After Life is maybe my favorite movie. Maybe the best low-key movie ever made? But people are odd. I cried all through that movie. Not sadness so much as just emotion and amazement and admiration. But a good friend of mine said, "Oh I saw that. It was cute."
I agree that Gaugie and N are wrong, that Shall We Dance is profound, and shall now paste my pedantic-sounding but sincere argument to that effect, since you have insisted so adamantly. Then I am going to go heat up some blueberry pie.
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Well, Gaug, it's not only about love, to me. It is about love, but it's about... sorry to be so pretentious, really, but this is the way I experienced it, and why I loved it, and felt it to be powerful as a piece of art-- it's about individual freedom and the right to joyful self expression and about unlikely friendship-- unlikely, because it is not the fruit of convention, but of the meeting of souls in pursuit of their individual joys. I think it was about the redemptive value of whatever it is that dancing represents in the movie-- art, and personal bliss, and the casting off of the constraints of convention; and sheer romance. (All of these themes are undoubtedly on the minds of young Japanese artists. The culture is terribly bound by convention and shame and the subordination of the individual.) Think of the beautiful teacher whom the hero 'saves' from cynicism and fear of appearing less 'important,' and fear of disgrace and loss of face if she dances, joyfully, in a new kind of triumph (one of the spirit,) in that big public dance contest in the end. She was inspired to become a true human being, to cast off her fetters of pride and false elitism, by witnessing the hero's dedication to the art of dance and his gallantry, in the terms she had originally admired in dance, (the male dancer does not think of himself, but protects his partner) before she was caught up in the hierarchical world that broke her spirit. And think of how he was 'saved,' too, from the deadly routine that was turning him into an automaton-- but not saved by the love-yearnings that originally brought him to the studio (when he saw the beautiful teacher through the window) but, in the end, by finding this unconventional world of joy and art and friendships-of-the-heart; a world that he could join only by casting off the ... well, the shame culture that is conventional Japan.
I wrote 'false' elitism, because the movie actually proposes a new kind of elitism-- those who understand this beauty, and whose souls are informed by it, become the 'elite.' This elite is made pretty explicit by the brief appearance of an important, 'top' dancer, who tries to convince the young teacher that her way is misguided.
In the end, the love is all platonic, except his love for his family. They all become a family of Like Souls-- the ludicrous, dance-possessed man who works in his office, the older woman teacher who is the most beautiful character given to us, the teacher who collapses from over work and her daughter, the fat male student... even the detective is swept along in the beauty and spirit represented by.. Dance. Almost my favorite moment in the movie is at the end, when, cornily and perfectly, everyone is brought together, and there we see the detective, for whom his glimpse of this world has also been transformative, explaining to his assistant the fine points of dance. They are now all a family, against the constraining, blind world.
It's explained to us in the beginning of the movie that in Japan ballroom dancing is considered scandalous and somehow absurd. Well, by the end of the movie, we see that everyone with open eyes has been elevated by exposure to the state of 'being' represented bydance.
The title of the movie could be, "Shall We Be Alive?"
So...
Should I be embarrassed now? Do you think I'm being a pedant? I mean all these things.
You can see why I thought the movie wasn't about unimportant things, since when I'm sitting there, I'm experiencing it as about personal freedom, the importance of joy, and casting off shame, and the redemptive power of love, and friendship, and art....
Funny, N also said "it's a lovely movie; simple, but lovely." And I said, "But it's NOT simple!... etc." I wonder if it's a male/female thing?
E.
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Maybe it IS a male/female thing, since you felt the same way! N and i usually agree about movies, except that he likes suspense and I don't. |
