) a cursed video, when watched, shows a bizarre female figure. Those who watch the movie are cursed (mostly school girls) and the frightening long black haired female figure kills them a week later or something. Long black-haired ghosts seem to be a consistent theme here, but they will be familiar to anyone who has read old Japanese ghost stories or seen the movie Kwaidan. In tonight’s movie, instead of a cursed video, the school girls are slain by:

A cursed sticker-picture vending machine

When their picture gets taken in the machine, a mysterious and horrifying female figure is seen behind them in the picture, foreshadowing their impending death.

“The 40 episodes cover the period from the morning of president Park Chung-hee’s assassination to the handover of power from Chun Doo-hwan to Roh Tae-woo.” But the first nine episodes concentrate on the last months of 1979, from Park’s assassination on Oct. 26, 1979 to the Dec. 12 putsch. The 1980 Gwangju Uprising gets four episodes to itself. “We will focus on the New Military Group’s preparations and decision-making process in brutally putting down the uprising.”

One or two episodes each will deal with other incidents like various financial scandals, the shooting down of a KAL airliner over Soviet airspace, the Rangoon bombing, occupation by demonstrators of the U.S. Cultural Center in Seoul, sexual torture inflicted on female protestors by police in Bucheon in 1986, Geumgang Dam, the torture and killing of collegian Park Jong-chol in 1987 and the June 29 Declaration of the same year that forced democratic change.

◆ The characters

The “hero” is Chun Doo-hwan, played by Lee Deok-hwa. “His negative side is well known, but he had a charm about him, like a boss who takes money from this person and that person to buy booze for his underlings in order to keep those around him happy,” Lee said. “We will show this as central to his attraction.” Roh Tae-woo (played by Seo In-seok), on the other hand, is depicted as an introverted, calculating fellow. “There is evidence if you look at Chun’s autobiography, where he says whatever he starts, Roh finishes,” Im said.

I would be very interested to see how the drama juggles accuracy, popular impressions of the recent past, and the views of the writers themselves. I’m sure there will be lots of interesting commentary floating around about this. I hope I can live to see the day when China permits the showing of a historical drama giving 4 episodes to Tiananmen in 1989.

The cartoon follows the adventures of the mischievous cat 傻瓜 and other characters. The show is deeply engaged in ethical education and multiculturalism, and according to their site each episode is dedicated to: 1) Modeling strategies for dealing with the personal and social issues children face as they grow into a variety of new roles. 2) Exposing children to elements of cultures other than their own and showing that children all over share many of the same interests and emotions. In other words there is a clear universalistic Enlightenment approach here combined with an appreciation for cultural diversity.

I’m not sure how much influence they have on children, but I certainly remember all sorts of warm and fuzzy lessons that learned from watching the Smurfs and Care Bears as a kid. Ok, so one of the Care Bear artists (writers?), Kathy Bostrom, is also author of “Little Blessings: God Loves You” and is perhaps the same Kathy Bostrom which was a previous president of the Presbyterian Writers Guild. However, I’m happy to see one author find that, “The occult images found in the Care Bear series are extremely subtle. On the surface, the Care Bears teach the children to express their feelings, especially those of love, to others. At first, these sound like very good ideas, but, they are Humanistic principles, which are in contradiction to God’s teachings. Magic and Eastern religious ideals also are prevalent in this series.” (Cited here from Phillips, Phil: Turmoil in the Toybox).

What I liked most about the Shagua/Sagwa cartoon, which is apparently based on a story by the bestselling author Amy Tan, was that unlike many cartoons that show aspects of cultures that are unfamiliar to many of its viewers, this cartoon actually tried to slip in a variety of cultural material which goes beyond the regular standard images. Sure, it had really stereotyped images in some scenes, but I liked how simple Chinese words constantly slipped into the dialogue (kinship terms, greetings like zaijian, food items like baozi, instrument names, and other daily words). Of course, many of the characters act in strangely Western ways, and promote entirely anachronistic values, but a child watching this will be exposed to a host of new cultural images, and vocabulary. After a word, for example is introduced, it is often simply referred thereafter by its Chinese name. I would love see more multi-lingual cartoons out there, even if this just means that we call baozi a baozi, and not a “steamed bun”!

