TWO films—one that features actors with food and angst, and another with the story about a war and the most fabulous display of bravery—have preoccupied me lately. This state of thinking, which seldom invades my thought process, could only mean one thing: these two films have touched me in such a way that my mind still lingered over the scenarios in the two works. This does not necessarily mean the films are so excellent that they have become unforgettable—classics, in the language of film aficionados; rather, the films are extraordinary in their, first, appearance, and, second, in their narrative.
Rokohōdō Yotsuiro Biyori (Colorful Days) is one such film. It is a story of four young men working and living together in a cafe/teahouse, kissaten to the Japanese. Headed by Nozomu Kotaki, who plays Kyosui Togoku, the team is composed of three more actors, namely Shono Hayama, Ryusei Onishi and Daichi Saeki. Impossibly cute, irrepressibly charming and most of the time hapless to the verities of the outside real world they all appear to belong to, sheltered by the ancient house.
Is this a case of Boy Love all over again, or yaoi as the genre is known among animé/manga otaku (obsessive fans), or is this a collection of stories about boys suffering through a society that demands so much of men?
The lives of the four men would not go on without troubles. Another young man, less vulnerable, enters their lair and brings in a mysterious conflict. He asks a lot of questions but we do not know why…until he goes back to his office where a man unidentified yet creates a context for the other man’s intrusive character. From this relation, the story would travel toward the direction of kinship, the past and its sad questions.
The magic really of the teahouse is in the food it offers. Here is where this film takes on a flight of fancy. Men and women who enter the place end up not only savoring the taste of the dish offered to them; such delectation also makes these customers aware of what has been wrong or lacking in their lives all these years. Suffice it to say that the tea or the cake provides the clients, each with their own sources of malaise or grief, a relief that the plot now moves from the culinary to the enchanting. Hey, make that enchanted.
While the customers appear to have their life crisis resolved by the most sublime of soup or pasta, the four young men seem to wallow in their own troubled present. This condition persists in such a way that we sense vulnerability in males to be a factor in their beauty, certainly a compelling thesis in any rumination about gender—and sexuality—in Japanese society.
While Boy Love remains a cultivated taste, the food presentation in Rokohōdō affirms another allure in Japanese culture—their cuisine and how the ingredients are so arranged to form a discourse on the evanescent, very much like the aesthetics on life and love. For another reference, the viewer may want to check another Japanese film, What Did You Eat Yesterday?, the story of a gay couple living together. (A delightful series based on the film is now streaming on Netflix.) Nowhere in the film is the physical aspect of love ever actualized before us. Love and lust, if you wish, are all there at the table as the lawyer-husband expertly prepares their dinner (sometimes lunch and breakfast) each day and the partner enjoys the regular feast.
Three directors handle the ten episodes of Rokohōdō, which are based on the manga series by Yū Shimizu. The film is an Asahi Film production.
Allow me to jump from the kitchen and table, or from a teahouse, into the warfront. Japan is still involved in this tale but another party is brought to the table—the Americans. It is World War II. Pearl Harbor has been bombed. The Japanese navy is supreme. The Americans, conscious of the imbalance in war instruments, are scampering to strategize and turn the tides of war.
In Honolulu, the code-breakers are winning this aspect of the battle. As is true with wars, the homefront usually does not feel much of what is happening at the front. The most difficult part is convincing the US mainland authorities that the intelligence forces in the Pacific, insisting they know better the positions and plans of the enemies, are correct.
Welcome to the Battle of Midway. The 2019 version, not 1976 edition.
Why bring up such an unfair comparison? Like the otaku (here, simply to mean avid fans) of the teahouse drama involving four young men, the war-movie enthusiasts cannot stop comparing the live-action scenes of the older Midway film to this film directed by Roland Emmerich.
Here is my point: we all believe in this principle of suspension of disbelief in order to accommodate a story unfolding before us in a play or film. In the case of Midway, I need not suspend anything because the rush of adrenaline was easily induced by the hyper-realism in the shots of the details of war, all generated by a computer.
Onscreen, planes soar from your left screen and bombs explode with the accuracy and vitality of the most active of imaginations. Thrill after thrill of close-up shots of pilots arrest your attention as seemingly no one could survive the hell up in the sky and more hell below with the torpedoes blasting to flaming eternity carriers and destroyers.
The energy is relentless and unforgiving. Where the action stops, it is to give a break to the audience exhausted from all that ride and fantasies, and to listen to the quieter tragedies in bunkholes, homes and command outposts. And allow the women actors to perform.
Midway is produced by Emmerich and, like traditional war movies, is an all-star cast outing. It stars the following actors: Patrick Wilson, Ed Skrein, Luke Evans, Nick Jonas, Aaron Eckhart, Dennis Quaid, Mandy Moore and many others.
Rokohōdō and Midway, like What Did You Eat Yesterday?, are streaming on Netflix.