Magadheera (2009)

What the hell is going on in Magadheera? We don't know - we don't speak Telugu! But that didn't stop us from seeing it last night and loving it to bits. We were promised "three hero deaths" in Magadheera, but unfortunately that was false advertising - though reincarnation does feature prominently. We were also promised "masala on steroids", and, boy, did it deliver on that one! Even understanding nothing of the dialogue, we still laughed, cried and - man! - some of that epic dishoom dishoom really got our blood going. And the dancing? OMG.

Magadheera begins with some straining violins as we witness the studly warrior Kala Bhairava (Ram Charan Teja), as well as the beautiful Mitravinda (Kajal Agarwal), both badly wounded and drawing their final breaths on a rocky precipice overlooking that one scene from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. After a brief exchange about... well, something (presumably their love for each other), Mitravinda passes away, tumbling over the precipice. With a look of anguished horror, Kala Bhairava throws himself off the cliff after her.

And so begins our story! Quickly zipping forward 1600 (?) - or possibly 400 (?) - years to present-day Hyderabad, we meet the studly cool dude Harsha (Ram Charan Teja... again), who has just finished winning a kabillion rupees on a motorcycle jumping contest. After a great song harkening back to a 1980s hit by the actor's real life father, 1980s Telugu star, Chiranjeevi, we follow Harsha as he goes off with his buddy in the auto-rickshaw. After sticking out his hand, he accidentally brushes the hand of the beautiful Indu (Kajal Agarwal... again) - this mere touch sends an electric jolt through Harsha, plummeting him in a super-hardcore out-of-body experience where we watch - again - the whole "throwing yourself over the precipice" thing, as well as other magnificent scenes from the year 400... or possibly 1600. Anyway, the glorious Andhra Pradesh past.


Past.


And present.

Harsha is now obsessed with finding the source of this electric jolt - and, particularly, the love from his past life. After some bumbling around (insert difficult-to-understand comic sequence), he eventually figures out that it is indeed Indu who is his reincarnated princess. And there is much rejoicing. However, at this point, we're introduced to the villain, Raghubeer (Dev Gill), who is some sort of modern-day prince... except completely evil. Witness his buffed up bod full of warrior scars - one can't help but wonder WHY he has those?! Anyway, after promptly introducing himself by killing off some guy with a spear in front of his enormous mansion, he too gets one look at Indu and goes immediately into Rapist Mode. After killing some other dude (his assistant!) for something his assistant apparently said, he decides to insinuate himself into Indu's home by ingratiating himself with her father. Alas, this works! When dastardly Raghubeer attempts to have his wicked way with Indu, however, the ghost of Kala Bhairava appears and beheads him in a most gory - though temporary - way. Suitably alarmed, Raghubeer hastily consults his nearest sage, who - using a potion? or a chant? or a book? well, something - explains the whole reincarnation deal. Now very alarmed - since in his previous life, he was killed by Harsha - Raghubeer decides to get rid of Harsha ASAP.

This leads to some fantastic sequences, including an extended flashback to the whole first life deal. Goodness, it was glorious! The introduction of the 400 AD/1600 AD setting, which had been constantly intimated to (and our appetite was suitably whetted for some rollicking good Ye Olde Times!), was so spectacular the PPCC was practically blown out of our seat. (Thank you also, multiplex, for maxing out the volume!) However, as exciting as it is to see both the original and reincarnated hero-damsel-villain love triangle play out, the second act unfortunately couldn't quite deliver on the first act's promise, and we really didn't need two identical resolutions. So the film finishes on a good note... not a great one.

