Twilight Cinema at YGP: SiCKO

I just returned from Yebisu Garden Place (YGP) where they were holding one of their Twilight Cinema movie events for the summer. Tonight's feature film was the documentary 'SiCKO' by Michael Moore. It took me about 3 minutes to get home. We arrived, on foot, about 25 minutes late for the movie after having dinner at a nearby Thai restaurant. We had to stand beside a pillar to the left side of the outdoor screen for the entire movie due to the popularity of the movie/festival. And since we were late, it might have been considered slightly rude by Japanese standards to intrude on the seated patrons to try to squeeze onto benches where only 2 people sat.

I love YGP; there's always something going on there and it's so incredibly clean. I have been known to accidentally, walk into the line of sight for a modeling shoot, a commercial, or DJ promotion of some sort when there is an "event" or thing going on. But tonight there was no film crew or camera man, just a projection man and he was already housed and elevated, so there was no way my head was getting into the line of sight of the film.

The Twilight Cinema event is running over the weekends from now until mid-August, which is basically the peak summer weekend nights. The venue has set up a large out-door screen and seating area, as well as a movie food stand to the right side of the screen. Even if it rains, it's a nice place to watch one of the foreign, indie films on-screen because the permanent canopy shields you from most of the rain. If it's gusty, you might feel some mist spray. All movies are sub-titled in Japanese.

For now, my plan is to go out for the English and French speaking movies. While I can struggle through the Japanese kanji, it would be limiting in my overall enjoyment if I could only translate the first word (usually the subject or object, depending on who is talking to whom) and the final end word which is always the verb (except for the cases where it is some kind of exclamatory interjection or post-positional word). Apparently, if you speed read like this, the brain can fill in the rest of the sentence. With my limited knowledge of actual Japanese adjectives and adverbs and connecting words, it may prove to be a confusing way to watch a movie. I believe Friday and Saturday nights' movies were in German and Chinese, respectively. We skipped them. Passing by at about 5:45 on Saturday afternoon, I noticed that a lineup was about 30 people deep had already begun to form for a 6:45-ish start time. Ideally, it would be best to sit on one of the benches they provide that are strategically placed between the screen and the sound systems for best sound quality and personal comfort. We initially tried to view the movie by watching from the 'balcony' in the surrounding atria but found that the sound quality was not that great. Difficult to understand in fact and a trees branches was in our line of sight. However, once we moved to the end of the covered ceiling, the sound got better, but there is still a hint of fuzziness in the words. In the end, we descended onto the ground floor and stood beside the pillar. Surprisingly there were a large number of Japanese people sitting on the floor beside the roped off bench area. That floor in YGP is cleaned about 4 times an hour during business hours - so it's a clean seat albeit not a soft one. The smarter people saved room for dessert and sat in one of the outdoor terrace tables of the cafe restaurants owned by Mitsukoshi (more on this store in another post). Next time, we'll have coffee there for the 2.5 hours of the movie.

I was so engrossed in the movie, that I was quite surprised when it was over. It was nothing like the long, boring documentaries that we used to watch in grade school. Michael Moore's movies are just so entertaining, satirical even. There were several laugh-out-loud parts where I think it may have only been us that were laughing out loud. Since there's so much inside information, insinuation, and reading between the lines, I would think it a very difficult movie for a non-native speaker to absorb and enjoy. I would hate to watch a movie like this in Japanese. It would just hurt my head. At the end of the movie and start of the credits, I had expected the crowd to clap as they do at the end of the movies at TIFF, but they didn't. Maybe it's a cultural thing and it isn't polite.

As the credits began to roll on the large screen (which by the way, waved and waggled a bit in the wind), I looked up and noticed that the sky had morphed into a pretty dark indigo hue whilst I was engrossed in the film. I also noticed that while it was hot and humid just a few hours earlier, it was now still hot, but cooler and breezy. I could the wisps of the hair that had escaped my ponytail moving freely in the breeze. And at that instant I laughed. I just realized that this would be the closest I may ever get to fulfilling one of my goals to attend an outdoor drive-in movie. There are no more in Ottawa or Toronto and a few years ago I had heard of one that was about 2 hours outside Toronto but it's a little ways to go for a drive-in movie, even in one of my most determined mindsets. Here, there was no automobile, no grass, no mosquitoes, no smell of freshly popped popcorn and for us there was also no seat, but plenty of potted and manicured trees and flowers, a beautiful breezy Tokyo summer night and lots of Japanese people staring intently at the screen. In the bustling city of Tokyo under a canopy of stars, and on an intricately patterned brick and marble floor, and, for us, a large pink marble pillar to support our weight, I managed to experience a movie in the natural outdoor setting of one of Tokyo's prettiest outdoor plazas.

The coverage of universal health care comparisons was great. He pokes fun at the current health care system in the US while highlighting the real pain of real people. He visits Canada, England and France and even forbidden Cuba, and exposes the system and debunks some myths about the quality of these foreign healthcare systems. The ending was great. You don't expect Michael Moore to give you a fairy tale ending, but I think this might be the closest that he could dare to venture toward that end. After all, he's not Disney. He is however, human, as are the doctors, people, healthcare practitioners and patients that he interviews throughout the film. Michael Moore, where were you when I was 12?