A New Blog/ "Pale Flower"

Okay, here it is: I have way too many movies in my Netflix instant queue. Do you ever go to the grocery store and buy a shitload of tofu because you just saw Food Inc. and you're feeling guilty about the baconator you horked down for lunch? You make some half-assed commitment to cook at least one vegetarian meal a week, but then you blink and three months have passed, the bottom of your car is lined with Wendy's wrappers and there's a big brick of moldy tofu lurking in the back of your fridge.

This is me, every day, with my Netflix queue. I fritter away my waking hours pigging out on junk food media-- Jersey Shores, youtube cat videos, etc.-- and then come the evening, I remember that life is fleeting, I could die at any moment, and I still haven't watched Ballad of a Soldier. Thus I flee to Netflix, spend two hours picking out a Movie for Grown Ups to watch, and then give up and fall asleep to an episode of MST3K.

I realize that as far as obnoxious White Person Problems go, having a bunch of arty movies to watch is right up there with "I have too many liberal news blogs in my Google Reader feed". Nonetheless, here's the plan: Within one year's time, I shall destroy my Netflix instant queue, which currently stands at 310 movies. As proof of this herculean achievement in slackerdom, I'll be blogging my thoughts and reflections on each film as I burn through them.

So, come and join me on this magical adventure through Internet Movie Land! Our strange journey begins today, with the 1964 japanese yakuza flick, PALE FLOWER!



THE MOVIE: Pale Flower

WHY IT'S ON MY QUEUE: I am an admitted slut for Japanese films, gangster movies, and anything with that big honkin' Criteron "C" on the cover, so this one was pretty much a no brainer.

ANYWAY: Pale Flower tells the story of newly-paroled hitman Muraki, who upon leaving the Big House comes to the swift conclusion that everything pretty much blows. In a moody opening voice-over, Muraki angsts about how nothing ever changes and calls the rest of humanity a bunch of "stupid animals". Bored out of his skull, Muraki visits a yakuza gambling den, where he befriends Saeko, the titular Pale Flower-- a beautiful, privileged city girl with an unquenchable thirst for seedy late-night thrills.

Together, they go traipsing through the underworld of 60's Tokyo: as Saeko's quest for kicks takes a dark turn down Heroin Alley, Muraki mopes his way into a yakuza clan kerfuffle and finds himself tasked with killing another dude.

So, yeah, it's basically Japanese New Wave 101, which is to say, it's catnip for film geeks. Yes, Pale Flower truly has it all: a jazzy, avant-garde score, dazzling black-and-white cinematography, and preposterous noir-drenched dialogue ("Here's a kick that beats even dope: I'm going to kill a man.").  Plus, it's in Japanese! How cool is that?

I'll ease up on the smug irony here and get to the point. Stripped of its (admittedly impeccable) style, Pale Flower ain't got much going for it.  Something tells me that in English, shot on digital, Pale Flower’s tale of the nihilist hitman who totally doesn’t give a fuck and his femme fatale-cum-manic pixie dreamgirl sidekick would meet with a lot more eye rolling and a lot less breathless admiration.

I get that these tropes hadn’t reached the level of student film cliché back in the 1960’s (though one has to wonder if setting your big final assassination scene to opera music was ever not lame), but even compared to its contemporaries, Pale Flower’s attempts at genre subversion fall short. After all, New Wave yakuza flicks were all about arthouse experimentation— next to Branded to Kill or A Colt is My Passport, Pale Flower seems downright conventional.  

Which, of course, wouldn’t matter in the slightest if Pale Flower told a story you could give a shit about. But alas-- in its pursuit of artiness, the film shrugs off any thought of satisfying the audience with a compelling narrative. And since Pale Flower only achieves a surface level cool, the film winds up stuck in New Wave Limbo: too shallow to hang with the arthouse crowd, and too viscerally unsatisfying to thrive as pulp cinema.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Uhh... 7 out of 10? I feel like as a fan of the genre, I'm being a bit too hard on Pale Flower. It might be style over substance (and surface-level style at that), but it is a very, very slick movie. The cinematography is stunning and the dialogue crackles, but there's just so much better stuff out there in the exact same genre that I can't really let it off the hook. The director, Masahiro Shinoda, did go on to direct the equally eye-popping Samurai Spy, though for my money it too was a little creaky and uninspired compared to its contemporaries (namely the other films in Criteron's totally rad Rebel Samurai box set). Maybe underwhelming me is just this guy's thing.

UP NEXT: We leave the isle of Japan for a totally-not-at-all-jarring-segue to a Gene Autry Double Feature! For reasons completely lost to me, two of the Singing Cowboy's finest are the next items up on my queue. Until next time, Pilgrims!