Dec 1

“The Great Passage” – Film Review from Australia’s 17th Japanese Film Festival

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The 17th Japanese Film Festival in Australia is now showing in Melbourne, the last major city on its national tour before wrapping up for the year. Eden Law (Fukushima JET 2010-2011, current member of JETAA NSW reviews some of the films on offer.

A Geek God

Japan’s official entry into the 2014 Oscar’s foreign film section might seem a rather strange choice, as its main overarching plot revolves around the 15-year compilation of a dictionary. Certainly, very few other countries would have made a film on such an apparently dry subject matter, but “The Great Passage” uses it as the basis to explore very Japanese concerns about hard work, teamwork, perseverance and discipline, which would have been implied by the actual translation of the Japanese title (“Assemble the Boats”, also the title of the prize-winning novel the movie is based on, by Shion Miura).

Beginning in the 1990’s, the dictionary department of a Tokyo publishing house, under the guidance of department-head Matsumoto-sensei (Go Kato), decides to embark on a grand project of collecting, documenting and eventually publishing a unique dictionary – one that would contain the contemporary lexicon of modern Japan. But due to the departure of its head editor Araki (Kaoru Kobayashi), they search urgently for a replacement, eventually finding Majime (Ryuhei Matsuda), a painfully shy, awkward (these days we would call him somewhat autistic) loner, but who is extremely exact in his mannerisms. Sensing an apt fit, Nishioka (Joe Odagiri) and Araki engineer Majime’s transfer as Araki’s replacement. And so begins a grand obsession for Majime, on several different levels.

“The Great Passage” is epic: not just in the time-frame depicted, or the nature of the dictionary work, but also in its focus. Director Yuya Ishii is not afraid to take the time to unfold the minutiae of what goes into compiling a dictionary, from fieldwork collection, cataloguing, cross-checking, multiple proofing and paper-quality scrutinising. Constantly, new words crop up, but the team patiently note and incorporate them into the ever evolving work, as technology, society and economy changes. Pretty much “all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-how-a-dictionary-is-made-but-wouldn’t-have-cared-to-ask”. On a larger scale, the compilation of the dictionary becomes a metaphor for life. The increasing number of foreign loanwords over the course of the compilation shows the exposure of Japanese society to the outside world over time, a truly, living, breathing project as envisioned by Matsumoto-sensei. Majime’s character development also happens in parallel with the dictionary, as he interacts more with his workmates, after coming to realise that a truly worthwhile enterprise requires the help and goodwill of others. Every aspect of his existence, for good or for bad, gets taken over by his work, as his budding romance with his landlady’s granddaughter Kaguya (Aoi Miyazaki) is good-naturedly encouraged and supported by the entire department as a way to come up with an authentic definition of “love”, to troubling dreams of drowning in a sea with floating pages.

Just like the film’s theme of teamwork, everyone’s performance helps to make this absorbing film, from Matsuda’s awkward Majime, who is at first unable to express his thoughts and feelings without resorting to reciting dictionary definitions, to Miyazaki’s expressive Aoi, as well as Odagiri’s brash Nishioka. Thanks to the cast, “The Great Passage” doesn’t drag, proving that an unhurried enterprise, much like the dictionary itself, can produce an excellent work.

The Great Passage (Fune wo Amu) directed by Yûya Ishii, released April 13 2013 in Japan, starring Ryûhei Matsuda, Kumiko Asô, Chizuru Ikewaki, Haru Kuroki, Aoi Miyazaki, Kaoru Kobayashi, Hiroko Isayama and Naoki Matayoshi.