私は貝になりたい映画評

JAPAN　TIMES（MARK SCHILLING）

Making a case for a 'war criminal'　By MARK SCHILLING Rating(2.5/5)
JAPAN　TIMES　Friday, Nov. 21, 2008
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ff20081121a3.html
＝大意：仲居の演技は悪い、演技しすぎ。命令した上官も含め彼は自分を無罪と信じ、それは田母神自衛官と似る。戦争犯罪を非常に極端な例だけに限って見せて、当たり前のようにそれが無罪だったと見せているが、他はどうだったのか？仲居に同情するなら他のケースはどうなるのか？又反戦を継承しているがアジアの殺された人々に映画はなんと言うのか？
また戦争を知らぬ若い世代は映画から何も得ないのではないか？

Based on a novel by Tetsutaro Kato, the 1958 TV drama "Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai" ("I Want to Be a Seashell") became a paradigm-shifting hit when it was broadcast on KRT Television, the predecessor to the TBS network.

Back then, the still-mighty Japanese film industry looked down on the programs of their small-screen brethren as vastly inferior to their own product. A world-class auteur like Akira Kurosawa would sooner fly to the moon than work in TV. Telling the story of a small-town barber who was tried as a war criminal in Occupation-era Japan, "Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai" enjoyed a smashing popular and critical success that signaled TV was here to stay ? and that the days of the supremacy of movies were numbered.

The drama inspired a 1959 film scripted and directed by Shinobu Hashimoto, who had been Kurosawa's scriptwriter on "Rashomon," "Ikiru" and "Shichinin no Samurai" ("The Seven Samurai"). Kurosawa gave Hashimoto his blessing for the film, his first as a director, "but you only have a C-class script," Kurosawa told him.

In 1994, TBS broadcast a new version, with George Tokoro playing the barber, a role originated by Frankie Sakai in the first drama and film.

Now there is a second film, with a revised script by Hashimoto, now 90, and directed by TBS veteran Katsuo Fukuzawa. Why now? TBS is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the drama, which in the commemorative-minded local- entertainment world is reason enough to crank up for a remake.

Also, the original's soft nationalism, with its argument that ordinary Japanese were more the war's hapless victims than its perpetrators, is gaining popularity again (as is the not-so-soft version advocated by certain Self-Defense Force officers).

As is often the case with Japanese commercial dramas about the war and postwar, "Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai" is baldly sentimental, with strenuous overacting by all the principals and a loud, literal-minded score by Jo Hisashi.

The worst offender is Masahiro Nakai, a member of the now middle-age boy band SMAP and a frequent presence on TV. Playing Toyomatsu Shimizu, a humble barber in a Kochi Prefecture fishing village, he gives every expression a record-breaking spin ? from the smiliest-ever smile to the darkest-ever look of doom. Being "on" every living second, he never gives us time or space to feel ? instead he does it all for us. As his long-suffering wife, Fusae, TV drama queen Yukie Nakama plays wide-eyed purity to a fault and looks somewhat thick-headed as a result. With Fusae as his closest ally, doggedly and ineffectually trudging through the snow to collect signatures on a petition for a retrial, I had a bad feeling about Shimizu's chances.

The film begins in 1944, with Shimizu, a married man with a child and a permanent limp (which Nakai exaggerates), exempt from the military but enthusiastically cheering on a uniformed friend bound for the front. Then he gets his own draft notice and immediately collapses into a black mass of despair. Though assigned to a home-guard unit, he undergoes the often-portrayed hell of the wartime Japanese military, personified by a brutal sergeant who slaps his face to a bloody pulp.

Then, as U.S. bombs rain down hell of a different kind on Japanese cities, Shimizu's unit is sent to round up a crew of downed American fliers. With their superiors and comrades watching, Shimizu and another unfortunate soldier (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) are ordered to execute the prisoners with their bayonets. They have no choice but to obey.

The war ends and Shimizu is trying to resume his old life when he is arrested by the military police and thrown into Sugamo Prison as a war criminal, with a possible death sentence hanging over his head.

Shimizu, understandably, believes himself blameless. In fact, he and most of his fellow prisoners are decent sorts, including Lt. Col. Yano (Koji Ishizaka), who gave the order for the airmen's execution and delivers an impassioned condemnation of U.S. carpet bombings prior to his date with the gallows.

