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I just saw a movie Rhapsody in August by Akira Kurosawa (IMDB, AllMovie). The movie has very interesting topic and pretty strong message. It is about WWII and Atom Bomb on Nagasaki, and how the surviver of the war (grandma) cope with loss and change of time. The whole Atomic Bomb thing is a topic that Japanese rarely talks about and for that, Kurosawa is making his point by making this film. Interesting movie to see, when the election talks all touch on “WMD”. Watching this movie gave me more of human dimension to that talk. (Barefoot Gen (imdb, allmovie) is a very strong film of this kind, even though it is an animation.)
Japanese people’s racism (well, that is a strong word but that is what it is… ) towards non-Japanese is pretty realisticaly captured in the movie, too. It’s not hatred, but more of ignorance coming from being isolated and homogeneous country. Richard Gere is in the movie, speaking Japanese (he is a half Japanese in the movie). And really, (sadly) he was the best part of the movie. Topic is so strong and interesting, it is really too bad that it was kind of slow and characters are not so interesting. I liked it overall, but could be better if any of the Japanese character (besides grandma) are more likable or had stronger personality. If anything the movie really made me want to visit Nagasaki (Yahoo Travel Japan Guide), it also has long and sad history of Christianity.
