SF Indiefest Report: The Hanging Garden Review!
Regular ScreenAnarchy-er Jungwhan Lah is patrolling the halls of the SF Indiefest for us this week and here he is with a detailed look at one of our most anticipated films of the year: Toshiaki Toyoda's Hanging Garden.
Japanese director Toshiaki Toyoda has made a name for himself through a trio of stylized genre pieces that place their emphasis on character development and dramatic tension. The drug-and-gangster film “Pornostar,” the disaffected youth film “Blue Spring,” and the escaped-convict drama “9 Souls,” all showcase Toyoda's ability to craft his own interpretations of genre standards while adding stylistic flourishes which solidify thematic concerns and contribute to overall visual impact. With his latest movie “Hanging Garden,” he confidently combines his love of characterization and stylized visuals to achieve an effortlessly engaging exploration of “people in Japan who don't have their feet on the ground” (as he stated in his post-screening comments); the end-result is a film that not only draws upon the best aspects of his former work, but builds upon them to create what is perhaps the most polished and inspired film of his career (thus far).
“Hanging Garden” is, at its core, a family drama. When the film opens, Toyoda presents the family in question—the Kyobashi's—as a singular unit who strictly adheres to one golden rule: all family members will always tell the truth to one another at all times, and no one will ever conceal anything. Furthermore, no subject is taboo, and an early scene at the dinner table where the daughter Mana asks her parents where she was conceived demonstrates this rule in full effect. While casual conversation about the location of the parents' sexual escapades can be freely discussed, critical aspects of the family dynamic and their ability to communicate with one another quickly come into doubt. As the narrative unfolds, the perspective shifts from character to character, and we quickly come to understand that the family rule is constantly broken because all of the family members, regardless of their outward veneer, are keeping secrets from each other.
Eriko, the family matriarch, works at a noodle stand, where she is verbally abused by her younger co-workers. At home, she prioritizes the family's sense of togetherness in order to combat her conflicted feelings regarding her own tumultuous childhood, defined primarily by her adversarial relationship with her currently-hospitalized mother, Satoko. Ko, the quiet son, spends all his waking hours with his headphones on full-blast, playing computer games and secretly fantasizing about his female tutor, Mina. Meanwhile, Takashi, the father, is having an affair with Mina, while seeking validation through her sexual domination. For their trysts, they frequent the “love hotel” called Wild Monkeys, which happens to be the location of Mana's aforementioned conception. Mana, Ko's older sister, also spends time at Wild Monkeys, ditching classes to go there and sleep with various boys. The Kyobashi family members' secret lives reflect upon their collective loneliness, yet ironically, it is their fake family togetherness that isolates them and prevents them from truly opening up to one another. As Satoko tells Eriko at one point, some things are better left unsaid, and some secrets you take to the grave. Does being a loving family unit necessitate total honesty at the expense of personal privacy?
As Toyoda poses this question to the audience, we become aware of the fact that the hypocritical nature of the family's non-adherence to their own rule is apparent to all of them; it is, however, the thing that they never openly discuss, and the film skillfully moves among the different characters so that we can learn everyone's individual perspective on the family and what is and is not shared. While the film bounces around the various characters' storylines, they intersect at some points and remain private at others. Toyoda expertly paces the narrative without relying on expository filler, and the audience is immediately able to identify and connect with each character's traits and concerns. It is a testament to Toyoda's sharp screenplay that he can establish such a variety of personalities without needing a significant amount of screen time to flesh out their differences. The film makes efficient use of its intimate character moments, during which the arc of each character becomes connectable to the others. In doing so, Toyoda suggests that despite the alienating effects of an impersonal and isolating society, the desire to seek out human connection is universal, and the individual traits that distinguish us from one another can ultimately become the connecting threads upon which actual and not just nominally honest communication can occur.