So! Observations from a predominantly Hindi film viewer who speaks English, a little Hindi and NO Telugu (apart from "koncam" and "pakka"). Well, first of all: if there's one thing Magadheera did fluently and well, it was cinematic extravagance. For masala lovers such as the PPCC, this film packed a lot of meat: completely over-the-top and completely gratifying ideas, like Chicken Soup for the Sentimentalist Cinephile's Soul. Consider, for example, a great sequence in which modern-day Harsha - amidst a general chaos in the Hyderabadi streets which we won't explain right now - almost gets run over by a horse. Jumping onto a bus to avoid being trampled, his fingers brush those of Indu: electrical jolt again! Freaking out, because he needs to see who is this girl who keeps mildly electrocuting him, he grabs the horse, flings himself onto it, gallops after the bus, catches up with the bus and - gets a face-full of Indu's dupatta. As he fumbles to get the dupatta out of his face, he finally sees her. We will not lie: we were seriously verklempt at this point. It was incredibly indulgent, and incredibly great chocolate cake filmmaking.

Another great thing, and somewhat different from Hindi films, was the choreography. Gosh! Particularly the male choreography, which is usually under-emphasized in Hindi films (at least, pre-Hrithik Roshan): star Ram Charan Teja is a hell of a dancer, and his super-chill moves included popping and locking (!!). The dance sequences had a color and inventiveness which we see only sometimes in Hindi films (and mostly in films which have South Indian choreographers/directors... Pukar, Dil Se, Virasat... you get the idea). One of our favorite songs from the film was the flashback ballad, Dheera Dheera, which was just pounding with the powerful drums, haunting sopranos and stark, Zhang Yimou color palettes.

Oh, South Indian cinema. Where have you been all my life?

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
-Ronald Reagan



Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is Star Trek wonderfulness at its most wonderful: bursting at the seams with cheeky literary references and commentary on present day socio-politics, the playfulness with which it weaves the meta into its narrative is just plain delightful. We spent a lot of Undiscovered Country just smiling and shaking our heads, going, "Oh, you guys! Stop making me love you so much!"

KLINGON CHANCELLOR Gorbachev GORKON: You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.

Oh... you guys!!

And this kind of breezy, clever Star Trek makes us realize just how cautious most science fiction is. Of course, all us sci-fi folk want to make intelligent commentary and use impressive references, but most of us - with the exception of this and Y: The Last Man - come across sounding precious, or worse, stodgy. Robert A. Heinlein's thinly-veiled moral pontificating in Stranger in a Strange Land? Alfred Bester's clumsy good ol' boy pulp noir plotlines? Spare me! (Well, actually, we jest - we love those books.) It's very hard to be smart and funny in sci-fi - Frank Herbert was a genius but pretty darn humorless, we always found funny-man Douglas Adams not so intellectually stimulating, Rudy Rucker can be both hilarious and mind-blowingly smart, but he also gets a little silly too - but Star Trek is just that. It makes us laugh, and it makes us gasp with, "Oh no, they did not just allude to Adlai Stevenson and the Cuban Missile Crisis?!"


Kirk and McCoy, on trial. Don't wait for the translation, people!!

The final film which features the cast of the original series, Star Trek VI is both a meta-commentary on their own careers, as well as the waning days of the Cold War (when the film was made). Exploiting (rather than pretending to ignore) the age and weariness of these actors, the story follows the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise in their last days before retirement. The expected peaceful conclusion is severely thwarted by a shift in intergalactic politics: the "cold war" between the Klingonskis and the Federation of Planets is thawing, and it's time to, ahem, tear down the wall (in space). (Hey, everything's better in space!) Yet old warriors die hard, and Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is a hardline, anti-Klingon hawk. His inability to see past his prejudices is given a neat narrative drive, since Kirk's son, David (Merritt Butrick), was killed by Klingons in one of the earlier films in the series. The realism and sympathy of Kirk's plight as a man whose generation is also quickly outgrowing its use in a changing world was just great - and oddly touching!

KIRK: Captain's log, stardate 9522.6: I've never trusted Klingons, and I never will. I could never forgive them for the death of my boy. It seems to me our mission to escort the Chancellor of the Klingon High Council to a peace summit is problematic at best. Spock says this could be an historic occasion, and I'd like to believe him, but how on earth can history get past people like me?

