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-You state that this film is ‘a collective improvisation’. Can you explain
more about your method?
I am not a very inventive person, not good in creating stories or plots.
So I asked the people who were interested in my project to bring in their
own stories. Then using them as a basis, we mixed the protagonists from
each story to observe what would happen. It was not that we were going
to use the stories themselves. What I needed was a series of characters,
and they should be based on the participants, the actors themselves because
they will serve as a basis of the improvisation process. But it is very
difficult for people to tell who he/she really is. I believe the best way
to understand someone is to listen to him/her telling his/her stories and
experiences. One can observe a lot of things through the way they tell
stories. So what we first did was to discuss the characters, asking questions,
pointing out contradictions, etc.
 The idea of collective improvisation comes from the American independents
of the 60’s-70’s, in my case especially from Robert Kramer and ‘Newsreel’;
I love Ice and Milestones, because they really capture the certain feels
of the era, and what does it mean to be young. Paul Morrissey also experimented
on that with his early films done at Andy Warhol’s Factory. Also, Nicholas
Ray at the end of his life was working on a collective improvisation project
with his students called We Can’t Go Home Again, from which we ended up
borrowing the title. Ray never completed that film and I never saw it.
Though I admire very much Ray’s works, I think I’m more influenced by Robert
Kramer on this one.
I knew Robert well. I used to be a critic back then, and he proposed that
we should make a film together in Japan, which never happened as he suddenly
passed away in 99. He was one of the people who pushed me to move from
film criticism to film making, and once told me that when he was young,
everybody was making movies on the weekends but nobody was doing that any
more, when the DV has become far more accessible than the 16 mm cameras
back then. The conversations with Robert have a lot to do with me ending
up making this film; for instance, this is a typical “weekend filmmaking”
movie, which I think was a reasonable way to do it, since nobody would
finance a project which is a huge gamble, that nobody could know how it
will turn out. Also, I chose this title, though borrowed from Ray, because
Robert and I talked a lot about the idea of ‘home’.
-Is this film an attempt to mix fiction and documentary? Do improvisations
come from your documentary background?
No. True that I made a few documentaries before, and it’s also true that
this film tries to incorporate as much as possible details of the reality,
for instance, of the streets, but improvisation has nothing to do with
documentary. Though I never wrote any scenes, we carefully composed,
even choreographed quite a few of them. It’s just that we didn’t use
pre-written
stuffs, and we had no idea how the stories would develop until we actually
worked with our bodies and cameras. Everything was decided on the set,
but nevertheless always with conscious decisions, which are made in a
very organic manner.
 I think people have a misconception about improvisation in films. Improvisation
doesn’t mean we shoot accidental happenings in front of the camera. We
decide on certain situation, we improvise what will happen. Very often
we rehearse, we repeat, we try several options, we invent, until it becomes
satisfactory. I had no direct control on what each person will say or
do; it’s up to the actors. My first job as the director-cinematographer
is
to be open-minded, to observe carefully and find what is really interesting,
and figure out how I can best record that as image. Nevertheless I can
suggest not to repeat certain things that I felt fake, or if the scene
becomes too long and boring. Also, I often told faster or slower, giving
directions where to stand, to go to the right, or to the left, for the
sake of framing, making visually more interesting. That was important
because from early on I had decided on the long takes.
-Why the long takes?
Part of the reason is purely technical. For sure we repeated the same
scenes; most of the scenes you see in the movie are fifth or sixth
takes, but we
didn’t repeat the same thing. With each take, the scene goes through
evolutions as the actors reach better understanding of the situation
and better grasp
of the rhythm. They start picking up whatever coincidences that happen
during the take, and use them to enrich the scene. It’s not very easy
to inter-cut those different takes, and I would have lost a lot of
the subtle
nuances. Also, with a long continuous take, the actors get more concentrated
and attentive since you cannot mess it up in the middle, and they ultimately
become more sensitive.
Improvisation is an organic process, so a long take that captures a
scene as a whole was a logical choice. Especially on public places
like streets,
parks, etc., we didn’t have any control on the background. It’s more
the background influencing what we do. I think it also emphasizes the
urban
feel; the surroundings ignore totally what is happening to the individuals.
People don’t have the time to care, or even to notice a girl being
followed by a stalker.
 I
wanted that the camera should be observing the characters as a whole,
as well as the environment that had a lot to do with how they behave.
It’s a bit like my camera was simulating a surveillance camera that
we see so
many in a place like Tokyo. I think Coppola experimented a similar
thing with The Conversation, and even more so in The Godfather Part
II; the
camera doesn’t seem to be serving the narrative in a melodramatic manner.
It is
primarily just photographing the situation as a whole. We the audience
should be more involved to really look at the picture, and withdraw
our own interpretations. What the camera does is to show all the necessary
elements to understand the characters, but restricting to itself--and
therefore to the audience--the primitive melodramatic desire to identify
with a character.
Maybe it requires some patience from the audience, but ultimately,
I
think this attitude would allow a better understanding of human behaviors.
Though it was not my original intention, I think the long takes also
has a lot to do with the fact that, finally, the film is also dealing
with
the cinematic medium itself: What is cinema? What is film narrative?
