Ashita Trailer

The Music in Ashita

In this film, ” Ashita”, same melody is repeated several times. Most parts which this music is played are very ordinary, daily and happy scenes of the family. However, it is also used at the end of the film, the front and the back of the very scene, exploding atomic bomb. In my opinion, it is used to heighten the emotion of audience. Since all the family members has gone, while their theme music is still left. Music has a power for people to remind something emotional of the past. In the same context, audiences come to flash back to the life of the family with this melody. Also, continuous music after end of the film implies our-audiences- usual days having possibility about sudden attack of nuclear weapon.

Above this, there are some scenes that music is used effectively.

In the wedding ceremony scenes, woman sings a song about Japanese pronunciation on number. This song means nothing. It doesn't include social, political problem and worry about the war. Thus, I thought this song can be interpreted their ordinary days: they don't have to feel anxious and consider deeply.

A solider plays the harmonica in the room which his collegue is not long for this world. The melody he plays make us feel lonely, sorrowful, and mournful, because it allude the death of one soldier in no distant future.

Review 2 (Yuki)

Point of View
This movie is filmed in Japanese point of view. In this movie, women and children have roles just as important as men. The girl looked at the sky and bomb just explodes without any caution. This is the view from below. It shows Japanese lives right before A-bomb, it certainly is Japanese point of view. There are few scenes of Korean soliders and English soliders. Those Korean soldiers speak in Korean. Perhaps this is not really Japanese point of view, but I doubt if this was Korean point of view. I think this scene's point of view is anonymous, it just depicts the situation of that time.

Form of Social Criticism
I think this movie gives us a little sence of absurdism. Absurdism is the feeling people get when they can't find any meanings to life, people, and themselves. From the line in the beginning, "Should humans be erased like fog just the same as my mother and father?", audience gets the idea that something bad is going to happen to these characters but all they can do is just to keep on watching till the ends. In some sense, audience is waiting for their time to come. After bomb explodes, it makes each individual's life, all the joy and struggles, meaningless. This gave me a feeling of absurdism.
This movie also has nihilism. Just like "The man who stole the sun", all the struggles that characters went through and joy of life become nothing when nuclear explodes. There is nothing left. We don't know who survived and who died but the movie ends with explosion and it really makes it seem as if the world is over (at least their world is over).
The line "should human be erased like a fog the same as my mother and father?" gives us negative feeling, but I thought it may give us a little of hope as well. It says "my mother and father", thus it may be implying that the baby survived. I am not sure whether the director implied this or not, but I think it can be read in that way as well. (In addition, this line comes from a real person who survived from the bomb in Nagasaki, so there is a possibility of survival, and at least there are people who survived, there is a little hope.)

Reflection

After studying about this movie, I think the main message is that it can happen to anyone. I did not think that this movie is trying to make audience sympathize (althought, as a result, audience would). In this film, there is no any particular main character. Everyone in the film is important and they all have different things to deal with in life. It really dipicts our lives in the way that each individual are different and we encounter different events in life. In addition he also showed us Korean solider's life and English solider's life. They were in Nagasaki, thus they also died from Atomic Bomb. People who died from Atomic Bomb is not only Japanese and it could be anyone if s/he were in Nagasaki. No one has a reason to be killed by A-bomb. That's the message that I got from this film.

My feelings to the project

After tomorrow, when the blog is due, there is only one step left for this atomic bomb cinema course! Times really flies.  Adding in subtitles was a brand new experience for me, started from installing the software, then go on to the online manual to get started.  At first, I really had some difficulties in inserting the subtitles because the old and new files overlapped with each other.  But the problem was solved very soon.  The process was really time-consuming as I have to match the speaking duration of the actors and actress with the appearing-time of the subtitles.  In the past , I  have only learned to translate subtitles, I never realized that making subtitles needs so much patience and attentiveness.  I even intended to finish the whole film myself.  But since I still have other courses' work to do, it is impossible for me to finish it alone, so I sought help from Yup.  It took him a long time to finish as well because he encountered other technical problems.  Although the process was not smooth, both of us had learned a lot, and as Yup said on the presentation," maybe we can apply a part-time job on inserting subtitles." 

And for the blog, actually posting a new entry is not a difficult job because I used to have a blog on blogger as well.  But what makes it difficult is that there aren't much information and review about 'Ashita' available on the internet.  What I can find is only some very short review and mostly making a summary of the film.   Therefore, I decided to write one all on my own by referring to the previous lectures, and I realized me and my fellow groupmates have some common viewpoints.  Probably we should post our reviews to various film website so that more people can share our ideas when they search about 'Ashita'.  Another time-consuming job was to edit the web links, so that they appears as a word rather than an URL.  Since this is the final week of the quarter, all my groupmates are too busy with their reports and exams that they cannot afford the time to edit their links, so I simply gave them a hand and edited everything.  

Last but not least, THANK YOU Professor Progler! I really learned a lot in this course, from now  on when I watch movie, I will pay attention to the special effects, music and other stuff, rather than just the storyline. 

About 'Ashita'

Film title: Ashita
Country: Japan
Date of Release: 13 August 1988
Also known as: Tomorrow (International), Der Tag Davor (East Germany)


Director: Kazuo Kuroki [Related Post: (1), (2)]
Screenplay: Masako Inoue, Kazuo Kuroki, Juuichirô Takeuchi
Story: Mitsuharu Inoue


Cast:
Kaori Momoi (1) as Tsuruko / Pregnant sister
Kaho Minami (1) as Yae/ Bride
Nobuku Sendo (1) as Akiko/ Youngest sister
Shiro Sano (1) as Shoji/ Bridegroom
Arthur Kuroda (1) as Tsuguo/ Shoji's friend


Nomination and Awards
Awards of the Japanese Academy:
   Nominated: Best Art Direction - Akira Naitou
                        Best Cinematography - Tatsuo Suzuki
                        Best Lighting - Kenichi Mizuno
                        Best Music Score - Teizou Matsumura
                        Best Supporting Actor - Kunie Tanaka

Blue Ribbon Awards:
   Won: Best Actress - Kaori Momoi

Hochi Film Awards:
   Won: Best Film

Kinema Junpo Awards:
   Won: Best Actress - Kaori Momoi
             Best Director - Kazuo Kuroki

Mainichi Film Concours:
   Won: Best Art Direction - Akira Naitou

Nikkan Sports Film Awards:
   Won: Best Director - Kazuo Kuroki