The filmmakers, however, have loaded the moral dice by making an extreme case like Shimizu the protagonist, instead of the more numerous torturers and murderers of POWs who rightly ended up on the war-crimes docket.

Also, the film presents the captured fliers as nullities. The one Shimizu stabs utters not a sound, while his face is barely shown. Nonetheless, its portrayal of the Imperial Army as absolutely intolerant of dissent rings true enough. Shimizu would have signed his own death warrant by refusing to obey a direct order.

The film also deserves its antiwar label that has been applied from its first incarnation as a drama. Shimizu becomes thoroughly sick of the military insanity, from both sides, that has destroyed his life. His wish ? expressed in the film's title ? is to be reborn as a seashell, deep beneath the waves and far away from war.

But what will the younger generation, who knows little of the war's reality, take away from the film? That wonderful folks like Shimizu did nothing wrong. That, save for a few bad apples, neither did anyone else in these green and beautiful islands. As for the 30 million Asian dead? Well, there's a speech on victor's justice I'd like you to hear.

名脚本家の50年越しの問題提起：60点　町田敦夫（超映画評）

http://www.cinemaonline.jp/review/raku/4861.html
　ちょうど半世紀前に放送された同名テレビドラマのリメイク作品だ。脚本は1958年のオリジナル版や、1994年の最初のリメイク版と同じ橋本忍。数々の黒沢映画に脚本を提供し、今年90歳になる老大家にとって、本作はことのほか思い入れの強い作品であるらしい。理髪師の清水豊松は、戦時中、上官の命令で捕虜の殺害に手を貸した。戦争が終わり、妻子との平凡な日常を取り戻したかに見えたある日、彼は戦犯として逮捕され……。
　老大家には失礼ながら、序盤の展開は少々ユルくて古臭い。久石譲の音楽もわざとらしくて大仰だ。だが、主人公が戦犯法廷で裁かれる段になると、作品の密度は一気に上がる。不十分な事実認定、偏向した裁判官、保身に走る上官、稚拙な通訳、弁護士の不在。監督の福澤克雄はこうした諸要素を畳みかけ、主人公の寄る辺なさと、戦犯法廷に対する疑問を効果的に表現する。首相の靖国参拝が毎回問題になるのは、そこに戦争“犯罪者”が合祀されているからだ。その意味で、「そもそも戦犯とは何なのか」と問題提起する本作は、いまも今日性を失ってはいない。
　58年版のフランキー堺、94年版の所ジョージに続き、今回はSMAPの中居正広が主人公の理髪師を演じた。善良で実直ではあるが、決して男らしくも立派でもない小市民像に、中居の個性がピッタリはまる。とりわけアイドル顔を封印して演じた、巣鴨プリズンに収監されてからの揺れがいい。まあ、髪を丸刈りにして撮影に臨んだだけでも、かつてポニーテールのままで特攻隊員の役を演じた誰かさんより真摯ではあるな。
　ただ、その小市民像が映画の主人公として魅力的かどうかは、また別の話だ。愛すべき妻子や、苦労して構えた店がありながら、死を前にした豊松は、自分の障害や不運に対する恨み辛みばかりを言い立て、「何もいいことのない人生だった」と愚痴るのみ。「貝になりたい」という発言に潜む家族への裏切りに、多くの善男善女は背を向けるだろう。

中居正広の個性を評価したい：65点　渡まち子（超映画評）

http://www.cinemaonline.jp/review/kou/4928.html
　伝説的ＴＶドラマを名脚本家・橋本忍が自ら改訂して再映画化したのが本作。理髪店を営む清水豊松は、突如、戦犯として逮捕される。軍隊の非情な実態や、弱者に犠牲を強いるＢ・Ｃ級戦犯裁判の不公正に、誰もが怒りを覚えるだろう。この物語がＴＶ草創期の1958年に生まれたことが驚きだ。旧作の主演は名優フランキー堺だが、彼の演技を真似るのではなく、平凡で誠実な青年というイメージで演じた中居正広の個性を評価したい。ただ、希望の光が見えた裁判が不条理に覆されたからくりを掘り下げてほしかった。21世紀の今だから語れる事実もあるはずと推察できるだけに残念。