Supermarket Woman Film Review

     Supermarket Woman, directed by Itami Juzo, is a charming film about consumerism, food, small business vs. big business, and the importance of ethics in owning and running a business.  It tells the story of Goro, the kind, widowed owner of “Honest Goro”, a small supermarket with a lot of potential but is held back by sloppy caretaking and stubborn ideals.  But when Goro runs into an old friend from grade school, Hanako, his fortune is soon to change. Hanako is a widowed housewife with a wealth of knowledge about supermarkets and how to run them effectively and fairly.  When a rival supermarket called “Bargains Galore”, that sells poor-quality products at low prices, opens nearby and threatens to put Goro out of business, Goro asks Hanako for help in improving his store.  Together they evaluate every aspect of the store.  In the face of big business owners trying to buy him out, Goro is forced to change his stingy ways.

     Goro’s store undergoes changes from making respectable rice balls with real roe, to packing lunch boxes with fresh food instead of yesterday’s leftovers.  Bargains Galore wants to buy them out, including all of their workers, some of whom (the “pro” chefs in the back) disagree with the changes Hanako and the boss have instigated and go behind his back to make deals with Bargains Galore.  Our two protagonists have until New Years to save their store otherwise they’ll be sold to Galore.

     While critiquing the consumer society in Japan and the danger of big businesses, Supermarket Woman maintains its humor and excitement.  For being a film about a supermarket, a typically humdrum setting, it’s still a fun movie to watch and surprisingly funny.  A quote on the DVD cover from Itami sums this idea up nicely: “I don’t want to make difficult movies.  I want to make interesting movies about difficult subjects… I make movies to get the Japanese to look in the mirror.”  Not only does Supermarket Woman make you think about the consumer, but also about the woman’s role as housewife and the skill that comes with it that seems to be overlooked; but also the ideologies of women in Japan which can be seen in many of Itami’s films. 

     Since we’re talking about food and women in relation to this film and Itami, of course we have to talk about Tampopo.  These two films showcase food as an important part of Japanese culture and in our lives in general.  Tampopo’s narrative style is post-modern, using subplots and main plots to connect its themes and messages.  Both films follow a pair of characters, character A with a problem and character B with the solution which involves training and teaching character A.  One difference however is in Tampopo, Goro (conveniently named the same in both films) trains Tampopo the art of noodle making and running a successful noodle shop.  The potential is there along and Goro helps Tampopo fulfill it.  In Supermarket Woman, Goro seems remarkably more helpless.  We see him coping with the death of his wife by drinking and sleeping a lot. Here, Hanako is the heroine who steps in with her wit and knowledge to save the day by bringing out the good in Goro.  This being said, due to the ideologies of women in Japan, both movie’s female protagonists have moments of intense dependence on their male counterpart.  This is something I’ve noticed in a lot of the films we’ve watched over the semester.

     Another example of this in Supermarket Woman is the romance and flirtation.  The pair have an interesting relationship, both having lost their spouses early.  Hanako makes it clear that she’s not interested in Goro but there is obviously a connection between them.  Hanako often teases Goro and behaves in a grade-school-buddy type of manner.  Later on in the film though, Hanako’s reasons for rejecting his flirtatious offers become less focused on her feelings toward Goro and more about how their relationship would be received by the other workers.  Hanako ends up in bed with Goro, in a strange obligatory sex scene, and she can’t take him seriously.  The way the film continues leads the viewer to believe that they weren’t intimate with one another.  Even though she denies him, there’s still an unsettling feeling of her dependence on Goro. Hanako mentions the idea of “freshness” or what I interpret as purity in some sense; that a woman’s body is well kept and “good” by some perverted standard so long as she is married and having sex with her partner regularly.  If not, like in Hanako’s case, she may be deemed “unfresh”.  Hence the worry, embarrassment and shyness she expresses in these scenes.

     Goro is presented in a good light, even though he has obvious undesirable traits.  He originally sees no harm in repacking and selling old meat and physically makes a move on Hanako while she’s praying to his wife’s memory. But, he learns and grows and stays true to the name of his store, so he’s not perceived in such a bad light. He’s like a helpless puppy and the audience can’t say no to that face.  Despite this obvious dependence on Hanako, Goro is still above her.  This patriarchal dominance, as seen through Hanako’s dependence on him, is more prevalent, say, in Tampopo but is especially clear in the flirtatious scenes between Hanako and Goro.  After he rescues her from a runaway freezer truck (from a scene I’ll discuss later), he warms up her unconscious body with his and gives her a bath.  When she wakes up, he laughs and tells her she shouldn’t have worried about her “freshness”, saying it was “not as bad as she thought”.  Not only is this creepy, but it shows the overt sexism and unfairness in ideologies and overall dichotomy of genders.