As for the moral education aspects of the cartoon, looking over the list of “messages” in each episode, I liked how we start with an episode which mocks slavish obedience to authority! The question the site suggests parents ask children, “Ask your child to think of a rule that he or she believes is unfair. What could be done to change the rule?”

In an amazing shift, however, the director is able to gradually turn the tables so that the audience gradually begins to feel much greater antipathy towards a callous and discriminatory society. When Gong-ju actually phones her attacker, who flowered her with compliments before assaulting her, a friendship is established between them. Jong-du is the only person who has given her any real attention. Her family has abandoned her in a tiny apartment while they live in the disabled-only apartment complex offered her and she is fed by neighbors who show her little respect. Jong-du tries to redeem himself and begins to take Gong-ju on outings. We later discover that the involuntary manslaughter charge for which Jong-du served 2.5 years in prison was actually a hit-and-run that his brother was guilty of and for which Jong-du took the fall. The growing love between Gong-ju and Jong-du, however, is a tragic one when society fails to recognize the possibility and legitimacy of a relationship between the two.

I have left lots of details out, but Kim discusses a few of the themes in the movie. One interesting aspect of the movie which have a very powerful effect are “fantasy” scenes in which Gong-ju appears as a completely normal person. In these scenes she dances, sings, and playfully fights with Jong-du. We are given insight into the imagination of Gong-ju and are able to better comprehend the paralyzing disability that leaves her almost unable to speak or control her body. Kim Kyung Hyun explores this realm of fantasy, and suggests that the director has tried to show, in this movie and others, the limits of language. Both in their relationship and throughout the movie, language has limited utility for the lovers, and on several occasions there are contradictions in language which actually give birth to fantasy.

The scene which Kim focuses the most on is the fascinating birthday party of Jong-du’s mother. There we find out that Jong-du took the fall for his brother’s crime. Shortly thereafter Jong-du tells a story about his childhood in which he is told by his father that some greenfinches in the trees had little bells around their neck. I think there is a play on words here with the Korean for greenfinch but at any rate, Jong-du laughs and cries as he describes how he stood under the tree looking for the bells on the necks of the birds. One of his brothers angrily asks why he brought up this story about the greenfinches (which were originally referred to as sparrows).

Kim sees this as an example of the fantasy world that a childish Jong-du lives in, the limits/power of language and attributes it with other significance I didn’t quite understand. I actually had a much simpler interpretation. I saw it as an example of how Jong-du had been deceived by his own father as a child and held on to belief that was in fact a lie. I thought that Jong-du (or more likely the director) was telling us something about the deceptive world he was living in, and the lies that Jong-du had been led to believe by his family. His brothers let him take the fall for the family but when he is released (at the beginning of the movie) they have moved away and disconnected the phone line without ever telling him their new contact information.

The movie was full of blanket stereotypes, weird music (presumably to give it a Chinese feel) and western actors speaking in a mechanical tone of voice to help us believe they are the Empress Dowager and her followers. Nothing more or less than common for a movie of its time.

To its credit, the Westerners don’t come across completely untarnished. In the first few minutes we hear some disgruntled Chinese say, “Different nations say the same thing, ‘We want China.'” The audience is also asked to respect the Chinese as Charlton Heston reminds his US soldiers, “This is a highly cultured civilization so don’t get any idea that you are any better than these people just because they can’t speak English.” It doesn’t help though that the next scene has Heston trying to save a Western missionary from torture and execution at the hand of Boxer rebels (who for some reason all seem to wave banners saying “Beijing” 北京 and “the capital” 京都). When he tries to buy the life of the missionary, our hero explains that the greedy capitalist Chinese will sell anything at a price.

