The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, November 4-10
The Yellow Handkerchief (1977)
Directed by Yoji Yamada
Ken Takakura excelled at striking poses of regret. The Japanese leading man (who died last year at age 83) built a reputation over the course of more than one hundred films for playing pensive, past-haunted lone warriors thrust into action by a need to combat injustice; some of his most memorable roles, though, came in films directed by the still-active Yamada, known for bittersweet comedies about lost men longing for home. In The Yellow Handkerchief—which won several awards at the inaugural Japan Academy Prize ceremony, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor—Takakura plays Yusaku, a middle-aged man fresh out of jail who catches a ride towards a mining town on the island of Hokkaido with two younger strangers, the foolishly cocksure driver Kinya (played by Tetsuda Takeda) and the guarded female hitchhiker Akemi (Kaori Momoi). Their initially awkward, superficial relations deepen with delving into Yusaku’s story. Over time, tender flashbacks emerge that show him and his wife Mitsue (Chieko Baisho) together before his prison sentence for murder began and he urged her to start a new life. Takakura begins the film with a curled-up body bearing years’ worth of embitterment, then opens gradually outward as hope within Yusaku swells that his beloved has chosen to wait for him. Aaron Cutler (November 6, 7pm at Japan Society)
