Daihachi Yoshida’s new film is known for its deliberate pacing and thoughtfulness Taiji is coming This is characteristic of the careers of Japanese filmmakers. The film had its world premiere at the 2024 Tokyo International Film Festival, where it competed in the festival’s main competition, and is another literary adaptation from a director who is an avid reader.
“When the pandemic first started, bookstores were closed, so I reread the books I had on hand. One of them was did [title of the original book and the film in Japanese, meaning enemy]. People around the world cannot get out and meet other people, living a senior lifestyle like the protagonist in the story. hollywood reporter The day the Tokyo Music Festival lineup was announced.
“Taiji is coming”
Tokyo International Film Festival
Yoshida’s literary adaptation proved incredibly fruitful. After twenty years making commercials, music videos, short films and TV series, he breaks out with ” Funuke show some love you losers! In 2007, it was adapted from the novel by Yukiko Motani. The film earned him national acclaim and an invitation to Cannes Film Critics Week. But he’s probably best known internationally for 2012’s bizarre high school drama Kirishima IncidentAdapted from the novel by Ryo Asai. The film won the Yoshida Japan Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, and received an unusually long theatrical run. Two years later, pale moon“”, adapted from Tsunoda Mitsuyo’s novel, participated in the main competition unit in Tokyo.
exist Taiji is comingThe drama, adapted from a book by famed Japanese novelist Tsutsui Yasutaka, stars Kyouzo Nagatsuchi as a retired French literature professor who gives odd guest lectures and asks for money based on when his money is spent. Come and plan your own ending. Old friends and former students come to visit. On a rare excursion, he meets a charming young French literature student, played by Yumi Kawai, who recently appeared in the Netflix series Extremely inappropriate. The monochromatic cinematography evokes a bygone time, where the lines between reality and imagination are blurred.
“My reaction to the book was completely different from when I first read it in my thirties and when I read it again when I was approaching 60,” Yoshida said. “I realized that I was getting older and had experienced the death of several people close to me and that I wasn’t going to live another 40 or 50 years. It lit a spark in me and I started thinking about what I would do if I were to film this. .
After writing the script, Yoshida took it to the book’s prolific and sometimes outspoken author Tsutsui, who celebrated his ninetieth birthday just days before the festival’s press conference. Tsutsui gave his blessing, but emphasized that the story was not about dementia, but about the protagonist actively engaging in his own fantasy.
Veteran actor Nagatsuka studied and worked in France when he was young. There he played a Chinese general in a French comedy (Chinese in Paris), largely because he was one of the few East Asians living in Paris in the early 1970s, sparked his interest in acting. However, France and Taiji is coming Yoshida said it was just a coincidence.
“Taiji is coming”
Tokyo International Film Festival
“The reason I shoot in black and white is because no one can stop me,” he laughs. “That still doesn’t explain why. I think monochrome has a restrained feel that suits the quiet and somewhat stoic life of the protagonist. But when I made the film, I felt it had a “rich” quality that maximized excitement captivated the imagination of the audience, including myself. So now I want to ask those who make films in color why they choose to do so.
Multiple scenes of food and coffee preparation establish the rhythm of the protagonist’s existence, but Yoshida has come to terms with the fact that food doesn’t look as appetizing without color.
“But the people who were cooking it were so talented and I thought it looked delicious even in black and white, and it made me really, really hungry when I was editing the movie.”
Like the division between fantasy and the real world, the nature of the mysterious “enemy” in the title is somewhat blurred.
“This is the enemy from the north, which historically means Russia to the Japanese. However, the protagonist’s enemies could easily be interpreted as death or old age. But in the process of making the film, I came to realize that everyone, Regardless of age, there are enemies who can be defined as a goal, a difficulty to face, or a reason to live. I think this is one of the essential elements for all human beings.