And the screenplay?! Brilliant*!

GORKON: You don't trust me, do you? I don't blame you. If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it.

Now - because this movie is great - Kirk is given the task of extending the olive branch towards the Klingons. In one of the best scenes, he invites the Klingon ambassador, Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner... recycled from Star Trek V, but in a different role! Very bizarre) and his generals over for dinner, and the table discussion is just packed to the brim with tense Shakespearean banter, commentary on ethnocentrism and other brainy thrills.

CHEKOV: Of course we believe that every planet has a sovereign claim to inalienable human rights.
KLINGON LADY: "Inalienable"? If you could only hear yourselves. "Human rights." Even the name is racist.

Everyone gets properly boozed up on the semi-illegal Romulan Ale, and the Klingons and Enterprisers retire to their respective ships, tired and grumpy and conclusively dubbing the evening a failure. But the onsetting hangovers are quickly interrupted when - to everyone's shock! - the Enterprise fires on the Klingon vessel, hence ruining the whole olive branch point. While Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Chekov (Walter Koenig) scramble to figure out who ordered the missiles, we see two mysterious, masked figures enter the Klingon ship and assassinate the Klingon ambassador. Kirk and our beloved Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) hustle over to try to save the ambassador, but poor ol' McCoy just bumbles around: "I don't even know his anatomy!" This is, after all, the first time he's saving a Klingon rather than, uh, shooting one. And, alas, the ambassador dies. This gives the more hawk-ish Klingon, General Chang (Christopher Plummer... of all people), the perfect excuse to cry foul play, and soon Kirk and McCoy find themselves on trial for murder. And then the film just starts tumbling out with the wildest Cold War references: General Chang as Adlai Stevenson ("Don't wait for the translation!"), Dr. Zhivago meets Ivan Denisovich gulag stuff, and was that "We have no fences!" stuff from Papillon?


Captain Von Trapp?! You?! Here?!

Overall, it's zippy and perfectly done. The storytelling is ace, with just the right balance of humor and pathos, self-satire and earnestness. And the details - finally seeing the Enterprise kitchens (well, we were interested), McCoy cheering Kirk on during a gulag prison, fight, and the later Kirk-Kirk duel - are just icing on a great cake. Oh, why did this ever have to end?!!

* Especially brilliant are the scenes they chose to cut, alas! You can read the full screenplay online, and it has some great, even more cheeky lines, such as:

A KLINGON AT DINNER: In any case, we know where this is leading: the annihilation of our culture. Klingons will replace those on the lowest rung of the Federation employment ladder, taking menial jobs and performing them for lower pay...

CHEKOV: That's economics, not racism -

UHURA: But you have to admit it adds up to the same thing.

BONES: Don't be naive, Commander -!

UHURA: Who you calling naive -?

Il dolce e l'amaro (2007)

Il dolce e l'amaro (The Sweet and the Bitter) is a quick, neat little package of a film, covering a well-worn topic - the Sicilian mafia - with a light, easy touch over well-worn plot tropes - betrayal, redemption, brooding killers and sad-eyed girls next door. It's nothing particularly enlightening, but it does have a freshness of presentation - earnest acting, fun cinematography and charming music - which makes it well worth 90 minutes of your time.

If you ever went beyond the Godfather or any other American films which still glorify and glamorize the mafia, Il dolce e l'amaro will be pretty old hat. Its main theme is the exploitation of the "working" mafioso, and what it means to be in the dregs of the mob. The story follows one underling, Saro Scordia (the wonderful Sicilian actor, Luigi Lo Cascio), from his beginnings as a hired goon to his painful, desperate ascent into a "uomo d'onore" (man of honor, or, protected member of a mafia clan) to his inevitable, tumultuous fall. But expect no Scarface-style roller coaster ride over Himalayan peaks of luxury and hellish AK-47 climaxes. Il dolce e l'amaro treats its subject with a steady realism, and so Saro's spends his good days living in a comfortable, clean Palermo apartment, and his bad days wandering dead-eyed through the flat, north Italian post-industrial landscape. While there are the usual genre staples of violence, drug use and sexuality, they are relatively rare and low-key. The one up-close killing we witness is also done in a highly deglamorized way, concentrating mostly on Saro's panicking horror than any blood, guts and Hollywood badassery.