And what does it mean to be ‘realistic’ in movies? It became an important
sub-text
to this movie. Bertrand Tavernier when he saw the first rough cut called
it “a fable about creation”.
-That was not intended?
At least, not from my part! Most of my previous documentaries were
about filmmakers and filmmaking －-a natural course for an ex-critic
filmmaker
to take, I suppose－-, and I was sort of fed up with films about film.
Or in fact, I always tried to avoid that the subject of my documentaries
would
be about films. The two ‘making-of’ docs I made for Amos Gitai, for
instance, are not at all about the making of the films, but about
Israelis and
their country.
But then, many of the young people who participated and invested
themselves through the characters were interested in cinema. Actually,
some of
them are film students. And the publishing company you see in the
film, ‘Film
Art Publishing’ is a company I used to write for as a critic. Katsunori
Ito who plays the boss actually used to be my editor. We needed
a place that the girl, Mao, works, and the young boy, Yushin works
part-time.
So Kastunori proposed that we could use the office for the weekends.
It was
actually a good choice since I think it served the actors to get
more into the characters.
Then, Mao Torii who plays the young editor got an idea that her character
wants to do a book on acting; in the course of shooting, she really
got interesting in acting, so she just poured her interests into
her character.
She forced me to play that annoying film critic! I have to confess
I was so nervous to act, I didn’t realize what she was doing until
we shot
that
fabulous telephone scene, a single fix shot that lasts for 4 minutes
and a half. I love that scene because it’s so minimalist, and also,
in her
improvised lines, she in fact managed to explain the entire game
of this improvisation process. Thanks to her the film became some
sort
of a hall
of mirrors, a film that reflects the process of its own creation.
-What about the references to films that you use so frequently?
Once again that cannot be avoided since we had several characters working
in a publishing house specializing in books on film. It’s not that
I wanted to do a series of homage a` la ‘nouvelle vague’. It’s just
that
movies
became one of the main subjects of their conversation. So, most of
them are treated more or less as gags. I think I particularly owe
an apology
to Theo Angelopoulos’ fans…
-How about Fritz Lang’s M?
M is a great movie. Though the way we worked was the total opposite
to how Fritz Lang worked (every scenes carefully written and
designed beforehand),
there are certain attitudes obviously influenced by M, including
to be aware that the camera is a machine and one can never beat
the real
thing;
again the camera as an observation device. Cinema can be a strong
tool to analyze the psyche of a society, M being a great example,
and now
I’m so happy that our film will be premiered in Berlin where
M and the Mabuse
films take place. But I once omitted that scene because I’m so
bad I cannot stand watching myself! Then Tavernier pointed out how
important
that scene
was to the structure of the entire thing, so I reluctantly put
it back. I still don't like myself in it, though…
-Are the actors really non-professionals?
 All
except two have never acted even in a school play! So it required
patience from everybody, but once things start rolling, it’s
okay. We started to
shoot in April, but the earliest footage that remained in the
final cut is from June. The majority of the scenes are shot after
August.
Actually,
all the scenes in the publishing house were shot after that Mao
and Tetsuya Yamada her stalker did that reverse scene; when Mao’s
character
starts
her revenge against her nemesis. It was a difficult scene and
I had to put tremendous pressure just to get that performance out
of her.
After
that, she changed totally, so I could not use any of the things
with her that we shot before. But that was wonderful.
-So you didn’t shoot chronologically?
I know that it’s the cardinal rule in filmmaking: if you want to
have good performances, you must shoot in continuity as much
as possible. I initially
thought I had to follow the rule, but eventually dropped that
textbook attitude. The first scene you see is actually the last scene
we shot,
more than a year after we started shooting.
-You mentioned you pressured your actress. Were you a nice director to
your young non-professional actors?
That, you have to ask them! Maybe I must have been very harsh some
times… In most cases I encouraged their freedom, and I didn’t
give any psychological
directions or suggest any motivation of the scene. That would
have been out of the rules of this particular game, besides I also
know
that neither
John Ford nor Mizoguchi had ever gave any psychological directions
to the actors. I’ve heard Manoel de Oliveira never does that
either. I think
that
if an actor cannot find his/her motivation him/herself, then
you don’t get a good performance. On the other hand, cinema is also
about
faking
emotions. You make someone cry and put him in a certain context,
then the reason why he is crying is because of that narrative
context. The
audience
would never know that it was actually because the director
bullied that actor!
-The city of Tokyo plays an important part in the film…
Absolutely. The only condition I imposed to the participants was
that whatever story they would bring has to take place in this
huge urbanity.
Because
it was going to be a weekend-filmmaking process, we wouldn’t
have the time to go outside the city. Besides, this huge urbanity
of 13
million
inhabitants
is an ideal place where several individuals who seemingly have
nothing to do with each other can cross, or even meet, create relations.
 I don’t think Japanese cinema in general has really dealt with
this capital, except for some pre-war silent films, and Tokyo
Story in
which Ozu managed
to explain what Tokyo is beautifully, without showing the city
itself! I always wanted to make a film about Tokyo, and what
does it mean
to live in this metropolis; to capture the vitality, the energy
of the
huge mass
of people living here, in spite of the loneliness, the alienations
that one has to feel, that we basically live surrounded by strangers.
