Cafe Lumiere: 35mm poetry

2008-01-12T21:07:00.000-08:00

Cafe Lumiere - Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

(This 'review' is my humble contribution to the Unspoken Cinema blogathon)

Café Lumiere (CL) does not have a plot. With that out of the way, I can breathe freely.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien was commissioned by the Japanese studio Shochiku (which produced most of Ozu’s films) to make CL as a tribute film for Ozu’s 100^th birth anniversary.

CL starts off with a trademark Ozu shot – a train passing against a row of houses. Next, we see a shot of an apartment. A young girl (Yoko) with her back to us is drying clothes on a line. She takes a phone call and talks briefly (with Hajime-chan) until someone knocks on the door. She asks him to wait and exits the screen. The camera does not move. We hear an off-screen conversation with her landlady. We see clothes swaying in the wind and the table-fan whirs away. She re-enters and resumes her call with Hajime-chan. They talk for a while before fading out. I describe this (seemingly mundane) scene in detail because it is fittingly representative of the aesthetics of the movie – ellipsis, off-screen action, static shots, and of course, the ineluctable sense of poetry that accompanies both Ozu’s and Hou’s works.

Yoko has just returned from Taiwan where she was researching the life of a Taiwanese-born composer. The rest of the movie concerns itself (plot-wise) with her continued research efforts and her interactions with a few people. This is all however, built on a masterful foundation of extremely fascinating cinematic aesthetics and that is where the beauty of the film resides, to a large extent.

In one scene, Yoko is visiting her family. She’s tired and goes to sleep without having dinner. She gets up at a late hour and walks into the kitchen. We see her momentarily before she exits the screen, leaving behind precious empty space.

This is a great example of how Hou marvelously exploits the emptiness of the screen (emptiness as it would typically be defined by conventional cinematic norms. A deeper look into this shot would reveal, on the contrary, the richness and depth that is lingering, albeit subcutaneously, all over the screen) – the light fixture with its dangling cord, the loaves of bread stacked up, the pan on the stove, the neatly arranged white tablecloth, the overturned bowl – all being aspects that rise to the surface and demand our attention only in the absence of conventional screen activity. It is a testament to Hou’s unflinching vision and to his editor’s keen sensibility that the seemingly uninteresting vacuity of this scene transcends the obvious plane of mundane-ness and elevates itself to something transcendental.

A few shots later, Yoko and her mom are sitting by the table as she eats. The camera is at the tatami level, typical of Ozu’s framing, but, more importantly, Yoko’s back is to us while her mother is facing the camera sideways.

She is about to tell her mother that she’s pregnant but we don’t see her face. What are the thoughts going through her mind in the moments leading to her ‘confession’?(although, it appears to be more than a confession, since she rebelliously and assertively declares later on that she will “raise the child herself”). Is she nervous? Nonchalant? Tender? We never get to know. Our curiosity is piqued, elevated and finally left unsatisfied – the scene ends without us ever getting so much as a peek at her face.

Our only clue to her emotional state takes an indirect route – it is reflected in her mother’s face (and gestures), which, being unable to absorb this sudden and harsh news is a wonderful canvas – it is a reflection of the turmoil in her mind while additionally mirroring her daughter’s state of mind – and it is solely up to us to decide how far we want to push ourselves in attempting to understand the subtle nuances of this scene.

One of my favorite scenes is where all three of them are having dinner at a bar.

There is no dialogue, no camera movement, no music – just the sound of noodles being slurped, an occasional dish being washed, the chopstick being tapped on a bowl – all with the three of them sitting with their backs to the camera. The scene ends with them continuing to munch on their meals. In itself, this scene doesn’t have any ‘value’ – it doesn’t push the story forward, it doesn’t complicate the plot, it doesn’t lead us on to believe that something else, something ‘interesting’ may just happen – it just exists – pure cinematic Zen. The camera simply rolls, the characters simply eat and we are simply watching – watching without any pretexts or artifices or barriers between us and them.