Fabrizio Gifuni, Luigi Lo Cascio and Donatella Finocchiaro. Gifuni and Lo Cascio were both in the transcendentally glorious La meglio gioventù.

The film also has a nice, vague taste of something Giancarlo Giannini would have made in the 1980s - we're thinking, in particular, of Ternosecco or Mi Manda Picone. That is, this film could easily be grouped into that genre of gritty, slightly surreal southern Italian films which explore the two main issues of the region: poverty and organized crime. Il dolce e l'amaro features one sequence (Saro's brief dip into prison life) which hits many of the same notes and delivers the same punchline as the similar sequence in Giannini's Ternosecco. Indeed, Luigi Lo Cascio has much the same twitchy, wiry energy as Giannini, that same quality of slightly comical viciousness, and that same vibe of being low on the pecking order. Both Giannini and Lo Cascio are pretty adept at playing characters that you both pity and fear. And we at the PPCC just gosh darned love both of them.


Surrounded by the mob.

In fact, this slightly-scary, slightly-pitiful viciousness is wonderfully exploited in this film's recurring use of compositions wherein Saro is put in a physically submissive position: his brief, weird one-night stand with the be-wigged lady, or the scene where his friend, the slimy don's son, Mimmo (Gaetano Bruno), pulls him on the dancefloor for a slowdance. Again and again, we are visibly shown how Saro is an underdog, kept constantly under the heel of his bosses. In a highly interesting turn, then, all the moments where Saro is physically the dominant one - for example, when he abuses his girl-next-door love, Ada (Donatella Finocchiaro), or when he kills a rival mafioso - are the moments when he is at his worst. The film clearly shows that all of Saro's attempts to get out from "underneath", to rise above his oppressors and dominate his fate, are misguided and ultimately flawed. In one poignant moment, Ada asks him (by leaning over him in a physically dominant way), "Is this the life that you wanted?", and he can only cry.

But Saro is clearly the Sicilian Everyman - and he personifies the ambitions young men may develop in a region which still suffers under the weight of poverty and lack of opportunities, where the mafia is the only "way out" from under all these heels. But the irony of trying to use the mafia to get free is probably best captured (yet more ironically, given what we said earlier in this review!) in Al Pacino's despairing lines from The Godfather: Part III: "Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in!" Well said, Al. And well played, Luigi.

The Prestige (2006)

We weren't sure from which angle to take The Prestige. A fancy-looking costume drama, it looked like it had pretensions to Oscar baiting. Its eventual revelation (to us, at least) that it is basically a fun, pulpy Gothic novel - think Edgar Allen Poe Lite - was unexpected. Were we missing something, or was it really this... silly?

Because The Prestige was silly. But we don't mean silly in a pointless, childish way. We mean silly in a "villains twirling black mustaches while they cackle over their eventual dominion" way. It was fun. It was self-consciously stylized ye olde pulpe. It was DASTARDLY. Ha ha!


Watch out, people - we may spear you with our rapier-like wit!

Following a dastardy duel to the death between a pair of competitively Ha ha!-ing magicians in 19th century London, The Prestige is directed by Christopher "he who brought us Dark Knight five times in the theatre" Nolan and stars Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. If you saw Dark Knight, you should have an idea of the film's aesthetic: brooding scenes suffused with moody lighting, lots of shadows, and some funky storytelling. The Prestige's main plot worms its way out of a tangled straitjacket of Cluedo-style scenes which make light of chronology and, heck, the time-space continuum (seriously, it gets pretty freaky). We spent the first half hour trying to figure this movie out - "But what are the themes?!" we wailed, clawing at our copy of Roland Barthes. We spent the remaining time enjoying with more and more glee the slightly trashy quality of this murder mystery. Was it Hugh Jackman in the library with the candelabra? Or was it Christian Bale in the kitchen with the wrench? Our money's on Colonel Mustard. Ha ha!


