(heartbreakingly beautiful toma...*_*credit: http://www.ns-movie.jp/)
i finally got to watch ningen shikkaku this month!
it was not as amazing as i thought it would be, but i still liked it.
i guess it's my favorite of all his movies so far. after all, it's toma's FIRST movie, not to mention his 1st serious/dark/very big deal movie, he's the main character (such an infamous, strange character, too!), his acting is brilliant, and he looks super gorgeous through out the whole movie no matter how much they try 2 make him look old/weird/ill. ^_^ and he won some awards for this movie, too. i'm so proud of him!!
the oba yozo in this movie is totally different from the novel!! i knew he and the story would be kinda different, but i didn't expect them to tone down things so much. you totally don't see how yozo feels like he is a monster and hates people and this world so much that he wants to die. i guess since most people have read the book, the director wanted to everyone to see him from a different perspective. if you want to see a more accurate portrayal of yozo, just check out the anime or manga version. O__O it really creeped me out!! so i'm glad toma's yozo is so different from the one in the book. xD but later on in the movie, you do see more of the crazy/desperate side of yozo, and toma did such an amazing job in those scenes!!also, i read somewhere that at the end of the novel, a woman says that yozo was a good boy, he was like an angel. even though yozo was so messed up and horrible on the inside, he successfully hid that from most people. so maybe the director wants us to only see yozo as how most people saw him, a good guy. he wanted to hide all that was ugly about yozo.
this movie is beautiful, but it is kind of boring. obviously, toma is so handsome in this movie! the music, the locations, are beautiful too. but it's a little boring because yozo mostly just seems like a bored/depressed/lonely guy (and an addict) who doesn't know what to do with his life. and all his relationships with women (except maybe the 1st one) seem so fast and meaningless. i guess it's supposed to be, but it felt like they were just going through a check list of his lovers. and there are so many scenes and dialogue that are so vague or random. i don't know if this is because of the director or the novel was already like that, but since they already changed the story, why not try to make things make more sense? actually, i thought some of the best scenes were those that showed us the strange things that only yozo sees. it would have been nice if there were more of these glimpses into his strange mind.
my favorite scene in this movie is when yozo and his girlfriend go to the beach. even though they're preparing to die together, everything is beautiful...and yozo actually looked happy, even if just for a little while. and she tied the red string on their feet and they walked into the water together...it's sad, but romantic somehow!
(credit: http://www.dramastyle.com/movie/No-Longer-Human/.u can see more screencaps i got here:
http://pics.livejournal.com/kate_firefly/gallery/00013p7c)
so....here's a bunch of my comments about the movie.
(no spoilers until the end!) and the screencaps i got from the korean subbed version. hehe. cuz i didn't want to DL the huge movie, i just watched it online while reading thru the english subs. xD
- the goldfish.what does it symbolize? is yozo like a goldfish, trapped in a world he doesn't want to be in, where his life is boring and sad? maybe that's why he has a pet goldfish for most of the movie.
- toma still looks so cute when he's all moody/depressed. xD
- i think it's cute how people call him yo-chan. xD
- i wish they had explained why yozo is so depressed and suicidal (ever since he was a kid!). we never get any explanation, and then one day, he's already saying to horiki, want to die together? huh??
- toma gets to smoke for his role again. i hate smokers, but...goodness, he always looks especially hot when he smokes!!
- of all the women in this movie, my favorite is the lady that owns the bar. lol. she always seems so cool and calm, no matter what happens. ~__~ (i love the sketch of her hanging on the wall!! hehe.)- the trailer is so misleading. i totally thought there would be a lot of love scenes. lol. i'm glad there weren't!
- his wife and some of the other women in this movie are so annoying. lol. like, they're trying too hard to be cute or something??
- the scene where he seduces that lady in her shop!!! omgggggg. even though it's just because he needs more drugs, and she's old and not pretty, but still!!! wahhhhh. so hot.
- i really love the main theme music. it sounds so pretty and sad. i don't like the ave maria that much and i'm glad it wasn't used in the movie, cuz it just seems too religious-y and too trying-2-make-him-angelic.
- the first lady yozo liked, that lady is the best actress in the whole movie. ^^ no wonder she won an acting award in a film festival in germany (she is the first japanese actress to win, i think?)!! though nothing very special about her character but at least she seemed most natural and likable, of all the actresses.
- i think it's cool that yozo is an artist (since i used to draw a lot i love all people that are artistic. xD)! but he's stuck drawing manga to make a living, which he hates. poor yozo. =/ still, i enjoyed the scenes where he is painting/drawing. =)- i hate that old man that works for yozo's dad!! he can be so mean and doesn't really care about yozo.
- horiki is a such a jerk! pretty much from the start. 1st time they talked, he already ruined yozo's painting. =[ i'm glad yozo was able to take his job drawing for the newspaper or something. lol.
***** SPOILER-y comments below! *******
-i love how yozo only takes the goldfish with him when he stops seeing that lady. LOL. and he just plops the bowl down in the bar. kawaiiiii. ^^
- "boyo, boyo"??? i guess it's kind of nice that yozo met the poet who was dying and they became friends, kind of. ironic how he wanted to live so much but he knew he was going to die, and yozo wanted to die so much, but he kept being saved. and it's nice that yozo did do a little something for him after he knew he died.
- horiki's reaction to seeing some creep attacking yozo's wife made me sick. o__O even if he thought that was her lover, he just looked so pervy and disgusting!!!
- that last lady that he lived with...was she his lover?? i'm confused. cuz she was saying that he's like her son, but she did sleep with him. and the naked toma scene. huh???? i hope not. lol.
-naked toma (even if just from the side)??!!! did not expect that!!! but it's done in an artistic, tasteful way. whew!! (well, i was so shocked when i 1st knew there's a naked scene cuz carry-chan talked about it after she watched it in the theatre. and then i saw the pic last year when some1 uploaded the pic, so i'm not shocked now, but i mean....be4 all that, i didn't think toma would be naked in his 1st movie!!)
- i didn't think yozo's vision of his death would be so short and fast. somehow i thought that scene would have a bigger impact on me or be more important to the movie...but it's not. i guess i thought so about a lot of other scenes, but then it ended up not being that significant. at least it didn't seem so to me...? hmm....
- i like the train scene in the end!! through the dark tunnel, then suddenly a bright icy window and sitting in front of himself (as a kid) and all the people he's known in his life are all on the train!! wow...
