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Bashing

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Bashing dir. Masahiro Kobayashi 2005.

Deeply moving, but lacking context. 4*

This film takes place over a few days, about 6 months after Yuko Takai (Fusako Urabe) was released from captivity in Iraq, where she had been kidnapped by insurgents while doing volunteer aid work. She is living with her father and stepmother in a concrete block of flats (where no other tenants are ever seen) in a small factory town on Japan's north island, Hokkaido. Yuko bicycles off to her job cleaning rooms (the one indication we see of some luxury in the community) and is fired because coworkers have found out her past. On the way home, she stops for soup at the local minimart, but some neighborhood louts knock it from her hands. She continues home and retreats to her room, where she lies curled on the bed, her face stone blank. The family receive politely hateful anonymous calls on a daily basis. Her boyfriend from before her volunteer work keeps calling and finally Yuko agrees to meet him; but he only castigates her for her inappropriate behavior. She runs into old classmates, now married with infants en stroller, outwardly polite but snarky; their polished domesticity contrasts nicely with Yuko, in jeans and practical jacket, simply coifed, with bustling energy and a solemn demeanor.

The next day, her father (Ryuzo Tanaka) goes to the factory where he has worked for 30 years. His boss has a chat about the situation: people have found out he works for the company, and are harassing it with phone calls and emails. His presence is bad for business, and it's made clear a resignation is expected.

I won't tell more of what happens, as there are some surprises worth experiencing, but we see events unfold over what seems to be a span of a few days. Perhaps the critical scene, for me, is near the end where Yuko has a heart-to-heart conversation with her stepmother. This ties together what has gone before, and provides a bittersweet ending.

Urabe is superb as Yuko. We can really believe she has been through this multiply horrific experience, and she captures alternating depressed withdrawal and anxious energy, anger and resignation, and even joy when she is describing why she went to Iraq and her mission there. It is clear she is deeply suffering, perhaps from PTSD, trapped in an awful reality. But she is not made a simple martyr: her reasons for doing aid work are not purely altruistic, inspired as much by her own poor fit to Japanese society, and when she sees a chance for escape she acts selfishly. Ryuzo Tanaka as her father and Nene Otsuka as her stepmother are excellently done, and sympathetic characters. The stark, almost minimalist, direction of Masahiro Kobayashi highlights the interaction of the characters and their reactions to the shunning and rejection Yuko and her family suffer as a result of her work, capture and release.

And this last is where "Bashing" falls down, at least for a Western or non-Japanese audience. The film is a "fiction, based on real events," events in which five civilian Japanese workers and reporters were briefly held hostage by insurgents in the spring of 2004. (Yuko seems based on the most well known hostage, Nahoko Takato; it's unfortunate that Takato's memoir of the events has not been published in English.) Upon their release and return, they met with official criticism and apparently virulent public shaming. Though other released captives have been met with mixed receptions, the extent of the Japanese reaction is frankly puzzling to outsiders. Unfortunately, Kobayashi provides almost no explication, much less explanation, of where this reaction comes from. Without such context, one prime reaction while watching the film is simply to wonder "why is this happening?", which I think is not the intent. Probably this is all quite obvious to the Japanese audience, who also have a more direct memory of the actual events than others are likely to. For those interested, a long, undated article by Marie Thorsten in in the online Asia-Pacific Journal, JapanFocus, [remove *'s japanfocus*.*org*/*-marie-thorsten*/*3157] This gives a lot of background and possible theory, but it's not clear what her perspective and particular axes to grind are.

To be honest, this movie is really depressing. At the end you feel dejected and sad because of the constant "bashing" of the main character, Yuko.

I appreciate what this movie is about, but i would have rather not seen it. The movie did not follow a conventional movie structure.

I wish they actually showed Yuko in Iraq being kidnapped or serving as an aid worker. I felt like I was waiting for flashbacks throughout the entire movie but there were none. The movie is intentionally filmed in dim, dull lighting where all of the colors are sapped out. This most likely reflects Yuko's disposition and the emotions she is feeling.

If you are interested in what this movie is about (volunteering, dejection from society, war kidnapping) then I suggest you see the movie. I strongly caution that this movie is depressing and extremely sad.