 |
| Images courtesy of Radiance Films |
Decades before Bong Joon-ho took home the Best Picture Academy
Award for his searing surreal dark South Korean satire Parasite which
depicted class warfare and underhanded conniving shared between a poor
materialistic family, Japanese comedy director Yuzo Kawashima and then-screenwriter
Kaneto Shindo (director of Onibaba) joined forces on this 1962 crime
satire The Graceful Brute or as it is known in other territories and on
this new 4K restored Radiance Films release Elegant Beast making its
stateside premiere. In what is
surely the snarkiest ensemble black comedy second to former assistant director
Shohei Imamura’s The Pornographers, this ensemble, at times
hallucinatory chamber piece inside a postwar Japanese concrete block apartment
starts out innocently enough before it turns into a steadfast battle of wits
while also being a play on the notion of the hunters becoming the hunted.
Within the urban concrete block apartment resides the Maeda
family consisting of ex-naval officer/father Tokizo (Akira Kurosawa stalwart Yunosuke
Ito), his wife Yoshino (Hisano Yamaoka), daughter Tomoko (Yuko Hamada) and son
Minoru (Manamitsu Kawabata) who exude the outwardly appearances of humility but
in actuality are scheming materialist two timers quick to hide their collection
of belongings whenever friends and neighbors affected by their antics show up
to confront them. Things aren’t all wine
and roses with the arrangement however, with Tomoko borrowing too much money from
her rich and famous writer boyfriend Shuntaro Yoshizawa (Kyu Sazanka) and Minoru
signed onto a music talent agency where he also embezzles the money from. While patriarch Tokizo invests his money in
military projects, Minoru fritters it away on his girlfriend Yukie (Ayako
Wakao) the agency bookkeeper and it isn’t long before Yukie reveals her own
grandiose plan to scam the Maeda family right under their noses to fund her own
hotel complex.
A dog-eat-dog netherworld taking place within the locked
quarters of the concrete block with only a few peers into the heightened
reality of the outside world replete with effects shots of the Maeda family by
windows overlooking artificial bright red or dark blue skies, Elegant Beast has
the feel of a stage play rendered on film with the overt theatricality of
Seijun Suzuki or Masaki Kobayashi. While
largely formal and within the brutalist architecture of the apartment block
with precise cinematography and blocking by eventual Gamera DP Nobou
Munekawa, the production design at times feels outlandish such as recurring
vistas of family members ascending or descending a tall sterile white flight of
stairs. The soundtrack by Sei Ikeno of Black
Test Car is rather traditional in instrumentation with little to no
orchestral renderings, giving the proceedings a timelessness with one foot in
the past while the other is firmly footed in the present.
The ensemble cast of the Maedas and those they’ve swindled
and/or swindled them give pitch perfect performances across the board. Yunosuke Ito as patriarch Tokizo exudes an
air of tight composure that is hard to break with Hisano Yamaoka as his wife
Yoshino being reserved and quiet while their kids Tomoko and Minoru are played
like wound up wild animals eager to break free of their cage. Most striking of all is recurring Yasuzo
Masumura actress Ayako Wakao who was already a major movie star of Daiei
Studios as the cunning bookkeeper who finds a way to strike and prey on the
neck of the Maeda family like a vampire.
Even as boorish taller men push and knock her around, she proceeds with
her dark mission undeterred and unfazed by the efforts to overpower and subdue
her and singlehandedly deals a near fatal blow to the family’s existence.
Long unavailable in English form in the United States or
United Kingdom, a wrong thankfully righted by Radiance Films with their new
deluxe 4K restored blu-ray edition, Yuzo Kawashima’s adaptation of Kaneto
Shindo’s The Graceful Brute aka Elegant Beast now has the chance
to be seen alongside its more renowned contemporaries as an indelible slice of
distinctly postwar Japanese social satires.
Taut, exquisitely composed and powerfully acted across the board, the
new Radiance disc comes with newly conducted interviews by film critics
Toshiaki Sato, Tom Mes and a visual appreciation by filmmaker Toshiaki
Toyoda. Seen now it is a strikingly
surreal dose of modern Japanese noir, starting out comical before slowly
turning up the heat. Radiance Films have
put together a lovely limited edition disc release and fans of Japanese cinema
should be tickled pink to have this!
--Andrew Kotwicki
