Movielogr

Rating: 6 stars

Tags

kanopy Japanese period piece mother son classroom teacher short film black and white

All movies seen on 03/31/2020

View on: IMDb | TMDb

Bean Cake (2001)

Directed by David Greenspan

Drama | Short

Overview

On his first day of school in Tokyo 1933, young Uchida Taro makes the mistake of saying he likes his favourite snack more than the Emperor.

Length 12 minutes

Actors

Ryuichi Miyakawa | Sayaka Kanda | Chikara Inoue | Naoko Niya | Takuya Matsuda

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

Found this on Kanopy. An interesting film depicting a young boy not relenting when asked what he loves more by his teacher. The kid loves “bean cake” and it is the wrong answer for every question so he is punished.

This is very well made and its best asset is looking like a film shot in 1933 as if it was really shot on 16mm and now has all the scratches and speckles of a film that old. But it’s not a digital effect. At least it does not appear like a digital effect and I can’t imagine these filmmakers at USC had access to the tech back in 2001 to reproduce those FX digitally.

The drawback for me, which is very minor, is that the school / classroom aren’t Japan authentic. It’s a western style school and classroom w/the wide hallways and high ceilings. I’m sure this is just because an authentic Japanese school / classroom doesn’t exist in California so they were limited and did the best they could. However, it was distracting having seen so many Japanese films set in schools.

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