Movies into Film
Tokyo Godfathers
Directed by Satoshi Kon
Japan, 2003
Miyuki changes a diaper. (Samuel Goldwyn Films)
Satoshi Kon’s new animated film Tokyo Godfathers places his previous movie Millennium Actress in perspective—as a better work than I initially thought. Both movies center on quests as protracted as they are improbable. In Millennium Actress, a doyenne of Japanese historical epics recalls a painter she met once or twice in her youth, how she became obsessed with him and spent her long life in hot pursuit of a (never realized) reunion. The searchers in Tokyo Godfathers fare more successfully in locating the parents of an abandoned infant; their journey, however, isn’t nearly the fun ride of that earlier film, which flitted across epochs and ultimately into the cosmos. Kon stays in one place this time, yet Tokyo Godfathers left me exhausted.
I suppose anime comparisons are as odious as any other kind. Still, I’ll write it—Kon is no Hayao Miyazaki. Kon’s palette is thinner: he relies on an oppressive excess of dull, heavy browns and grays. The colors often fade blinkingly out and in within a scene for no discernible reason. The screenplay, co-written with Keiko Nobumoto, grafts urban grittiness onto slapstick chases, or attempts to. While I smiled at the prospect of a homeless drag queen serenading a squalling baby to the tune of “Climb Every Mountain,” most of the film doesn’t work. Kon and Nobumoto keep shifting tones and tossing plot curves until Tokyo Godfathers snarls up in its own endless twists.
The best moments involve Miyuki, an embittered, foul-mouthed adolescent runaway, and Aya Okamoto voices the character to perfection. Alone with the baby in a washroom, Miyuki, the most unsentimental of surrogate parents, consoles the infant—and herself—by saying, “I am sorry I spilled your food.” Later, the runaway and child end up at the apartment of a Latina who has a newborn of her own. Miyuki speaks no Spanish; the lady speaks no Japanese. Yet the women communicate through looking at photographs together. The encounter loosens up Miyuki’s reserve—she’s shaken by how moved she is. I wish that Kon gave us more moments like those. After that, the movie falls back into formulaic conventions: faked miracles, careening vehicles, and contrivances that feel lifted from failed television pilots. I know that Kon seeks a “breakout hit” to put him on the map in America; in tandem, I hope he makes at least one good film. – NPT