     One scene I thought was particularly entertaining and well-done was the chase scene.  Hanako discovers that the meat dealer is colluding with the main butcher and stealing the expensive Kobe beef.  She and Goro are dressed in ridiculous Christmas outfits so Hanako spends the whole scene chasing the thief around the store in a large penguin suit.  The music accompanies the action in a great way by adding to the dramatics and almost slap-stick humor.  Like many good directors, Itami subtly ties together bits of the plot.  In this scene in particular, Hanako uses the trolley to stop the thief.  These trolleys are unused by the store but were bought by Goro in hopes that the kitchen could be set up in assembly line fashion but to no avail.  This scene also vaguely reminded me of the old woman who squeezed the food in Tampopo.  It’s a hysterical chase scene, and funny enough the store clerk is played by the same actor who plays Goro in Supermarket Woman!

                                              

     This scene is just another example of one of the many times in which Itami uses humor and energy to draw in the audience in order to achieve his goal of getting viewers to think about the issue he’s addressing.  The events in this film are absurd and often silly, though not necessarily unrealistic.

This Itami film, though not as notably famous as Tampopo or A Taxing Woman, was and is important and relevant to Japanese society and many others as well.  During this time in Japan (1996), Japan continued to be influenced by the west.  Commercialism and consumerism were inflating and like many other places, dealt with the struggle between small, locally owned business and chains or corporations.  As a post-modern director, Itami constantly tried to get his audience to reflect on themselves and the power they have to do right in Japanese society.

     One successful tactic Itami uses to reach his audience in this way is close-ups.  Camera work in general is a subtle way of provoking emotion from the audience or invoking moods and ideas into a scene even after it has been shot.  These close-ups are frequent and often occur when it concerns how a fair supermarket should be run and how they should behave.  To me, these are Itami’s feelings directly voiced to the audience.  Yes, in the film Hanako is literally speaking to her fellow employees but she’s addressing the Japanese audience at the time, now, and all of us.  One could even argue that Goro represents all of us.  Even if we’re not exactly helpless, Hanako is there to guide us down a morally fair, ethical and successful path to fight the corruption.

     Supermarket Woman is a brilliantly crafted film that provokes thought from the audience and critiques consumerism in a timeless way.  I can see why it’s not as popular as some of Itami’s other films, as it is less conventionally exciting and arguably slower.  This being said, it is a very interesting film even in pair with Tampopo and sends its director’s message across in an extremely effective way. 

Sansho the Bailiff: Scene Analysis

Shot 1: An outdoor master shot of an old woman lying on the ground in the center of the shot and a young woman entering carrying branches from the left.  The older woman’s hands are clasped on her stomach and her feet are not visible due to a stone Buddha sculpture in the foreground.  There are three other Buddha sculptures in the shot: one directly to the left of the younger woman after she enters, one at the older lying woman’s head (similar to a gravestone) and one in the background between the grave-looking one and a tree curved into the center of the shot. Also in the background is a small sculpture of differently-sized and shaped stone pieces on top of one another.  Behind this a man is sitting and holding a long stick.  Tree leaves cover most of the top of the frame and there is the side of a rocky cliff that acts as the back wall directly across from the camera.  During this entire shot, the camera maintains one position at about height-level with the young woman.  However, the camera seems to bob up and down slightly, mimicking the breeze in the leaves.  The young woman enters from the left side of the frame, carrying two large branches.  She crouches slightly to rest one of the branches on the ground next to old woman while she leans the other against the curved tree over the woman.  The young woman then stands, looks down at the old woman then faces toward the man and says “My brother will do the rest.”  The young woman turns away from the camera and walks at an angle towards the back center of the shot, towards the guard who, noticing her approach begins to stand up.  Mizoguchi cuts on these actions to:

Shot 2: A full-body shot of the man holding his stick linked to the previous shot by an eye-line match between the man’s gaze and the direction the young woman was coming from.  The man is slightly above eye-level and is in the very center of the shot.  To his left is the stone-shapes sculpture which is far enough in the foreground to be of equal height as the guard.  Behind him is the cliff-side from the previous shot and in the left of the foreground is the stone-shapes sculpture sitting on a pile of different rocks.  In the right foreground are bushes of grass.  The woman enters from the left and continues to walk toward the man.  Turning to face the woman, he says “What?” His knees are bent and he is already fully standing up by the time the woman enters the frame.  As she crosses to the right of the man, she says “Thank you for waiting. My brother will handle the rest. Let’s go.”  The man’s gaze continues to follow the woman, who looks back to the left before turning to face the man once she was ahead of him.  The man nods at the woman and looks off-screen in another eye-line match to the spot where the older woman is presumably still lying on the ground.  He gestures with his stick in this direction, saying “I hope I don’t end up like that. Let’s go, quickly.”  The man takes another glance around and behind him before walking ahead of the woman to lead her towards the back right of the frame.  The woman turns back to look off-screen again, taking three steps toward the camera.  She hurries toward the right again, looking back one last time before running off-screen.  Mizoguchi holds the shot of the differently-shaped stone sculpture for about a second before cutting to the next shot.

