Honor Among Thieves?

The premise of the film Shoplifters is a group of petty thieves (and as it turns out sex workers, murderers and kidnappers) form a family.  Yet, can there be trust or honor among thieves?  They are, after all, using each other (maybe exploiting each other) to make their lives better.  Gramma scams her ex-husband's family and hides the fact that their daughter is a sex worker. Her housemates are willing to hide Gramma's death and bury her so they can continue to collect her pension.  They are willing to run away and abandon Shota when he is captured by the police.  Is the movie trying to justify their crimes or indict them?  Is it telling us that crime doesn't pay?  What is the film telling us about crime and community, about morality and family?

Down and Out in Tokyo

 Shoplifters focuses on the fringes of Japanese society, examining the outskirts of its economy.  The main characters are a retired pensioner, a construction worker, a sex worker, and a laundry worker and two neglected children.  The make ends meet by sharing the pensioner's small home and her pension, supplementing their meagre incomes with shoplifting.  Is the film an expose of injustice?  A study of resilience?  A political attack on the status quo?  What is the film saying about economic class and political leadership in contemporary Japan?

All in the Family, Part 2

 Shoplifters tells the story of an unusual family -- members are not connected by bonds of blood but of choice.  A aged pensioner has opened her home to a down-on-their-luck couple, the daughter of her ex-husband's new family who is playing hooky from her school and two neglected children found on the street.  Furthermore, they scrape by in part by engaging in shoplifting. This is not your grandfather's (read Ozu's) vision of family life.  Nonetheless, characters in the film share bonds of affection, offer advice and participate together in rites of passage and call each other (or in some cases do not) by names of familial relations.  Sometimes they even discuss whether their arrangement is even better than a traditional family ("Less expectations" the grandma says on the beach).  Is the "family" in the film a real family -- or are they just pretending?  Are bonds of blood better or worse or equivalent to bonds of choice (and are these bonds really about choice)?  Does the fact that these relationships are also financial and that "family" members were willing to abandon each other negate the worth of these bonds?  What is the film saying about what makes a family?

Rituals, the Traditional Arts, and the Confucian Concept of Li

 Through out the film A City of Sadness we see images of the traditional arts such as the Peking Opera and classical Chinese music as well as rituals such as funerals and weddings.  Homes often have shrines with ritually prepared food. These ritual activities are celebrated in Confucian philosophy as a way to humanize and sensitize those who practice them.  In short, culture can make people better.  Yet what is the film saying about these ritualistic activities?  Sometimes these are contrasted with other pursuit such as photography and gambling. Sometimes the arts are shown under direct threat as when Wen-heung (the oldest brother) breaks an erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument.  Are the arts and Chinese culture under threat? What is the relationship between the modern world and tradition?  Is Confucius right about the potential for the arts to civilize and make us better? 

A Hospital of Sadness?

 One of the central images of the film A City of Sadness is a corridor just outside a hospital.  The movie begins with the journals of Hinome who is working at the hospital.  It is the location where Weng-Leung is cured of his madness, where victims of the February 28th incident seek aid and where at the end of the film she has her child.  Why is this image repeated throughout the film?  What is the symbolic function of the hospital?  Who needs health -- and will they receive it?

The Gangster State

 A City of Sadness opens with the announcement of the Japanese surrender which will mark  the withdrawal of the Japanese overlords after over 50 years of rule.  The movies focuses on the Li family as they negotiate this new political reality.  Nationalist troops and government officials as well as Shanghai-based gangsters descend on the island.  At the center of the film is the February 28 Incident (1947) in which the National government suppressed a popular rebellion in which at least 18,000 civilians were killed.  The Li family has three brothers (a forth never returns from the war) : Wen-heung, the oldest brother who runs a bar and is a small time gangster, Wen-Leung,  a gangster who is the Shanghai-gangsters betray to the police (and who suffers brain damage), and Wen-Ching, a deaf photographer (and fellow traveler of revolutionaries).  What is the movie telling about the political realities of Nationalist Chinese Taiwan?  What about the use of violence for political or personal ends?  

Not Your Grandfather's Love Triangle

At the center of the movie Farewell, My Concubine is a love story -- more specifically a love triangle.  Yet it is not the more traditional story of two men in love with the same woman.  In this story, it involves a man and a women in love with the same man.  Furthermore, the love in the story is put through a test of loyalty as Xiaolou, the man at the center of the triangle denounces his opera partner and his wife under the pressures of the Cultural Revolution  (unlike the character of the Concubine who remains faithful by killing herself).  What is this film telling us the nature of love and loyalty?  About the status of gay men and women in the film(and the legitimacy of their desires)?  Is love a force for good -- or curse -- or somewhere in between?