Sayonara
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Movie Reviews of Sayonara
Movie Review: A Two-Hanky Classic!
Summary: 4 Stars
There have been some comments in reviews around the net about the picture-postcard look of this film being a little hard to believe. But I can assure you, having lived in Japan during the years the film was made and released, that this is exactly what it looked like then. From the military scenes, the big city, religious shrines and parks, to the seedy canal village.
What's hard to believe of course, besides Brando's accent, is the almost magical ability of a boorish, and not so subtly chauvinistic character like Ace Gruver to, within a few days, bridge the immense cultural and societal gap between the "Ugly American" and the cloistered superstar Hana-Ogi, and in the first date get a commitment of eternal love from her! Still, the ethereal beauty and personality that Miiko Taka brings to the role makes this improbable love story just as believable as any star-crossed classic. It's a wonder that Taka didn't get nominated too.
One of my yardsticks for how classic a film really is relies on how impressed I was with it as a kid, and 50 years later finding out how good it still is, even after I now understand what it's really about, and how movies are really made.
Despite it's few silly drawbacks though, this is definitely a minimum two-hanky date flick for couples at any level of involvement.
Movie Review: Superior soap opera
Summary: 4 Stars
Sayonara has all the problems of 50s Scope blockbuster doorstop novel adaptations and Joshua Logan films both - slow pacing not the least of them - but still works despite it taking nearly an hour for the lovers to meet. But for once the soap operatics seem to be there to support the film's surprisingly daring criticism of the US Army's racist policies rather than its sole raison d'etre, and it's hard to imagine a major studio today making a mainstream big-budget picture with A-list stars about, say, American troops falling for nice Islamic girls. Brando is at his worst here, clearly bored with the part he plays up the Southern stereotype to such a simple downhome cliché that he comes across more like Steve Martin as the Jerk doing Elvis rather than a successful West Point career officer, but a strong supporting cast - an understated Red Buttons (unjustly slated by Pauline Kael for some reason), James Garner and Kent Smith - take up the slack, and MGM/UA's DVD is such a stunningly beautiful transfer that it's easy to get sucked into it. Shame about the impromptu press conference ending and Ricardo Montalban's ah-so turn as the world's tallest Kabuki actor.Movie Review: Good Movie, no doubt
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a nice love story, beautifully shot and acted well. Good movie, no doubt. However, I am really appalled by many reviews here that praise the social commentary of the film offhand, and deeply disturbed by the way a few sensibly critical reviews are rated as "not useful" by many users.
Yes, the movie is obviously meant to be anti-racist, but what it meant back in the 1950s was not much more than white men's right to non-white women. And regarding Asians, the argument was done by emphasizing the stereotype of submissive and pretty little oriental girls, more desirable than many white women who wanted a little more control over themselves. Asian males were either erased out of picture, or dehumanized, or played by white men in media, and nobody had any objections. That was as much as the 50s liberalism could go, and the film reflects it perfectly.
And now it's 2004, and I see so many presumably-white men here still practically saying "I'm tolerant and anti-racist because I admire/married/slept with Asian women." We seem to have made very little progress over half a century.
Movie Review: The Ugly American?
Summary: 4 Stars
Based on the novel by James Michener and directed by Joshua Logan (PICNIC) SAYONARA is a not very subtle account of American soldiers falling for and taking Japanese women for wives during the Korean War era. Marlon Brando in an Air Force Major who at the beginning of the film makes racist comments about Asians, only ultimately to fall in love with a Japanese woman. Alhough this film was probably on the cutting edge in 1957; it hasn't aged very well.
Of course Brando is really not bad in this movie-- he was nominated for an Oscar-- in spite of his strange Southern accent, just like the one he used in a later film REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE. He sounds like a Southerner with pebbles in his mouth. Red Buttons as an enlisted man in the Air Force who married a Japanese woman is quite good-- I believe he received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor-- actually better than Brando even.
One thing the movie has going for it is that is is beautifully filmed. The cinematography is not dated at all.
This film of course is worth seeing for another chance to watch Mr. Brando.
Movie Review: Star-Crossed Lovers in Post-War Japan
Summary: 4 Stars
Based on James Michener's best-selling novel, filmed and set in post-war Japan, this is an intimate character-driven story of miscegenation, racism, and the emerging relationship between America and Japan in the post-war era. Many of the customs explored here seem old-hat to us now, but were brand-new to Westerners back then: sushi, sake, kabuki theater etc.
Lovingly filmed in 50's Japan and starring an intense, accented Marlon Brando (playing a southern air force colonel from an old-line military family), the battle of accents reach epic proportions when Brando meets the great Japanese Kabuki star, played by none other than....Ricardo Montalban? That's some fine Japanese Corinthian leather!
Depite all that, this film unwinds beautifully and tragically, a serious exploration of important themes that, notwithstanding some dated elements, remains one of Brando's finest 50's efforts.