OMG they figured out how to make the Earth a giant outlet!

No, seriously. For a film as superficially... uh, well, superficial as this, if you think about it, it has quite a lot of meat to it. Just like the focal Transported Man trick in the film, there really is more than meets the eye - and it's not just smoke and mirrors. The clever parallels are particularly fun - keep an eye out for people getting stuck in water tanks; also, nota bene how poor ol' Christian and Hugh destroy themselves in the feud (literally!). And the subtle commentary on Dickensian London with its Gothic, steampunk vibes - you can just imagine Sweeney Todd working down the street from the magicians - and completely dodgy Industrial, pre-labor rights environment - can you imagine PETA during that dove scene? meltdown, people - is really quite fun. Director Nolan has a very specific aesthetic in mind, and he makes strong visual references to the heritage behind that aesthetic. (There are no clocks buried under the floorboards though, thank God.)

The freakiness factor of the film also reaches some pretty surreal heights when, in the following order, we get

• Andy Serkis... who most of the world knows as the man who is Gollum
  
• David Bowie?!
  
• science fiction

Well, glam rocker/sci-fi fans that we are - and Mr. Serkis is pretty awesome too - we were just bought and sold. But we recognize that the film, particularly in the last half hour, acquires a whole new strangeness that may alienate the more conventional-friendly viewer. Oh yeah - and the actor who plays the actor who plays Hugh Jackman's double was also very, very freaky. Magic in the 19th century: not very safe. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are perfectly cast as two sides of the same coin, two approaches to the same job. Would you prefer to be lied to by the charismatic, sparkly charmer? Or perhaps you would prefer to be deceived by the brooding, gloomy tough guy? We love it when Christian Bale plays more thuggish characters, as he has a certain brute aggressiveness which is just great. Hugh Jackman is likewise perfect as the howdying, sunny American - and his descent into obsessional Gothic anti-hero was hence pretty awesome. Elsewhere in the cast are Scarlett Johannesen as a deceptive "my lovely assistant", the wonderful Rebecca Hall as Christian Bale's adorable, doomed wife, and longtime PPCC favorite Michael Caine. Oh, Michael Caine! We've read three biographies of this man. That's a lot of love. Do you know he first saw his wife in a shampoo commercial? OK, we'll talk about Michael Caine some other time. In the meantime, have fun watching two brooding, handsome anti-heroes duke it out using chunky, steampunk magic tricks in Victorian-era London. We certainly did!

Y: The Last Man (2002)

There's a delightful, meta moment in the superb graphic novel, Y: The Last Man, when the main character, Yorick, is reading a graphic novel about the last woman on Earth. He describes it as "this quasi-feminist, sci-fi thing. Very po-mo." When asked if it's good or bad, he thinks and finally concludes, "Meh."


The cover of the first issue.

Oh, Y: The Last Man! Where have you been all my life? This snarky vignette of self-satire perfectly encapsulates why we at the PPCC loved this graphic novel: feminism, sci-fi, po-mo, and twentysomething nerd chic. Oh, Y: The Last Man, you are not "meh" at all, you are awesome. After sixty issues and countless hours, we finally finished this glorious story last night at 1am. And - pray - is that a tear in the PPCC's eye? Why, yes. Yes, it is.

Taking place in the year 2002, the story opens with a mysterious plague that kills every mammal with a Y chromosome. In an instant, every man in the world is struck dead. The only survivors are a young amateur escape artist, Yorick (the titular "Y"), and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand (i.e. "&"). Now it's up to Yorick to navigate the dystopian, post-gendercide landscape in a trek to reunite with his girlfriend, Beth, who was studying in the Australian outback when the plague hit. Along the way, he runs into all manner of adventures: a group of radical, nihilistic feminists calling themselves the Daughters of the Amazon, mad scientists, ninjas (!), pirates (!!), crazy Republicans, crazy Secessionists, and loads and loads of snappy commentary on gender.