Shot 3: In this shot is the same scene as in shot 1, but the camera has moved slightly farther away and to the right so that the woman lying on the ground is skewed to the left with her head pointed at the bottom right corner of the frame.  The cliff face covers the back “wall” of the shot.  The curved tree is at the right side of the frame and bends over the grave-looking Buddha stone and toward the center with the two branches still leaning over the lying woman whose hands are still clasped on her stomach.  In between the curved tree and where the right side of the frame ends is the stone-shapes sculpture. In the middle-ground between the cliff face and the lying woman, three other Buddha stones are side-by-side in descending order of height from left to right.  Taking up the left side of the shot and foreground is a dark wet rock.  When this shot begins, a water drop starts to drip consistently from the middle of the dark rock to the bottom.  A man runs into the shot from the left, carrying straw.   He is looking in the direction that the previous two figures exited.  He stops in alignment with the old woman’s chest before taking three steps toward the background to look further toward their exit.  He throws the straw to the ground behind the grave-looking Buddha stone and moves quickly to toss the leaning branches on the ground to the left and right of the old woman.  The man crouches over the old woman and removes a vine that is attached to the headstone Buddha from the woman’s hands.  He takes something from her chest and puts it in his robe.  He props the old woman up and tells her “Come, Namiji-san, let’s go” and slings her arms over his shoulders to pick her up.  He adjusts her position on his back and runs diagonally off-screen at the bottom right corner of the shot. As he runs away, minimalist music begins to play.  Mizoguchi cuts on the action of the man running to:

Shot 4: A long shot, somewhat obstructed by trees, of a path down a mountain.  The man enters, still running, from the top left corner of the frame.  He moves down the path which cuts diagonally down through the shot and wraps into the center down towards the bottom of the mountain which is not visible.  The old woman is slung over his back and as he nears the end of the visible portion of the path, he seems to drop a piece of fabric.  The man takes a few more steps before Mizoguchi cuts to the next shot.  During this shot, the music from the previous shot continues to play.  As the man runs down the hill, the music grows in intensity.  It mimics typical American-style horror film music during a climactic point.

   
    This scene comes at a pivotal point in the film.  Zushio has just suggested that he and Anju escape from Sansho’s estate.  Anju knows they’ll be caught if they both try to run so she tells Zushio to go without her and to take Najimi, whom they’d brought to the mountain to die.  Zushio warns that Sansho will have Anju tortured, but she insists nonetheless.

    Surrounding what is to be Namiji’s grave at the top of the mountain are half a dozen Buddha stone sculptures.  Buddhism has an important role in this film. The father’s teachings, which drive the plot through Zushio’s actions, have strong connections to Buddhist beliefs and teachings.  It is what leads Zushio to end the suffering of the slaves. 

    As for the dripping water, it is clearly purposefully included and holds significance.  As these scenes progress, anxiety and tension grow not only through actions, but in the music and with these water drops.  Suddenly there is a consistent, frequent motion up front that steals your attention.  To me, it almost feels like a clock.  We’ve reached a climax in the plot where things are going to take a drastic turn.  Zushio’s running away and what’s to become of Anju? Time seems to be ticking away now as the audience is at the edge of their seats waiting to see how the plot unfolds.  Zushio’s movements seem unnaturally quick, almost as if the film had been sped up in editing.  However, the water drops are steady and consistent and realistic-looking, although it may also be that the water was originally slower and sped up in turn resulting in them looking a normal speed.

    The water dripping in this scene also foreshadows Anju’s death in the scene that directly follows this one.  As it dawns on the guards that Zushio has escaped, Anju comes to understand the danger she’s in and commits suicide in sacrifice for her brother by drowning herself in the lake.  The dripping water seems to be time running out for Anju before her watery death.  My understanding of these scenes is that they are precursors for the rest of the film and are used to build emotion and excite angst in the audience about Zushio’s escape and Anju’s death and the events that will follow.

"I Was Born, But..." - Mise en scene assignment

Extreme long shot, angled up slightly
Two identical figures (dark bodies, white heads, facing/walking away from camera)
Figures centered at base of image
Figures are cut off at the knee
Barren landscape
Dimly lit (most light in lower middle of image)
Nighttime
Rows of electrical poles on either side of figures
Some plant life on land beside them

      This image is an extreme long shot of two identical-looking figures centered at the bottom.  They are both dressed in grey with white hats.  They are faced away from the camera, both with their arms at their sides.  They are almost the same height and are both cut off at just about the knee by the border of the image.  They are framed by two rows of electrical poles that continue on into the center of the image, creating a vanishing point.  It appears to be night.  The scene is dimly light and most of the image's light is focused on the poles and the figures.  What is visible of the landscape is barren.  Some shrubbery or grass is just barely visible next to them.  The camera seems to be tilted upward slightly, since we are unable to see the figures' feet walking on the road.  The image is split into thirds by the poles with most of its content set in the middle third.
      This image is from the scene that follows the home-movie screening.  The boys, ashamed by their father's behavior in the movies and overall behavior toward his boss, leave the screening.  They storm away with their heads lowered and kick off their slippers.  They walk home, discussing their distaste and proceed to kick and throw things and scream once they're at home.  This shot, along with the melancholy piano music, signifies the boys' disappointment and solitude in their beliefs.  The story takes a turn in these few scenes and the mise en scene matches their tone.  The boys are surrounded by a vast nothingness aside from the poles and ground.  It is dark and gloomy, and the two figures are alone but together with sunken posture and their hands in their pockets walking away from not only the camera but the disappointing scenes they just witnessed.