Our American hero, as is often the case in these movies (and in reality?), is an impatient, aloof, but thoroughly seasoned warrior who doesn’t have time for the subtleties of diplomacy (that is left to the British ambassador). He only knows bravery, duty, and action and he gets very angry at the British ambassador when told that killing the Empress Dowager might not be a good way to resolve the crisis. I could see his eyes totally flashing, “Dude! But she’s like, EVIL!” More below…

The other diplomats of the great powers (with the exception of the American representative who says that the US has no interests in China and is thus above the whole affair) are all sniveling fools who eventually bow to the strategic genius of Britain’s representative David Niven, only to complain when things are not going well. Niven, while the most crafty and calculating of all, is also concerned and reflective, assuring us that he is taking a hard line to achieve peace through deception. After his son is wounded and his wife has a fit, we find him skipping dinner to lay on his couch and ponder over what he and Britain are actually doing in China in the first place. No answer is forthcoming, but he pulls himself together and personally joins Heston for a raid on a Chinese armory. The attack proceeds smoothly thanks to the hand chop karate action delivered by the Japanese member of the team.

Speaking of the Japanese, I was pleased to see that the Japanese are at least included. An American officer who wakes up a row of European soldiers by saying “good morning” in each of their languages, stops at the Japanese soldier and after a moment of confusion, just says “Good morning” in English. The Japanese actor who plays the head of the Japanese troops speaks great English, and has two whole lines in addition to his martial arts performance. One is to report on the exact military strength of the Allied troops in the legations (exhibiting that Japanese skill for precision and accuracy?) and the second is to saying something like, “Major, if you are thinking what I know you think I think you are thinking (that we should attack the Empress Dowager), then I have to say I agree with the [British] Ambassador” (perhaps showing that timeless ability of the Japanese to think in a calculating way?) Overall though, in the shooting of Heston and Japanese actor as “fellow soldier pals” the Japanese come across in the movie as cooperative allies.

There is a little “children out of place” theme in the movie. A half-Chinese girl who dreams of going “home” to America is eventually adopted by Heston when her American father dies, showing that he has come around from his original view at the beginning of the movie that she should be left behind in China with “her own people.” In a very different way, the two British children who grew up in the foreign legation are brought into focus by Niven’s distraught wife, “Do you think if a child dies in a foreign place without ever having been home that his soul doesn’t rest? I think it goes into limbo, an enormous empty Chinese limbo and it wanders there lost and crying.” Foreign place? Home? TCKs (Third-Culture Kids) all over the world must have sighed with exasperation when they heard this line.

The movie opens and ends with the triumphant marching of soldiers, the raising of flags, and happy songs from each country being played. As the troops from each European country come into the legations and victory is secured, joyful women rush out to meet them. The British (Indian troops), the Americans, the French, the Spanish, the Austrians, etc. were all there. I was very interested to see how the coming of the Japanese troops were portrayed a little differently. At the very end, after all the soldiers from European countries (plus America) have been embraced by their comrades, the music gets a little more quiet, playing a slightly oriental tune, and then, in the distance, through a cracked door, we see some Japanese marines march towards the Japanese pal of Heston. We can’t quite make out who they are until they stop marching, salute and then finally bow deeply.

Perched on top of the ruins of their defenses, Niven says to Heston, “Listen to them, they are all playing different tunes again.” Heston replies, “Well for 55 days we all played the same tune, ‘Kill the Chinese.'”

Ok, so he didn’t say, “Kill the Chinese.” But he should have. Then the camera should have panned out over the scene of a burning Beijing and we should have been able to see Allied soldiers rampaging about during their massive pillage of China’s capital. Instead we see the empress dowager repeating the phrase, “The dynasty is finished. The dynasty is finished.” If you listen really closely she is actually saying, “The horror, the horror,” long predating this line heard in the movie Apocalypse Now.

I am a big fan of this rather odd movie but not everyone finds this movie to be a celebration of multi-ethnicity and a condemnation of Japanese society…

Aaron Gerow in Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States (87-93) takes a much more critical look at the movie. He admits that, “at first glance Swallowtail Butterfly appears to be part of a series of films critiquing the myth of a homogeneous Japan by focusing on its ethnic minorities” (88) and that it can also be seen to represent “border-crossing” and “fluid identities” which is, of course, what I love about the movie. However, Gerow argues that the movie reconstructs the nation in a terms of a postmodern consumer culture and often portrays the Asians in the movie as a utopian idyllic community devoid of reality. Also, as Shaviro notices, there is not a single Korean in this multi-ethnic Japan, a startling absence considering their importance.

