MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Discarnates’ Taps Common Desire

“The Discarnates” (Little Tokyo Cinema 1) connects with our deepest longings in a remarkably potent fashion. Who, after all, has not yearned for a reunion with long-gone loved ones? The challenge, of course, is to make such an encounter convincing and to give it some larger purpose. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi accomplishes this and more in his graceful, mysterious heart-tugging fantasy of the supernatural, which Shinichi Ichikawa adapted from Taichi Yamada’s novel.

Harada (Morio Kazama) is a dapper, successful, 40-year-old writer of TV soap operas. He lives alone in a handsome, sleekly modern flat in a building in which all but one of the other apartments have been converted to offices.

One night Kei (Yuko Natori), a beautiful but distraught young woman--and his sole neighbor--knocks on his door and introduces herself, seeking company and clutching a bottle of champagne. Harada, tired from a long day, dismisses her but subsequently succumbs to her charms. On another night Harada boards a subway, on a seemingly abandoned line, and ends up in Asakusa, Tokyo’s ancient and colorful amusement and shopping district, where he was born.

In an old vaudeville theater he encounters his father (Tsurutaro Kataoka), who takes him home, where his mother (Kumiko Akiyoshi) insists he stay for dinner. The only catch is that Harada’s parents were killed in an accident when he was only 12.

Obayashi makes shrewd use of settings and of a particularly haunting theme from “Madame Butterfly.” Harada’s childhood home is as idealized as his parents are, as it is as warm as his apartment is cold in its shades of gray. His young parents are a humble, carefree couple devoted to each other and to their only son. They see him as he was as a child and are proud of his success as an adult, and do not see him as the middle-age man he has become, a self-absorbed, competitive striver who has discarded his wife and neglected his own son. At heart, “The Discarnates,” which takes its title from an archaic word meaning “stripped of flesh,” is a cautionary tale with which many can easily identify.

So firm is Obayashi’s control that he can get away with both the sentimental and the bizarre. Harada is splendid as a man transformed by experiences as mind-boggling as those James Stewart underwent in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The rest of the cast is equally satisfying. You may well come away from “The Discarnates” (Times-rated Mature for some sex and for some sequences too intense for youngsters) surprised by the intensity of its emotional impact.

The Tora-san Festival continues at the Little Tokyo Cinema 2 with “Tora-san and a Lord” and “Tora-san Carry On!”