Cut カット (Film Review)

Shuji (Hidetoshi Nishijima 西島秀俊) with director Amir Naderi.

I have talked before about my feeling of loss towards the fact that I left Tokyo before my study term was over due to the Earthquake in March. Since coming back to Toronto, I have regularly attended the weekly language exchange meeting at my local Japanese community. Other than that, however, I haven't done much to improve my language skills or to learn more about the culture. And so, when the Toronto International Film Festival came around, I lined up for tickets to see a Japan-related film. The film I randomly chose was Cut (カット), by Iranian director Amir Naderi. I did not notice the director's last name until I had bought the ticket. While I questioned the authenticity of the film being Japanese, I nevertheless embraced the TIFF spirit of internationalism and eagerly waited for the screening.

SPOILER ALERT: There will be spoilers to the film, Cut, after this point. Please be warned.
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Cut is a film about Shuji, a young, struggling director who dreams to create artful films much in the footsteps of classics like Stanley Kubrick's Path of Glory or Akira Kurosawa's Roshomon. He holds regular private screenings of old films on his rooftop in an urban city in Japan, and is seen running through the streets with a megaphone telling people to "wake up and see the world through cinema". Suddenly, he receives news of his older brother's death. It turns out his brother was a part of the mafia and was beaten to death in an underground toilet. Shuji is told by the mafia that his brother owed them 13 million yen, and that he has 2 weeks to pay it all back. For some unknown reason, there is a boxing ring in the underground lot, where gangsters who lost money while gambling go to punch a punching bag to relieve their frustration.

Shuji comes up with a brilliant idea: he would become their human punching bag, and each punch that he takes, they would pay him 10000yen. Meanwhile, there's a barmaid in the mafia who was obviously in love with Shuji's older brother, but has now transferred her love to Shuji; there's also an old guy (the incinerator man from Departures／おくりびと) who bows a lot but does absolutely jack shit except to account money for Shuji while he gets beaten. The film then flips back and forth between Shuji's meditative states and the violence inflicted upon him... for the next 1.5 hours. Finally, Shuji is close to finishing the goal, and for each one of his last 100 punches, white words of classic film titles from all over the world pop up on screen. Even after the very last film, Citizen Kane, appeared, Shuji was tanking the shots inhumanly and lived to repay his brother's debt. He then asks the mafia heads for a loan of twice the sum of the debt he has just paid, just so he could get started on his independent, artful film. The film ends with a black screen and the sound of Shuji shouting, "Ready... Action!"

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The director, Amir Naderi, was at the screening. It was already past midnight, but he held a Q & A session regarding the film. Here are some of the more significant questions he answered:

Q: How did you decide on the "100 films"? Why are there no films from the most recent 20 years?
A: Those 100 films have always been among my favorite films of all time. Since this is a Japanese production, I feel obliged to include Japanese films. As for the exclusion of recent films, I feel the films of today must be examined 10, 20 years into the future.

Q: How did you direct the film? Are you fluent in Japanese?
A: I do not know Japanese. (Laugh) It is a very difficult language. However, I teach Japanese cinema in America, and I have always worked between Tokyo and New York.

Q: In many of your films, the characters are similar. Is Shuji drawn from previous works?
A: Yes, many of my characters have a goal they work hard towards. Shuji is one of them.

Q: In the film, you express a frustration at the disappearance of classic films from our cinemas. It is true that most of the films you listed are not being shown anymore, but with the internet, we have access to all films. What are your thoughts on that?
A: The internet is very useful and with Netflix and such it is possible to watch all sorts of films, but my point was that the cinema-going experience is being lost in today's world. It used to be people gathering in a dark room and sharing a moving picture together. It is supposed to remain that way. Watching films on the computer is totally different.

Q: I feel you are making a comment on popular culture. Are you saying that the traditional model of cinema is superior to the commercial cinemas of today, or are you criticizing popular culture in general?
A: I understand that even 80 years ago, there was commercialism in the cinema, but what I wanted to say is that we need to preserve the cinematic environment. You know, in cities like Los Angeles, there are only about 2 cinemas showing art films. Toronto is a great city, but maybe only 3 cinemas that would show those films, it is a dying form of art, and we need to revive it.

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To be honest, my opinion of the film was not very high. For starters, it was a gruesome 2 hours of self-torture featuring a fullscreen super-close-up of the protagonist's beaten face. I understand where Naderi was coming from: his background of parental loss, the banning of his films by the Iranian government, divorce, and expatriation make their incarnations in Cut. In a post written by Kim Jisok of the Pusan International Film Festival, he describes that Shuji represents Naderi in that they both express a great love of films. The Wikipedia entry for Naderi also states that Cut is a film about "a young filmmaker giving it all to make his next movie". I do not fully agree.

If it weren't for the final scene where Shuji demanded funding to his filmmaking, the only thing people would remember from the film would be the torture he goes through and his seemingly love of getting punched. There was just too much violence; it was heavy-handed. I do not know how much Naderi has suffered in the past, but putting his audience through 2+ hours of masochistic torture is not a good way to express his want to "preserve traditional cinema". If Naderi's "Top 100 films" were significant and deserve continuous recognition, flashing their titles over a person getting his ass kicked only makes people cringe. There is also a possibility that people will associate the making of those traditional films to violence and sacrifice. But then again, logically, why would you want to preserve something that makes you sacrifice so much?

My second problem with the film was the lack of character development. Shuji is adamant about repaying his brother's debt via selling his body to gangsters, and every other character basically just stood there and watched him. The people in the theatre, too, were watching. It was horrible because no one wanted to be the spectator and no one wanted to be the protagonist. If Naderi intended for the film to both repel its audience and to forcibly make them conscious of their "involvement", then well done.

Cut has artistic merit. I enjoyed the superimposed images on the naked torso of the protagonist near the end of the film. Sometimes the imagery synced and made wonderful, surreal textures. I commend Naderi for doing that.

What I do not commend is Naderi's Q & A session. It was a time when all of the audience was reflecting and wondering if the director had anything deeper that he would have liked to express, but he did not deliver. In fact, in the above questions, especially in the question regarding contemporary popular culture, Naderi never addressed if there is any immediacy to cinema in today's world. What if contemporary culture has no need for cinema? Many of his viewers were no doubt reminded of the criticisms of the Frankfurt School such as Horkheimer's essay on the change to the nature of the cinematic environment. But Naderi gave no response.

I asked one of my friends who I saw by chance at the screening. He said he also did not have a high impression of Naderi in person. We agreed that perhaps Naderi had not expressed his thoughts fully, but as it stands he seems like an old man holding onto something that is crumbling, and all his efforts, including Cut, a film in the making since 2002, was not enough to reverse the process.

S² Rating: [6.5/10 (65%)]
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Review written by micr0q, copyright 2011. Image belongs to Amir Naderi, Tokyo FILMeX, no copyright infringement intended.