We cannot recommend this enough. The story is smart, fast, nerdy, funny and touching. Did we mention it's also really, really smart? The dialog zips back and forth at lightspeed, with a whip-snap snark reminiscent of Joss Whedon when he's really on his game (think the best of Buffy, or Firefly). The plot twists and turns in unexpected - and often completely delightful and fascinating! - ways, such as when we bump into the post-plague Pacific heroin trade, or when a war-mongering Israeli general decides to use the post-plague geopolitics to her advantage (Israel is, after all, one of the few countries where women are drafted to serve in the military, and where women have seen combat). All in all, the general idea - What would happen if, one day, all the men died except one? - is explored in a variety of interesting, and often very realistic ways. This inevitably leads to a wicked smart commentary on gender - on the gender balance in the workforce, on gender roles across cultures, on gender and sexuality, and on gender and evolution. (Wo)Man, it really blows your hair back.

The storytelling is also top-notch, and it's chock full of (sometimes very) cheeky literary references (with Shakespeare and 20th century intelligentsia cinema up the wazoo) and cross-cuts between all the various plot threads. It seems to have been written specifically for the PPCC's demographic (twentysomething intellectual uber-nerd? XKCD lover?) - we practically imploded with glee when Yorick admitted to not writing much except for "Knightrider fanfic", or when someone used Ampersand to make a comment on "Stick enough monkeys in a room, and you get Shakespeare!" Or when Yorick accuses his travelling companions, ultra-kick-ass Agent 355 and the grumpy Dr. Allison Mann, of engaging in "Spock/Bones slash fiction"!


Another cover.

And we think the gloriousness of the story will appeal to a lot of people, regardless of where you sit on the pop culture spectrum. Heck, the fact that you're reading a blog called the "Post-Punk Cinema Club" pretty much guarantees you'll enjoy this title.


Gratuitous Richard Feynman picture. We love you, Mr. Feynman! We're not joking!

Now, a graphic novel like this just begs to be turned into a film, and apparently there is something in the works, with the possibility of young Shia LeBeouf playing Yorick. We saw Yorick more as a Luke Wilson type, but... meh. The novel is pretty hardcore - with numerous, quite violent (and sometimes repetitive) fight scenes, occasional complete nudity, sexual scenes and frequent swearing - so we expect it would have to be an R. At least, while we could live without all those stabbings and gunshot wounds, we think - to respect the interesting arguments about sexuality - you would have to give this an R rating. Indeed, a small warning: this story was pretty heavy-duty, both on your gray matter and your heart. Even we at the PPCC - lovers of the dystopia - found the dystopia occasionally oppressive, and just wanted everything to be okay again. But maybe we're just big lumps of vulnerable goo. We won't tell you if there's a happy ending, but we can tell you that there were some strong Richard Feynman vibes in the end, and we love Richard Feynman, so we were pretty happy. We can also say that this story covers sex, death and EVERYTHING (the name of our new band) and is like purified John Hughes (RIP) and Joss Whedon for the Y generation, so you must read it now.

...GEDDIT?!

Barefoot Gen (1973)

Okay.

So we have a backlog of Star Trek and Hindi and Tamil and Italian films, but - dammit all - we're not going to address any of that today. Today, we want to talk to you about our new favorite media: the graphic novel. And since most graphic novels are turned into films eventually, we figure its totally within our mandate to turn the PPCC into the CBG for today. Or this month...