In fact, it is this very unpretentiousness of this scene that lends it a contemplative character. Being divested of all narrative duties, the scene now, thankfully, has a chance to bloom and attain its true potential. As for the audience, we have to trek our way across the characters’ minds and plumb our sense of intellect and intuition to fathom the depths of the emotions that are being played out behind a veil. Having made our own personal journey, we are obliged to look back and reflect on our trail of thought, a reflection that rewards us by imparting a faint tinge of poetry to the air.

Hou manages to attain a cohesive unity with the landscape he’s shooting in, and given that this movie is homage to Ozu, this should come as no surprise. Trains, buildings, traffic, people on the street, sounds of everyday life, neon lights, shopping centers – all of these blend in with the fiber of the film in a manner that coexists seamlessly with the aesthetics of the story, the cinematography and the editing. The landscape is as much a part of the story as are the characters. It has its own dialogue and its own rhythm, and at times they both appear to be pulsating to the same beat.

In this wonderfully framed (and architected) shot, we see two trains passing each other.

Their paths intersect for a few fleeting moments before the camera pans down and we see him leaning against a wall. Our attention shifts from the landscape and the environment inhabited by the characters to the characters themselves. We are lost in thought with him, when deliciously, our train of thought is interrupted by the sight of another train entering the shot.

We hear the sound of an oncoming train, so it is not completely unanticipated, but the direction of approach of the train is where are caught off guard – the track that snakes through the center of the screen is empty and the train enters from the tunnel in the lower left hand corner of the screen – where we (or at-least myself) were least expecting it to come from. A subtle lesson in learning not to ignore any part of the screen, no matter how far flung it is. And is that not how it is in life sometimes – things (and people) happen to come our way when we were least expecting it and we are pleasantly surprised at this unexpected bounty.

In one (what must have been a painstakingly orchestrated) shot, we see two trains running parallel to each other. Yoko is standing by the door and staring out towards the rapidly passing platform when we catch a quick glimpse of Hajime-chan in the parallel train with a mike in his hands. They don’t see each other and the trains diverge uneventfully. Perhaps the trains and the journeys they undertake are a subtle (and pervasive) metaphor for the lives of Yoko and Hajime-chan – tortuous, mysterious and always on the move.

Speaking about their lives, one of the things that struck me was the deftness with which their relationship was handled. At no point in the movie are there any obvious sparks between them: there is no melodrama, no infidelities, no acts-of-passion. Yet, one can’t help but feel that there’s a very ethereal undercurrent of attraction between them – an attraction that is never manifested but is omnipresent. A couple of scenes in particular reinforced this belief in me.

First, the scene where Yoko meets him at his bookstore: They’re in a narrow space lined on both sides by bookshelves (perhaps a visual metaphor for the circumstances that restrain and streamline us against our wishes?) and are listening to a CD by a Taiwanese pianist. His dog is in between them, curiously watching. We see narrow shafts of sunlight (reflected from the traffic passing by) dancing on the bookshelf . They make occasional appearances and are as fleeting as they are beautiful. Considered individually, all these elements (the music, the sunlight and the wordless swatches of time) may not amount to much. But their collective sum achieves a poetic synergy that is intangible and leaves us with a vague hazy sense of beauty, hope, purity and love.

Second, there’s a scene towards the end of the movie where they are both in the same train and again, share a very special moment together (more about this scene towards the end of this post).

A scene that is particularly ripe with tension is when Yoko’s parents pay a visit at her apartment. In an earlier scene, the mom had urged her husband to talk about the pregnancy with Yoko. We are hoping that this scene, where father and daughter sit down for a meal will be the one where he finally brings up the topic. Yoko continues to happily devour her favorite meal while her dad pensively sits there, taking a few bites out of his dish. He lovingly shares some of his food with her. She smiles and accepts it. They continue to eat in silence.

