MCN Voices: Andrea Gronvall

An old Chinese curse goes, "May you live in interesting times"--acknowledging that life can prove hazardous during a period of upheaval and innovation. As new markets emerge in this era of
globalization, consolidation, displacement and downsizing, unemployment continues to climb, and some days it seems like there are armies of homeless scattered on the streets.

Conventional wisdom might argue that a movie inspired by these grim realities would be a tough sell. But if you passed up Tokyo Godfathers because its subject about three homeless people sounds like a downer, or because it's animation--which in this country usually connotes juvenile--well, you'd be out of luck. This third anime feature from Japan's Satochi Kon has many charms to beguile even the most jaded and media-weary moviegoer. It combines the exotic with the familiar to deliver a singular and emotionally satisfying entertainment for adults, expanding the potential of animation as a medium and further elevating it as an art.

The scheme that frames the story and drives the plot are the vicissitudes of luck, a concept taken quite seriously by the Japanese, who spend an estimated $1 billion yearly on good fortune amulets. The action begins with a slyly comic scene on Christmas eve in Tokyo's glittering Shinjuku district, as school children perform a Nativity pageant for the homeless who gathered together not for the play and certainly not for the sermon, but for the free dinner. Holiday soup kitchens always make the nightly news in America, but in Japan, where no more than 2% of the population is Christian, Christmas is celebrated primarily as a secular festival and has taken on
other cultural meanings--chief of which is that it's regarded as a particularly auspicious day.

Thus the stage is set for a miraculous discovery that will alter the lives of three street people down on their luck. A middle-aged alcoholic named Gin and a fading drag queen named Hana wrangle extra food for their companion, a teenage runaway girl named Miyuki. In a nation where one's
identity is predicated on family and membership in other groups, these outsiders have formed their own unit, although not a harmonious one. A furious spat breaks out between Gin and Miyuki, but they're soon distracted by an infant's wailing. Searching through garbage bags they find an
abandoned baby girl, who the maternally-minded Hana christens Kiyoko, from "kiyoshi," meaning "pure." After some fits and starts the three self-appointed guardians undertake a mission to reunite Kiyoko with her mother, about whom they have only one clue--a key.

Diehard fans of American Westerns will recognize the basic storyline--it's been done by Hollywood four times, starting in 1916 with Edward LeSaint's The Three Godfathers, through three remakes, the last being John Ford's famous 1948 version starring John Wayne. The three outlaws in the desert have been transformed into three outcasts in the urban jungle, but their
journey remains both an adventure and spiritual quest, as their bond is tested and their painful pasts resurrected by the addition of their helpless new protege. The challenge of facing themselves proves as hard as locating the missing mother.

Along the way there's a lot of humor in Tokyo Godfathers, from the flamboyant Hana's fractured warbling of Climb Every Mountain, to pratfalls and send-ups of neighborhood gossips. There's a great deal of sentiment as well, springing organically from revelations about the characters' strengths and flaws. We may think it's daring for an animated movie to focus on the
problems of the indigent; in the film we see the tents of the homeless pitched in front of Tokyo's Metropolitan Government Office, as they are in real life. But in Japan social realism is not restricted to serious literature or documentaries. Everything gets mixed up in anime, the tragic
and the hilarious, the sacred and the profane, the sublime and the tacky. Hana segues from clowning into composing a haiku. A gangland chase turns into an encounter with Latino guest workers in a Tokyo slum. A rescuing angel morphs into a club denizen of the red-light district.

In the hands of Satochi Kon, it all unfolds so fluidly, and with achingly beautiful visuals. The filmmaker's ambition and skill have increased considerably since his 1998 directorial debut, Perfect Blue, a psychothriller about a pop star whose career takes a sordid turn as she is
menaced by a stalker. Perfect Blue's narrative is complex, and the transitions between the central character's perceived reality and fantasy are cleverly executed, but the quality of the drawing is often flat and sketchy. On that score, Kon's second film, last year's Millennium
Actress, shows marked improvement. A lyrical and poignant tale of love and loss, the framework of Millennium Actress superficially resembles that of Titanic: a crew looking to unearth the past travels to meet an elderly actress and presents her with a key that turns out to be a token from the love of her life. The flashbacks to her youth effortlessly blend into plots from her movies, and the lush detail and supple lines of the drawing are as alluring as the spunky heroine.

With Tokyo Godfathers Kon's storytelling is more linear, but the scope of his screenplay, in which he and co-writer Keiko Nobumoto fully develop three characters as well as a mystery surrounding the the baby, is most ambitious. The camera work is highly energetic; on this alone the movie would deserve study, so on point are Kon's varied use of wide shots, medium shots and
closeups, high and low angles--and his opening credit sequence is inventive and fun. Thematically, the moral lessons are amplified by the richness of the material. As Kon makes a statement about the problems of homelessness today--the shame of the dispossessed, and the shame of the society that ignores them--he taps ancient cultural traditions like ancestor worship and karma, throws in pop references, strings together a series of happy accidents, and wraps it all up with the soulful optimism of another Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life. Capra-esque corny? Maybe a little, but we could use a few more heart-warming movies about compassion,
generosity and redemption, and not just at the holidays.

####

Tokyo Godfathers is currently playing in Los Angeles and New York, and on January 23 begins its rollout to Chicago and other markets.

12/7/03 - Angels in America
10/24/03 - Bus 174
9/29/03 - The Boys of 2nd Street Park
8/23/03 - Finding Debra Winger