Reviews

Yoshiko is a bossy and irascible girl of 17 or 18 who lives in her parents' house in a dusty rural town in Japan. Her father is in hospital. She is called "gorilla-man" because of her resemblance to a manga character of the same name. The title refers to a handsome German lad who also lives in the town. His presence is explained part-way through, but the explanation is not convincing. Yoshiko starts teaching the recorder to young children, has various little adventures with them, and pursues her dream of becoming a famous singer.

This felt rather like an amateur film. The budget was obviously very low, the image is 4x3 or so (not widescreen), and it is only 70 minutes long. Most of the actors are children. Some of the acting is distinctly wooden. Eventually, the film tails off into wordless and abstract scenes where nothing happens. But it is frequently funny and occasionally surprising. You could say it is a fresh and original film.

The English subtitles were far from perfect. There were spelling mistakes, and on at least one occasion they did not even try to translate a word - they just said "this photo will be bokeh", or something like that.

Warning: there are many casual mentions of extremely unpleasant topics, and one or two scenes that actually show people doing very unpleasant things. These are things that you would definitely not want young children to see or hear.

Well made and quite gripping.

However, I thought it was totally unconvincing that Danny and Lester were capable of running a successful military contractor company. Danny was completely unstable and had no aptitude for business or level-headedness.

So Lester must have done all the organizing and thinking, though we never saw any of that take place. But why in the world would Lester trust Danny and think he was a suitable business partner?

Another thing that seemed unlikely: the Americans and Iraqis were easily able to understand the British characters' strong accents (Northern Ireland, Manchester, and Newcastle?). I had plenty of difficulty understanding what they were saying, and I'm British and sitting comfortably at home, and sometimes even rewinding it or switching the volume up.

Apparently this film was shown in a BBC 4 season called "Why Democracy?", introduced by the question, "Can politicians solve climate change?" But this is clearly not a heavy serious-minded documentary. And there is no mention of climate change. There is barely any mention of political issues at all.

I don't think the director was making a great effort to raise "issues" or make serious "points". And I am sure he was not trying to make points that are relevant in all countries. Not all themes are universal. Many of the quirks of Japanese democracy result from the country's laws and are therefore probably unique to Japan. I think the director just made the film like this because he thought it would be interesting, funny, and entertaining.

There are many extremely funny scenes: the station staff jamming people on to trains; Yamauchi throwing his socks into the corner of the room, into a box of newspapers; his friends saying that he hadn't paid social insurance (this is an issue that has led to the downfall of several senior Japanese politicians).

There are several scenes that make you think, "How on earth did he get permission to film this?" And it is an impressive film in that way. But as you can see from the other IMDb pages, the director did the producing, photography, and editing himself, and he knew the candidate from university. I am sure Yamauchi would have been much more wary if a big crew from a major TV station had turned up and tried to film private conversations with his wife. But in the end all the main characters come across as good people.

I suppose you could say that Yamauchi is uncharismatic. But that is not a crime. He is just a person trying to do something. And after all, this is only a city council election.

The ending was slightly unsatisfying. When everyone else was in the office awaiting the result of the election, Yamauchi was inexplicably still at home. And when he finally arrived, he somehow did not seem to be himself. And then it was all over.

--- USEFUL THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE YOU WATCH THIS FILM ---

(I agree with the previous comments that audiences who are not familiar with Japanese politics might find this film difficult to understand.)

Japan has very strict legal restrictions on how candidates are allowed to campaign. This explains why he does not use radio or TV to campaign, and why he has to start and stop campaigning on the streets at certain exact times of day.

In Japan, many people vote for the LDP unquestioningly. They are just conservative-minded and they prefer things not to change. This goes part-way to explaining why there is almost no discussion of issues and the whole campaign seems to be just an effort to get people to know the candidate's name.

I saw this at the Shin-bungeiza cinema in Tokyo. At this cinema, they don't kick you out after your film ends, so you are allowed to stay and watch the next film (which is always different) for free.

I had watched the previous film, and I had nothing to do. I knew nothing about this film, so I had been intending to stay and sleep through it. But it was so exciting that I stayed awake the whole time, my eyes glued to the screen.

The villain of the piece is a rich company president who wants to build a new railway line out of Tokyo and develop the land around it. This is the early 1960s, when Japan was building new roads, railways, and buildings all over the place.

The company president cares nothing about other people. He is a deeply loathsome character, really one of the most despicable characters I have ever seen in a film.

There are many characters and story lines. Overall it is a most enjoyable and well-made film. Despite my pessimistic expectations, it is not melodramatic, sentimental, low-budget, or dated.

I saw this at the Shin-bungeiza cinema in Tokyo. I didn't understand it all that well, but it was pretty exciting. It was certainly not a B-movie in the pejorative sense, and not too dated.