During the course of his argument Gerow makes some interesting points about the movie. On occasions when the Chinese are portrayed in their familiar exotic Oriental environments, there are no subtitles. Gerow believes that “for all its multicultural celebration” the movie, “reveals a deep-seated fear of Asia and presents the Japanese subjectivity to conquer it.” (89) He also looks closely at the issue of how furusato or hometown/native place is treated and the homelessness of the characters searching for a home. The upshot of this discussion is that Gerow feels the movie has an entrenched “conservative nostalgia…in part through having foreigners yearn for the same maternal place as Japanese.” (92) This, he concludes, contributes to, “creating a new Japan amid the detritus of the postcolonial era, a space where all can become Japanese by buying into the image of furusato.

My own feeling is that Gerow is too harsh. For example, it is difficult to see how the “new Japan” of the movie bears any resemblance to the kind of homogenizing nation which bore so many contradictions for Japan in the modern period. If pure “native” Japanese still hold power in Yen Town, this is revealed to the audience through their corrupt and cruel roles as villains. The yearning for a furusato by the minorities in the movie is a very real emotion, felt by many of us who have trouble identifying with any one place (such as myself) or when we do, being rejected as members of that community (many minorities and immigrants all over the world).

It is not resolved by identifying with some reified Japan, but instead left without resolution, in the movie as it often is in life. The attachment to Yen town and the primacy of money as the currency of legitimacy and power are hardly substitutes and I would argue the emphasis of these themes do more to erode traditional associations with the nation than to reconstruct them.

The movie is great fun, beautifully filmed, and well acted. Cruise’s swordsmanship, broken Japanese, etc. are all well done. I agree, however, completely with the Washington Post reviewer who calls the movie, “Dances with Swords” or “Dances with Samurai”. The movie really does feel like a remake of Kevin Costner’s “Dances with Wolves” set in Japan.

There has been lots of discussion going back and forth on the H-Japan discussion list about the movie. As any student of Japanese history will recognize, the samurai rebellion is modeled on Saigo Takamori’s rebellion in the Meiji period. Much of the discussion on the list was either fighting over the historical (in)accuracies of the movie, over which Western military advisor inspired Tom Cruise’s character, and whether or not the movie should be celebrated for attracting new students to the “field”, or critiqued for giving students a distorted view of history. I found Mark Ravine‘s (author of a biography of Saigo Takamori) posting to the list to be the most interesting.

Although I still find it entertaining to compare movies with the historical events they portray or the periods they are set in, I have long ago given up judging a movie based on its historical accuracy. I think it is far more interesting to consider the portrayal of certain groups, people, or behavior and will therefore not spend much time here talking about those inaccuracies. I will only note what I found most ironic among the omissions in the movie’s reproduction of Saigo’s rebellions. The character modeled on Saigo could never have gained our audience’s sympathy as a loyal imperial servant who simply wishes to preserve a traditional culture if we were to learn that he was partly motivated to leave the government and rebel out of anger that it refused to invade Korea when he wanted it to. If he had stuck around a few decades, he would have seen his goal fulfilled.

There are lots of messages in this movie but rather than giving lots of commentary, I’ll just list some of them. 1) The Meiji emperor is urged not to be a slave to the lies and deception of his advisors and to follow his conscience. This connects directly into the narrative of Japan’s modern emperors not being able to prevent their nation from doing nasty things. 2) The beauty and moral purity of Japan’s traditions are constantly juxtaposed with the brutality of modernity. It is interesting to note, however, that the most tragic aspect of modernization portrayed by the movie is the ban on the samurai ability to wear swords and have a top knot. 3) Americans showed no regard for the life of Native Americans. 4) The gun industry and greedy merchants are bad. 5) The samurai rebels lived humbly in mountain villages in totally utopian classless world. Their oppressive rule over the peasants is not portrayed. 5) Except for their views about death and their fanatical loyalty, there is no portrayal of the more problematic elements of samurai morality.

