Black Gate

My first scheduled film at Fantasia 2020 was Special Actors (Supesharu Akutâzu, スペシャルアクターズ), written and directed by Shinichiro Ueda. I loved Ueda’s previous film, 2018’s One Cut of the Dead (Kamera wo tomeruna!, カメラを止めるな！), and this is his first solo feature since; he co-directed 2019’s Aesop’s Game (Isoppu no Omou Tsubo, イソップの思うツボ), and this year posted a special short film follow-up to One Cut on YouTube. Special Actors turned out to be very different from One Cut while still dealing with themes of storytelling and acting and family — and doing something as structurally surprising as One Cut in a completely different way.

Kazuto (Kazuto Osawa) is a failing actor with a medical condition that causes him to faint when nervous; a lucky encounter with his brother Hiroki (Hiroki Kono), who he hasn’t seen for years, leads him to join Hiroki’s acting company, Special Actors. Rather than perform onstage, the Special Actors play roles in real life: they can be hired as extra mourners at a funeral, or to sit in the audience at the premier of a comic movie and laugh wildly. They will also do more elaborate things, like stage a fight with a guy so he can look tough in front of a girl he wants to impress, or pretend to be the new lover of a woman trying to break up with her abusive boyfriend.

In other words, the Special Actors stage scenarios to help people live their lives. They’re a troupe of weirdos complete with acting coach and scriptwriter, and despite his self-doubts Kazuto fits right in. Then a young woman, Miyu (Yumi Ogawa), comes to the Actors with a tricky request: her sister has joined a cult, who are working on getting her to turn over the family inn. Can the Special Actors expose the cult’s lies and save the inn?

The answer to that question of course involves a series of wild schemes, and schemes inside schemes. Yet this movie avoids frantic zaniness in favour of a constant but relaxed pace. There’s some mugging, but nothing extreme. Jokes come quickly, and build to appropriately chaotic scenes; still, as a whole the film’s anything but manic. There’s a kind of humanity to it that counterbalances the contrivances of the plot and its various twists and contortions.

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Most of the movies I want to see at Fantasia 2020 play at a scheduled time, but quite a few are available on demand for the next two weeks. One of those struck me as a good place to start this year’s unusual Fantasia-from-home: Justin McConnell’s documentary Clapboard Jungle. It’s about the process of putting a film together, focussing not so much on the technical details of directing but the much longer struggle to find financing.

McConnell’s previous film Lifechanger is the central case study for Clapboard Jungle. That movie played at Fantasia in 2018 (I thought it was a success, despite a few quibbles about plotting and concept), so I knew going in there’d be at least a glimpse of the familiar Hall and De Sève Theatres. I got that, and the sight of a few familiar festival faces. More important, I also got an intriguing documentary that showed the modern film industry from an unusual angle.

The movie’s structured around a video diary McConnell started in 2014, when he set out to make a new film. The movie he ended up making was not the movie he then expected to make, and Clapboard Jungle does a good job following the twists and turns that led him to Lifechanger. The loose narrative works because it gives McConnell a strong frame into which he fits interview snippets with filmmakers, producers, film festival organisers, and other industry people.

These snippets are well-chosen, illustrating the points McConnell wants to make. And they’re edited tightly, giving the film a fast pace, presenting a lot of information and ideas very quickly. McConnell starts with autobiographical material to set up why and how he got into film, but from there keeps a good balance between his personal story and the interviews that make up the larger part of Clapboard Jungle. He’s able to use the structure of the diary and the interviews to maintain a sense of forward narrative momentum while showing the process of arranging financing for a movie, which the film makes clear is a long, tedious, repetitive slog. As well, beyond documenting the stalls and reversals and occasional leap forward of the development process, he also shows himself slowly learning the ropes — going to film festivals and markets, for example. We have the feeling of learning about the process at the same time he does, which gives the documentary a needed sense of progress.

The heart of the film is this long struggle to set up a project, showing by example how a film comes to be — or, more usually, does not come to be. It’s a reminder that every film I or you watch, at Fantasia or elsewhere, beat the odds just by coming into existence. McConnell shows us what those odds really are. It’s a bracing look at a side of the industry that rarely comes into focus for outsiders.

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This week we’re here to praise Olivia de Havilland, the great British/American screen actor who passed away last month at the age of 102. De Havilland was remarkable, not just for her stunning beauty, but for her sharp wits and indomitable spirit, all of which she brought to bear in nearly every performance. She was Hollywood’s first Queen of the Swashbucklers thanks to her defining roles in Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood, which launched her career and that of her co-star Errol Flynn into the stratosphere. (De Havilland’s reign was followed by that of Maureen O’Hara, but we’ll talk about her another day).

No matter how many times you’ve seen Blood or Robin Hood, you can’t help but delight in de Havilland’s performances as Arabella Bishop and Maid Marian. She’s far more than a mere attractive love interest for the hero, especially in the latter role, where she risks her life to save Robin Hood and the Saxons. Capsule reviews of those two films follow, and I’ll warn you in advance, they’re unapologetic raves. I’ve added a review of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, a lesser film in which de Havilland was third billed after Bette Davis and Flynn but which nonetheless has points of interest. Enjoy!

Captain Blood

Rating: ***** (Essential)
Origin: USA, 1935
Director: Michael Curtiz
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

After the success of swashbucklers Treasure Island and The Count of Monte Cristo, Warners decided to go all-in on a remake of Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood. (There’d been a silent version in 1924, now lost.) The stars they initially had in mind for the leads bowed out, and in the end the studio took a huge risk and cast two complete unknowns: Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Luckily, they were both excellent, ideal for the roles — and even better, they had great on-screen chemistry together, so good they were paired seven more times in the next ten years. The director’s chair went to studio veteran Michael Curtiz, who in 1938 would co-direct another swashbuckling essential, The Adventures of Robin Hood, before his career pinnacle helming Casablanca. Add in Basil Rathbone as the villain, supported by a slate of the best character actors in Hollywood, with a stirring soundtrack by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and you have the makings of a true classic.

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I would happily watch a couple of seasons of this man and his odd companions.

It’s no good. I’m still obsessing about the anime adaptation of Inuysasha. Specifically, about Sesshomaru as a character. He’s just so interesting. I’ve had some time to think about why I find Lord Shesshomaru such an interesting character to me, and I think it comes down to one thing.

Lord Sesshomaru is full of contradictions.

The elder to two brothers, and the only full-blooded demon of the pair, Sesshomaru appears to despise his younger half-brother, Inuyasha. Throughout the show, he stands opposed to Inuyasha, competing against him to acquire his father’s heirloom sword; Tessaiga. In their first battle over the sword, they exchange serious blows. Sesshomaru doesn’t hold back. The fight ends when Inuyasha cleaves his left arm off. He is, strangely, not particularly peeved about that, and seems to accept the outcome of that fight (even going so far as to reject his arm when it’s offered to him to reattach). The brothers clash frequently throughout the series, mostly over the sword. Several times, he mentions he does not consider Inuyasha his brother. Yet, he will go on to save Inuyasha from harm more than once, as big brothers sometimes do. He even seems to be quietly rooting for Inuysasha to prove himself worthy, while simultaneously trying to stop his little brother from advancing. This is never quite so apparent than when Inuyasha’s sword absorbs the power Sesshomaru himself had spent considerable time honing. Sesshomaru’s internal desire seems to be a powerful will to see Inuyasha prove himself as the rightful master of their father’s sword, while his external actions are by all accounts, designed to stop him from doing so. This contradiction – the brother who both disdains but loves his young brother — makes him fascinating.

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