This concept is best represented by Eriko's attempts to navigate her past, where the root of her depression and need for control lie. Earlier in the film, her son warns her that her obsession with having no secrets clouds her view of reality; although she initially dismisses this idea, she slowly begins to recognize her own hypocrisy and inability to deal with the past. Eriko's OCD-like desire to construct and maintain the “perfect” family is clearly a manifestation of her drive to be the kind of mother she herself did not have. As the tension among the characters reaches its boiling point during a birthday / dinner party, everyone (including the grandmother and the tutor) begins exposing one another's “secrets” by openly talking about them for the first time. The dialogue-driven nature of the encounter feels like a scene from a stage play, and as it unfolds, the family's ungrounded and “rootless” nature is bared out in the open like the hanging plants on their balcony (hence, the title). In the wake of this exposure / blow-up, Eriko and her mother share a private conversation where she accuses Satoko of being a failure as a mother. Satoko responds by discussing a recurring dream she has been having based on a memory: a four-year-old Eriko will not share her ice cream with her mother, despite Satoko's pleas. Fed up, Satoko hits Eriko. We learn that over the years, Satoko's dream has begun to play out the memory with slight revisions, to the point where in recent dreams, the two of them no longer fight, but instead share the ice cream together happily. This discussion of using dreams to reconstruct and improve upon one's memories resonates with the films theme of what we hold on to in order to feel closer to others. Later, when Eriko questions her memories of the past, the film seems to question the transience of memory itself—how it alters our perceived notions of what is real, what we can recall, and whether or not we can self-heal through dreaming of better days.
Toyoda reinforces all of these concepts through the film's stunning visual imagery. Beginning with the opening sequence, a tracking shot slowly moves through Eriko's balcony mini-garden, while the camera utilizes a back-and-forth “hanging-basket-style” swaying motion that is almost vertigo-inducing when sitting near the front of the theatre (as I was). The camera then does a snap-pullback to reveal the housing project complex where the Kyobashi family lives, while maintaining the swaying motion. The movement itself is representative of the family's unstable situation, but the pullback drives the point home on a more societal level. Indeed, Toyoda's examination of a “normal” Japanese family uses the Kyobashis as a microcosm for the lack of a stable standard among the traditional family unit. The image of the housing project from a distance is repeated in Ko's video game, where he is able to move the building around on his computer monitor, mirroring his attempt to break the static nature of his restrictive family environment.
As in earlier films, Toyoda continues to venture into surrealist territory by using fantasy sequences to depict nightmarish or otherwise striking imagery. A Kubrick-like blood waterfall flowing down a staircase, a vicious fork-stabbing fantasy with copious blood spray and focus-shifting glass-vision fracturing, flashback memories depicting multiple versions of reality—all of these sequences successfully incorporate style into the film's narrative drive, and feel organic to the material instead of used as flashiness to cover up for lack of story. In the film's climactic moment, when Eriko experiences a screaming catharsis in her garden, its a scene that visually recalls both “Carrie” and “Blood Rain,” while relying heavily on color and symbolism to draw its thematic power a la the end of “Sympathy For Lady Vengeance.” It's an earned release for the emotionally burdened head of the Kyobashi family, and Toyoda avoids easy answers by injecting a sense of ambiguity into Eriko's memory navigation and realizations about her past.
But “Hanging Garden” isn't all family conflict and character angst; we also get drunken facial vomiting, a false STD accusation, a recurring song about nipple-biting, and symbolic pink teddy bears. The film finds a type of natural humor in these moments, which don't feel out of place amidst all the family drama. In fact, the film's humorous moments (of which there are many) give the character relationships additional weight and realism in the face of the movie's varying bizarre or imagined scenarios. This combination of humor, surrealism, and family relationships is reminiscent of “Taste of Tea,” and like that film, “Hanging Garden” expertly achieves a delicate balance between all of these elements and uses them to create a greater whole.
We've all seen films deal with the difficulties of family life before, but Toyoda's inquiry into the fragility of human connection and the societal expectations regarding love and familial obligation avoids clichés while carving out its own niche in the genre. This type of examination and deconstruction of the Japanese family unit, along with the film's deliberate pacing, might not click with everyone's sensibilities. But for fans of Toyoda, he's at the top of his game here with his most balanced film to date. If this is any indication of the direction that Toyoda plans to take his future work, then we're all in for a treat, and I know I'm not alone when I say that I can't wait to see what he does next. Biker gang movie, please...