Our rabid desire to consume ALL GRAPHIC NOVELS EVER PRODUCED IN THE HISTORY OF THIS PLANET NAY GALAXY all started with Keiji Nakazawa's Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) - which, incidentally, is a film (we just can't find a copy). We picked it up a few weeks ago, intrigued by the cover and description: a graphic novel about Hiroshima. Having just finished a fabulous biography about J. Robert Oppenheimer - American Prometheus, which you must all drop what you're doing and go read NOW - we were very curious to see the same topic - the atomic bomb - treated from a dramatically different perspective in a dramatically different medium. American Prometheus is the mother of a biography: nearly a thousand pages, and full of Pulitzer Prize-winning writing about all the fascinating details of being Oppenheimer. How could a graphic novel (we were still calling it a "mere cartoon" two weeks ago) compare?



Well, the best - and most startling - thing about Barefoot Gen was that it held its own against the Oppie bio (and how!), offering an insightful, provocative and deeply affecting portrayal of a working class family from Hiroshima struggling to get by in the last days before city was bombed. Told from the perspective of the family's middle child, Gen ("Roots"), the story follows the quotidian joys and sorrows of being poor and pacifist when everyone else seems to have caught war frenzy. Gen's father, a tough-yet-kind patriarch drawn in heavy, block-like lines, is stubbornly pacifist - and this brings endless grief to the family, who are humiliated and attacked again and again by the other townspeople for their beliefs. Eventually, this even drives the oldest son to join the Imperial Navy in a last-ditch effort to alleviate the family's shame. This son's experiences then form an important anti-war subplot in this already very anti-war book - with one of the most powerful moments occurring when he runs into a pair of kamikaze pilots on one last, desperate bender before they fly out the next day.

Our edition of the book has an introduction by Art Spiegelman, who has some interesting reflections on the book: the Disney-like drawing style for Gen and his little brother, the blunt storytelling, the ambiguous attitudes towards America. This is all true: Barefoot Gen offers a very straightforward portrayal of Japan during the war. Its only accusations are inward: against the bourgeoise, xenophobic attitudes of the wartime Japanese elite. And it goes to great pains to reveal the cultural pressures that drove so many soldiers and citizens to support the war and Emperor unquestioningly. From a national perspective, it's a biting, cynical criticism of "patriotism" and "valor in war". Interestingly (even eerily), from an international perspective, America isn't present at all. In light of slightly more recent evidence which shows that President Truman dropped the bomb after learning that Japan would surrender (see American Prometheus for a lot more on this), this book's attitudes towards the US seem too forgiving. But enough of politics.



The narrative structure is blunt and lacking in nuance, but the story still remains incredibly affecting. Partly this is because we know the story is semi-autobiographical, and the weight of the topic is enough. Also, while the storytelling isn't subtle, it is very skilfull - the use of the burning sun to mark the passage of time, like a countdown to the bomb we know will soon drop, steadily builds the tension. Indeed, the bombing itself occurs in the very last few pages, and the impact is enormous: by this point, we had become so immersed in Gen's life that we had almost forgotten about the bomb! Plus, we had become incredibly invested in all the characters - watching the inevitable catastrophe occur was devastating!

Another great (and very cinematic) moment occurs earlier in the book, when the oldest son, after an argument with the father, leaves town to join the Navy. Everyone - the mother, the other children, the PPCC - are freaking out, because this might be the last time the father sees his son. We have a few short panels of the son in the train, thinking about his family, and then, just as the train speeds up out of the station, he sees his father standing in the field by the train tracks, raising his arms and yelling, "Banzai!" (Live long!) It's a wonderful moment which lends itself perfectly to the screen, reminding us of some of those epic sequences from Steven Spielberg's early film about wartime Asia, Empire of the Sun.



In conclusion, this was just great. We read this on a packed airplane, stuffed between two large men, and bawled into our tray table (before storing it in an upright and locked position). We also discovered a whole new world (a new, fantastic point of view!) - the graphic novel - and learned yet more about things which fascinate us (Japan, Oppenheimer, etcetera). Definitely check this out.

(PPCC Readership in Japan: Anyone catch the 2007 live action TV drama of this?)