September Movies

[osprey_archer]

I’ve already posted about most of the movies I saw in September (trying to prevent the backlog that overcame me after August! I still haven't posted about Menashe), but here a couple about which I didn’t have quite as much to say.

First, The Women’s Balcony, a delightful Israeli film about a small orthodox Jewish congregation in Jerusalem after the women’s balcony in the synagogue collapses halfway through a bar mitzvah. The collapse injures the rabbi’s wife and sends the rabbi into a state of nearly catatonic shock, which creates a power vacuum… into which steps a charismatic young ultra-orthodox rabbi, who sees this as a chance to win this comparatively lax congregation (the women don’t wear head-coverings) over to his views.

It’s a real ensemble picture - a portrait of a community as much as a portrait of any of its individual characters. I really enjoyed it, but then I’m fascinated by anything that offers a keyhole view into the lives of the highly religious.

I also popped over to the theater to see Lego Ninjago, of which I perhaps expected a little too much on account of how much I loved Lego Batman. It’s good goofy fun (with mechas!), but the father-son reconciliation plotline needed to give more weight to the destruction Garmadon caused - not just in his son’s life, but to the city of Ninjago - in order to have real emotional heft.

And I rewatched My Neighbor Totoro! Because Julie had not seen it *gasp*, which clearly needed to be corrected as soon as possible. It’s still a delightful, delightful movie - a perfect melding of fantasy and reality, with fantasy elements that seem to grow right out of the beautiful landscape, and the whole thing grounded by one of the most realistic depictions of childhood I’ve ever seen onscreen. Mei is such a four-year-old, oh my God.

Comments

[evelyn_b]

Is it lunchtime yet?!

My Neighbor Totoro is the best. I should watch it again - it's been too long.

[osprey_archer]

It's so hard waiting to eat your adorable bento box lunch that your sister made for you! Oh Mei. And then she tries to show them the way to the Totoro, and the pathway just keeps spitting her out in the backyard again, SO FRUSTRATING.

And it's always a good time for a rewatch of My Neighbor Totoro!

[asakiyume]

Totoro is such a lovely movie.

[osprey_archer]

I thought I might have exaggerated Totoro's excellence in my memory, but no. In fact, it's even better than I remembered. It makes me feel nostalgic for a time & place I've never been - although I guess in a wider sense it's not about 1980s Japan so much as childhood - so I guess the nostalgia makes sense after all.

[asakiyume]

And actually, it's representing 1960s Japan--it was set in the past, even when it came out.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, wow! I never picked up on that. Are there clues in the movie I should look for next time that I see it? (Quite possibly there's a great big calendar somewhere and I just didn't notice...)

From Up on Poppy Hill is a real nostalgia-fest too, and now I want to rewatch it also. This is the danger of watching Studio Ghibli films: one is never enough.

Although! My mom and I are going to see Ponyo on the big screen in just a couple of weeks. So that should give me a Studio Ghibli fix.

[asakiyume]

Whoops, and I was overestimating: Wikipedia says 1958.

I think it's mainly in the rural lifestyle, things like not having a phone, etc., plus the fact that the mom is being treated for tuberculosis.

[osprey_archer]

Tuberculosis! I wondered what she had. They never say in the dub.

Someday I should watch it with subtitles, just to compare.

[asakiyume]

To be fair, I don't think they spell it out, even in the Japanese--it's just that that was the sort of facility used to treat people with tuberculosis, and Miyazaki's mother had tuberculosis.