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Shodo Girls
Okay, so I just went and saw "Shodo Girls: Watashitachi no Koshien", which is a movie about a high school calligraphy club in a paper-factory town in the middle of nowhere in Ehime Prefecture, based on a real story. In order to revitalize their town AND bring more interest to shodo (Japanese calligraphy), a group of girls organized a newfangled performance art of doing calligraphy to music and dancing and whatnot. I have to admit that the Japan Times review, which I hadn't read before seeing it, does capture a lot of the bad of the movie, though none of the good. Basically, my main beef with it was that the movie shoulda been a LOT shorter -- I think the runtime was around 2 hours, and really, they only had about one hour of worthwhile plot. There were way too many overused gags that involved people splattered with ink -- it was funny the first few times, but, I suppose when you are making a movie about a calligraphy club, people covered in ink IS your best comedic outlet.
Funny thing is, just as I was thinking "goddamnit, when is this movie going to GET A PLOT AND GO SOMEWHERE ALREADY?", it did. The best part of the movie is actually the last 20 minutes when they actually hold their Shodo Performance tournament, which is something I totally could NEVER in my life have imagined before seeing this, so that was pretty freaking awesome. The performances by the shodo groups were fantastic, really interesting to me. Infact, the movie is almost worth seeing just FOR those last 20 minutes, if you want to put up with an hour and a half of bizarre Shikoku hick accents, a lot of beautiful but depressing scenery of a factory town going through economic depression, and way too much of an obnoxious teacher who becomes the shodo club advisor and then proceeds to piss all of them off.
I will give this movie credit for continuing what now seems to be the Time-Honored Tradition of Movies Called _______ Girls, in that there is an Obvious Romantic Interest but there is No Way It's Happening In This Movie. This one features the main character Satoko, who is the daughter of a professional shodo artist/teacher, who obviously has had a lifelong crush on a boy who is the nephew/apprentice of a guy who makes handmade paper. And it's pretty obvious he likes her back too. But again, no use in distracting from the "plot", I suppose.
The other funny thing about the movie was that the calligraphy club actually has 3 boys in it as well as 4 or 5 girls, BUT for some reason they have managed to make the boys pretty much completely servient to the girls (and you barely see the boys pick up a calligraphy brush at all). This is a theme that I have observed many times in movies but rarely in real life. Maybe this behavior happens in high school, as I don't think the boys in our school are afraid of the girls so much as just unwilling to be seen talking to them. We have school clubs that have boys and girls in them, but in the kendo club, for example, boys and girls don't mind bashing each other in the head with swords, AFAICT.
Oh well, I wouldn't call it a waste of my time or money (since I saw it for only 1000 yen), but I wish I could say better things about it besides "Awesome last 30 minutes, if you can sit through the rest of it". I think some people studying Japanese might enjoy it just because there is so much kanji to read all over the place. I had to admit that half the fun for me was looking at what they were WRITING as opposed to what they were SAYING -- there's one scene where a girl has fallen head over heels in crush with the new crazy shodo teacher, so she's standing there on these HUGE big white pieces of paper, passionately throwing down the shodo paintbrush in a vain attempt to make a perfect 愛 kanji. That part of it is pretty amusing, at least.
Funny thing is, just as I was thinking "goddamnit, when is this movie going to GET A PLOT AND GO SOMEWHERE ALREADY?", it did. The best part of the movie is actually the last 20 minutes when they actually hold their Shodo Performance tournament, which is something I totally could NEVER in my life have imagined before seeing this, so that was pretty freaking awesome. The performances by the shodo groups were fantastic, really interesting to me. Infact, the movie is almost worth seeing just FOR those last 20 minutes, if you want to put up with an hour and a half of bizarre Shikoku hick accents, a lot of beautiful but depressing scenery of a factory town going through economic depression, and way too much of an obnoxious teacher who becomes the shodo club advisor and then proceeds to piss all of them off.
I will give this movie credit for continuing what now seems to be the Time-Honored Tradition of Movies Called _______ Girls, in that there is an Obvious Romantic Interest but there is No Way It's Happening In This Movie. This one features the main character Satoko, who is the daughter of a professional shodo artist/teacher, who obviously has had a lifelong crush on a boy who is the nephew/apprentice of a guy who makes handmade paper. And it's pretty obvious he likes her back too. But again, no use in distracting from the "plot", I suppose.
The other funny thing about the movie was that the calligraphy club actually has 3 boys in it as well as 4 or 5 girls, BUT for some reason they have managed to make the boys pretty much completely servient to the girls (and you barely see the boys pick up a calligraphy brush at all). This is a theme that I have observed many times in movies but rarely in real life. Maybe this behavior happens in high school, as I don't think the boys in our school are afraid of the girls so much as just unwilling to be seen talking to them. We have school clubs that have boys and girls in them, but in the kendo club, for example, boys and girls don't mind bashing each other in the head with swords, AFAICT.
Oh well, I wouldn't call it a waste of my time or money (since I saw it for only 1000 yen), but I wish I could say better things about it besides "Awesome last 30 minutes, if you can sit through the rest of it". I think some people studying Japanese might enjoy it just because there is so much kanji to read all over the place. I had to admit that half the fun for me was looking at what they were WRITING as opposed to what they were SAYING -- there's one scene where a girl has fallen head over heels in crush with the new crazy shodo teacher, so she's standing there on these HUGE big white pieces of paper, passionately throwing down the shodo paintbrush in a vain attempt to make a perfect 愛 kanji. That part of it is pretty amusing, at least.