The movie was lots of fun, but as with all such productions, the complete lack of moral ambiguity and complexity in the characters means I always tend to feel a degree of irking dissatisfaction.

I was impressed by the complexity of its characters, their interaction, and the fact that the audience isn’t treated like an idiot. I never thought a movie with a name and plot like this could have subtlety. The action, for what it is worth, was also impressive, with everyone behaving like they actually had training in tactics rather than growing up on too many cheesy police shows. The bad guy bodyguards are even given a little more than the usual, with them hatching their own plots and affairs and also behaving half way intelligently.

The “Left Behind” series, which I was able to get a taste of through the B-Movie of that name, tells the story of unbelievers who are “left behind” after faithful Christians are suddenly removed from the world. A perceptive group among the survivors realize that they have erred in their lack of faith, become reborn Christians and try to spread word that the world has plunged into the heart of the Bible’s Revelations. They uncover the identity of the Anti-Christ (who is none other than the secretary-general of the UN) and battle against his evil blue-helmeted UN troops. In addition, they discover a range of diabolical plans for things like a unified world currency, world government, an end to starvation, and, God forbid, peace among religions.

Sayaka’s interesting twist to this idea, which I think would make for a great Terminator 4 came initially from her question of who John Conner (future leader of the “free” post-apocalyptic world in the movie’s prophecies) is suddenly in radio contact with when the world has been largely destroyed by the nuclear cataclysm launched by the “cybernetic organism” Skynet…

She wondered if perhaps the only other survivors in addition to John Conner and his future wife were the Mormons. At first I tried to tell her I didn’t hear mention of the Mormons but that the radio in the movie said something about the Montana civil defense but then I realized she was really on to something!

Terminator 4 could be about John Conner and his motley crew of hardened post-apocalyptic Mormon warriors! There is also, of course, plenty of room for a crack corps made up of the Jehovah Witnesses (perhaps manning a watch tower somewhere on the frontier) and other elite units corresponding to each religious group that is well prepared for the worst. They could all get their own uniforms, insignias, and wage major battles against the machines.

I’m not sure if the respective religious groups could be brought on board without a little work from the marketing department. Among other things, they might not like the idea of John Conner, a young punk, leading their respective religious factions in messiah-like fashion. However, the idea is definitely not without potential.

On a another only slightly less silly note, the Terminator series shows that, despite a valiant attempt in the third movie to account for the “software” and “internet” elements of a dark future, it is thoroughly “old school” science fiction compared, for example, to the Matrix, which incorporates some elements of a new generation of writers. The “dark future” genre has a long history full of continuities, but a comparison between the two basic stories of Terminator and Matrix (which has undoubtedly been done across the net in the past year) reveals a considerable shift away from a dark future which primarily places emphasis on a) material destruction, usually in the form of a nuclear holocaust b) a return to small communities, barbaric feuding, and a mix of traditional community values with pioneer individualism and c) in many cases a single enemy in the form of an evil post-apocalyptic empire, race of aliens, or machines. The Terminator series (along with Mad Max, Water World, The Post Man, etc.) exemplifies all of these, even though we will have to wait until a fourth release before the series actually reaches the dark future it predicts.

The Matrix series, including the second movie that destroyed much of its simple and elegant thematic backdrop, contains much of what is above. There is material destruction in its vision of the near future, as well as a devolution into earlier civilizational modes, and there is also a single enemy in the form of a race of machines. However, the movie also introduces to the big screen some elements of the new “cyberpunk” science fiction in which the focus is just as much on the influences that a completely wired future might have on perception, identity, experience, human relationships, and rationality in general. It is a shift, though not complete, from a dark future which focuses on mechanization and unparalleled physical pain and destruction to a future where the biggest casualty is perhaps our sanity. While not the first and definitely not the best movies to attempt this (Strange Days and the horrible Johnny Mnemonic are other examples), they are the newest additions to reach the screen.