Rückkehr der drei Trunkenbolde

DICK STEEL posted that during the mock interview segment, "we realized who outnumbers who – the result which has to be taken with a pinch of salt." I think he missed the point of that segment. The point was not that Koreans outnumbered Japanese in Japan; it was that Japanese ARE Koreans! Oshima makes this same point (in a more direct manner) in Sing a Song of Sex. Japanese are descended from Koreans, and therefore they are the same people and discriminating against Koreans is discriminating against your own people ("Koreans don't kill other Koreans").

Tackling racism on film is a tricky thing. It can often sound too didactic and preachy, as in Crash or even Oshima's own Sing a Song of Sex. But Oshima found the right balance with Three Resurrected Drunkards.

I also wanted to add that I, too, checked to see if the DVD had somehow restarted at the halfway mark!

I liked what Nagisa Oshima was trying to do here, which was to condemn Japanese treatment of Korean immigrants and the horrors of the Vietnam war. Unfortunately, how he went about it was too silly for me, starting with the casting of The Folk Crusaders, whose music and antics ala the early Beatles or Monkees were more grating than funny. The series of misadventures they find themselves in are light on both humor and biting political commentary. At one point one says, "It'd be nice if a couple of bodies just fell from the sky," and another replies, "Damn, if only this were Vietnam. There are corpses all over the place there." It's not exactly deep.

The long history between Japan and Korea is complicated to say the least, and I'm sure the skits and absurd tone held meaning for the counterculture in Japan at the time that I can't fully appreciate, but I didn't get the sense that there was a lot of nuance here. About halfway through, the film resets itself and we start seeing the same inane scenes all over again, identically initially, and then gradually diverging. Let's just say, it was painful both times through.

What really made me hate the film, however, was its treatment of the execution of Nguyen Van Lem, a moment caught on film that shocked the world. As that occurred on February 1, 1968 and this film was released March 30, 1968, it gives you an indication for how quickly it was slapped together, and it shows. The film opens with the trio play-acting this execution on a beach, trying to get the aiming of the gun and the facial expression of the victim just right to goofy music, which I thought was in incredibly poor taste. Imagine some other war atrocity from history being made light of in this way; it's mind-boggling. At the end of the film Oshima tries to restore a sense of gravitas by showing a mural of this image repeatedly and equates it to Japanese officials executing Korean immigrants in the process, which was heavy-handed and far too simplistic besides. Overall, just an irritating, tedious film, and I say that despite being aligned to the director's anti-war, anti-xenophobia positions.

This film is weird. Director Oshima had worked for Jean-Luc Goddard, and is clearly paying homage to the wacky French director here.

"Three Drunkards Come Home", as this film is sometimes called, begins with a surreal situation of three students playing on the beach and having their clothes pinched by Korean (refugees? soldiers?). They are then mistaken for Koreans and begin to play the roles themselves. Then the story starts again at the halfway point, continues for at least five minutes the same way, and gradually diverges.

You need to be a serious film fan to take this sort of stuff. If you aren't a fan of Oshima or Goddard, don't go anywhere near this film. If you are, then you have some idea of what to expect.

As a fan of Oshima but not of Goddard, I sat through this film with mixed feelings. As in Death By Hanging, Oshima makes some strong points about the Japanese discrimination against Koreans. But as its apparently main purpose and theme, I feel this was handled much better in Death By Hanging, and I consider Three Drunkards Come Home to be one of his weaker efforts.

There are some directors I just have a hard time engaging with, no matter how beloved they may generally be. Between Jean-Luc Godard, Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, and even Ingmar Bergman I've loved some of their pictures, and hated others; worse, I've felt decidedly indifferent toward some, or at best liked them, but didn't get anything from them. Much the same goes for Oshima Nagisa. I've loved some of his films ('Empire of passion'), and others ('Double suicide: Japanese summer') just didn't leave much of a mark. Add 'Three resurrected drunkards' to the latter group. I appreciate the suggested commentary, the skills of all involved, and the intended comedy. I simply don't believe any of these qualities actually meet their potential, and the resulting viewing experience is at best just rather middling.

To the extent that the movie carries a message with its examination of the poor treatment to which immigrants are subjected - represented in the core idea of the Japanese protagonists being mistaken for Koreans - the premise is countermanded in part by all the other bits and bobs that are casually tossed in along the way, and definitely by the inclusion of a Korean character who is more or less antagonistic. In its very last minutes that messaging comes to the fore, but in a manner so heavy-handed as to break with what the piece has been doing for the entire rest of its length. There are some clever ideas in here that may have been ripe for comedy, but by one means or another they fail to evoke the desired reaction: because the tone is too soft, because the comedic timing is off, or often because the bit just isn't clever enough to earn a laugh. The nearest this comes to being funny is at various points in the latter half as the same sequence of events plays out in a more absurd way, but that's still not enough, especially as the whole begins to feel overlong and tiresome. Other odds and ends are clearly of a more somber nature befitting a "comedy-drama," but the attempted comedy works against these beats. Meanwhile, though I recognize the capabilities represented in the acting, cinematography, music, sound, costume design, stunts and effects, and so on, I just have a hard time caring about these facets when the substance of the feature falls flat.

Oshima has been included in a group of filmmakers pinged as the "Japanese New Wave." Like the "French New Wave," however, and other art movements - Impressionism, Expressionism, Modernism, Romanticism, Parallel Cinema, Neo- or Hyper- or Post-Whateverism, and so on ad infinitum - the label is meaninglessly non-descriptive. Oh yes, I discern some similarities of "New Wave" style, but it's a style that in my view is extraordinarily hit or miss, and in and of itself carries no special influence or importance. As the title fails to impress in any other capacity, that label is just an empty word.

No doubt this hits all the right notes for some folks, and some viewers will find 'Three resurrected drunkards' to be riotously funny or deeply impactful. I'm not one of those viewers. I don't specifically regret checking it out, but it's my belief that the flick fails to say, do, or be any of what it was meant to, and the sum total is ultimately very so-so and undistinguished. By the time the end credits roll, it feels like we've been sitting for longer than eighty minutes, and my already humdrum favor is further diminished. Watch if you want, and may you find it more valuable than I did; I think my time would have been better spent elsewhere.

Second of all Oshima never worked for him.

Most important of all this film stars the great Japanese pop group The Folk Crusaders. Imagine The Beatles making an experimental film. it would look something like this.

Oshima is concerned here, as he was in "Death By Hanging" made the same year, with Japanese anti-Korean prejudice. Socio-political events too complex and multi-faceted to discuss in a forum of this kind are the basis of this film -- which end with the recreation of the most indelible image of the Vietnam war.

The result is a baroque masterpiece that foreshadows Rivette's "Celine and Julie Go Boating."