The scene cuts briefly to one where they fetch some sake and glassware from the neighbor and resumes again. This time however, the camera is positioned such that her father is at the focal point in the composition, while both mom and daughter are at the fringes of the screen. Her mom makes a few perfunctory questions about her pregnancy and her boyfriend, but not a word from her dad. End of scene. His silence is markedly conspicuous given his central position in the framing. There is no conclusion, no definitive answer and no arguments. Perhaps it is her father’s inability to communicate. Perhaps it is the generational chasm that has come to characterize modern society. Perhaps he is gathering his thoughts and is waiting for an opportune moment in the future. We don’t know. But what we do know is that we are feeling uneasy and restless; perhaps as uneasy as the father himself.

And perhaps our natural instincts clamor for a soothing balm, something that will put to rest this uneasiness, this sense of vague uncertainty that has been brewing inside us. But Hou masterfully denies us a consummation. In one of the last scenes, Hajime-chan and Yoko are in the same train. She is catching a nap and is unaware that he’s standing next to her. He looks down at her and smiles. The train pulls over and they both get out. She watches as he records the sounds of the train pulling away. No words or glances are exchanged. Thoughts and emotions dangle from their edges waiting for a denouement that will give them a concrete form – a wait that is futile for them but immensely rewarding for us.

Welcome to the blog for "The Wind Blows Where It Will"

2007-05-12T13:51:00.001-07:00

Greetings and welcome to the blog for the feature film "The Wind Blows Where It Will" (hereonwards referred to as TWBWIW)

It is a 182 minute feature written/directed/co-produced by Kunal Mehra. It was shot in Portland in Oct/Nov 2006 and was in post-production through May 2007.

For the data lovers, here's a complete timeline:

June 2005: Kunal starts jotting down disparate notes which would eventually make their way (selectively) into the script of TWBWIW

August 2006: The script is complete, inasmuch as any script can ever be complete. Clocking in at a humble 58 pages, it's rather small considering that the movie is a little over 3 hrs long.

August - mid-October: Pre-production in full swing. Plenty of hiccups encountered in securing an apt to shoot in.

14th October: Production starts.

6th November: Kunal hands over the first batch of tapes to editor David Bryant of In The Can Productions LLC.

18th November: Productions wraps. Coincidentally, this is Marcel Proust's 84th death anniversary. Not that the two are explicitly connected in any distinct way, but an interesting coincidence nevertheless.

6th January 2007: Wrap-party at Ron Tom's. Kunal screens the rough cut of about an hour of the movie.

9th - 14th January: Bulk of ADR recording completed at Jason Wells' Audiowells studio.

24th February: Picture edit complete. Coincidentally this is Kunal's birthday as well. Not that the two are explicitly connected in any way, but...
David and Kunal burn a DVD of the edit, do a quick (but great) case art and take the DVD with them to the screening of Werner Herzog's "Rescue Dawn" at Cinema21 (part of the 29th Portland Int'l Film Festival) with the hope that Kunal may get a chance to introduce himself to Werner (who was supposed to personally present the movie) and give him the DVD for his critical comments. Werner does a no-show. C'est La Vie.

28th February: mov's of the picture edit are uploaded by David to sound designer Gerard McConville's servers in NYC.

4th April: Kunal flies to New York to review the finished sound edit with Gerard.

16th April: David starts color correction.

4th May: Karl Lind of In The Can Productions LLC completes the trailer for the movie. The website for TWBWIW goes live.

~7th of May: Color correction complete. Misc. effects work in progress.

10th May, 3pm: Print-to-tape complete.
10th May, 7pm: TWBWIW premieres at the Hollywood theatre!

~~~

My next task-at-hand is to start researching into DVD authoring/duplication. I've talked to one company in town but the rates they quoted were pretty darn ridiculous, so I'm going to have to do some more looking-around. I'm hoping to have the DVDs ready by sometime around the end of May.

And then the real 'fun' starts. Marketing and distribution.

~~~

Thanks to everyone for making it to the premiere! It was immensely rewarding to finally see the movie on the big screen. It's indeed a long (and winding) road from a hazy abstract concept to a series of moving images projected on a large screen and I have nothing but respect and thanks for the professionalism, dedication and faith of the people involved in the making of this movie.