The main character is a journalist who investigates some murky goings-on. The journalist looks like a hero from a Hollywood thriller, and his heavily built and thuggish nemesis looks like a Japanese Robert Shaw.

This film is mainly interesting for the view it gives of international politics and security in Japan during the height of the Cold War.

Obviously, the title is the Japanese pronunciation of the English word "spy".

A young man on his way to a job interview is wrongly accused of groping a high-school girl on the train. He consistently denies the crime. But he is detained by the police and then charged. Most of the film consists of the numerous court sessions, and I found it totally gripping all the way.

The point of the film is that the Japanese justice system is totally unjust. Astonishingly, 99.9% of defendants are found guilty. In Japan there are no juries - judges make the decisions themselves. (This system is going to change in a few years, so that for serious crimes the verdict is decided by judges and small juries together. But who knows whether this will make the system more just. Many Japanese people might feel a strong pressure to conform with authority and find the defendant guilty even if they don't think they actually are.)

In the film we get an excellent look at how evil the system is. For a start, in Japan, the police can hold anyone for ten days without charge, and an extra thirteen days (I think) if the public prosecutor agrees. This is a very long time to be held without charge! The police repeatedly tell Teppei that if he confesses then he'll just be able to walk out of the police station - "it's only groping, it's just like a parking offence." But this is coercion and untrue. If he confesses, he can easily be charged and convicted. So the police are not allowed to say this. And in court, under oath, one police officer perjures himself by denying that he ever said it.

Someone in the film says that one problem with the system is that judges get regarded well and promoted if they deal with their cases quickly and find most defendants guilty. And judges are public employees (civil servants), so they naturally want to side with the police and the public prosecutors against some poor defendant they don't even know. But they're judges! Surely they should have enough moral fibre to put justice ahead of their personal careers.

So for people living in Japan, this is a very scary film. Innocence is no defence. For me the really shocking thing was that the judge and the police were outright evil. (Actually the judge changes half-way through the trial. The first judge seemed like a good man - he told some students, "The highest responsibility of a judge is to not find innocent people guilty.")

What I wanted to know was: what proportion of people found guilty in Japanese courts actually are guilty? Obviously there's no easy way to find this out. But perhaps a foreign lawyer or judge could read the transcripts of about a hundred Japanese criminal court cases, and say whether they think the person should have been convicted assuming that guilt has to be proved beyond all reasonable doubt. I think this would be an interesting exercise, though it is doubtless much more difficult than I imagine.

The other thing I wanted to know was: what should you do if you are arrested in Japan? If you confess, the best thing that can happen is you settle out of court and if it's a groping case pay the victim about 2 million yen (US$20,000). Or they might charge you, and since you confessed, you are certain to be convicted. If you don't confess, you spend loads of money on lawyers, spend a year of your life going through a terrible experience like Teppei in this film, and then eventually get convicted anyway. What a nightmare.

The director says he hopes lots of people around the world will watch this film. However, this can't be because the story has relevance to people in other countries - most countries don't have such crowded trains, so many men who want to grope teenage girls, or such bad justice systems. Perhaps he wants to bring shame on Japan and international condemnation of its justice system.

Anyway, I highly recommend the official English website (http://www.soreboku.jp/eng/ (this page has disappeared; use web.archive.org to find an archived copy)). It is only one page, but very interesting to read.

Incidentally, the film's official website gives the English title as "I just didn't do it". But the Japanese title might be more accurately translated as "I still didn't do it". When reading this out loud, "still" should be emphasized to make the meaning clear (which is maybe why they chose "just" instead). "Soredemo boku wa yattenai" is what you might say after someone talks at you for a long time, telling you how bad you are for doing something and how damning the evidence against you is.

This is a good film, and very funny. I'd say it is slightly less funny than, say, Swingers. Unfortunately it has lots of scenes about a minute long where the camera just lingers on something in a sentimental or dreamlike way.

The main problem is that the music is truly awful. I think it's the most glaringly bad music I've ever heard in a film. It is utterly bland, tinkly, constantly light and cheerful, and nondescript. I really can't describe it any better than that, except that it mainly features a piano (or electronic piano).

What's more, in the credits at the end, there is a huge credit for the "Sideways Jazz Orchestra". This was an orchestra?!? They're claiming that was jazz?! They get credited for this!? I couldn't believe it.

And to add insult to injury there is then a long list of the titles of the pieces/songs, with the composers and performers listed, and an announcement that the soundtrack is available on CD. This music is not good enough to have been "written" by anyone, I promise.

Watch a Stanley Kubrick film and your jaw will drop at how apt and perfectly appropriate and well judged the music is. This is the opposite.