70%
of the people come from somewhere else--from all over Japan,
and now from
all over Asia. I grew up here except for some years abroad, but
my parents come from Kobe and Hiroshima. And since nostalgia
is very
much amplified
in today’s media, Tokyo is basically seen as either a glamorous
(but ultimately fake) place, or a place of alienation, a place
one cannot
feel at home,
since ‘home’ is somewhere else. Japanese people in general are
very attached to those nostalgic identities, like my father who
lives
here for more
than 40 years still speaks in his Kobe dialect when within the
family and friends.
-Hence the title “We can’t go home”?
Yes. As I said I used to discuss a lot about the idea of ‘home’ with
Robert Kramer, who was born in New York but based in Europe for
the last 20-30
years of his life, and who was more attached to Vietnam than
both the US and Europe. For instance, in his Doc’s Kingdom, the American
doctor
living
in Portugal is asked by his son “Won’t you go back home?” and
his
reply is “Home? This is my home!” That’s where the title actually
comes from.
In my case, I grew up partially in Paris, and don’t have any
attachment to a particular ‘home’ either.
In today’s world, many people are displaced and cut off from
their ethnic/cultural/religious /national roots. Particularly
in big cities
like Tokyo, Berlin, New York,
Paris, Taipei, Tel Aviv... Tokyo and Berlin don’t have too many
obvious historical roots on its surface either, as they are relatively
new
cities, and were once destroyed by the war. In case of Tokyo,
twice; the big
earthquake in 1923, then the bombardments in 45. There are some
reminiscent, traces
of the past, and historical monuments, but not like in Paris
where the entire city is still very much 18th-19th century. These
are the
places
for displaced, de´racine´ people, which is often taken as something
negative, but not for me.
-You mean, it’s a place where you’re free, a place to realize one’s dream?
 No, no. Urbanities certainly involve a lot of problems, and life is
not easy. Tokyo is a safer city compared to others, but still
it’s a jungle.
I certainly don’t want to glamorize big cities like in that song
New York, New York. I suppose there are more opportunities than
in regional
communities,
but still, success is very limited. It’s actually one of the
themes of our film; one of the stories initially submitted was about
a girl
realizing
her dream to become an artist. Of course, that story doesn’t
have its place in this film. It might be turned into a story about
what
does
it take to
realize one’s dream, the personal sacrifices, the competition,
etc. But we thought that’s too masturbatory, lamenting on oneself by
blaming
the
others, the society, the system, etc. I myself am in that situation,
and so are all of the young people who participated. It’s too
easy to blame
the others.
But nevertheless, the theme of “realizing one’s dream” is important,
like one of the most popular pop-music bands in Japan today is
called Dreams
Come True. So we started to take another point of view to the
question, and that’s really a fruit of collective improvisation.
“Why we chase
a ‘dream’?” In another word, “Who am I to be obsessed with this
‘dream’?” This again goes back to the idea of ‘home’, of the
place you belong
to, of the question of identity.
-What do you mean by that?
Is it a very Japanese thing? I don’t know, but it seems to me that,
for instance, when you dream of becoming an artist, a very big
part of that
dream is to be accepted in the ‘artistic milieu’. It’s again
the idea of the place where you belong. Or when you dream to become
a
filmmaker,
you
are attracted to the glamour of Film Festivals, or the Oscars,
or to be part of the ‘film world’. Of course I’m very happy to be
selected
for the
Berlinale, but the bottom line is, you do what you can do to
make a
movie, and it’s with the work you believe in and you are able
to do that you
get acknowledged, if you’re lucky enough so that the film turns
out good. The
kind of movies I’m interested in to do are huge gambles, and
one can’t win the game if you are thinking like, “I wanna go to Berlin
so I make
this kind of ‘festival-friendly’ movie.”
Of course you need a certain zest, passion, even ambition, but
you have to be extremely sober about yourself, to become aware
of what
you are
really interested in, and what you are really able to do. You
can’t achieve that
just by your own, either.
-As the protagonists of this film find out, at the end.
Yes. But once again, I didn’t create that development in the film;
they did. I just saw that possibility in what they were doing,
and found the
ending. Maybe the last scene is the only scene that comes from
myself, but the story was already pointing at that ending; the only
rational
conclusion to the improvisations we made.
 To
come back to the question of urbanity, being displaced, surrounded
by thousands of strangers, I think that existence, once you become
aware of
it, gives a modern and sober option about your identity. You
don’t have the historical heritages to which you have to live
up with.
You don’t
have the parents that protect you, who encourage you all the
time, but you are
also free from ideas such as “I want to be successful then my
parents will be happy”. You’re on your own, and since there are
so many people,
you
can meet someone just by chance, and create a relation from scratch,
not because that person is a long-time neighbor, a family friend
or a relative.
I think this is a great human possibility. ‘Home’ is not somewhere
you can go back anymore, but this place, the city, can be the
place where
you really belong to.
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