Weekend Views No.7

Sometimes life is synchronous to the point of madness. Take this example: I'm halfway through the latest collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - and i'm reading it on my journey home from Manchester's Futuresonic Fiasco. By the time I'm on the tube to Brixton I'm reading a story called 'Tony Takitani'. As I reach Brixton I just finish the story, walk up the escalator, step onto a bus and as I sit down I look up. The bus is passing the Ritzy cinema, and up on the hoarding it says, between Superman and Pirates of the ~Carribean...yup, you guessed it...Tony Takitani!
Weird. I'm sure all you film buffs out there will be screaming 'we knew that film was out!!' but put yourself in my place. I'd never heard of this film, and suddenly, seconds after READING this story, there it is on the silver screen. I nearly fainted. Especially as Murakami's tales are FULL of strange coincidences and almost surreal twists of fate.
Of course, I HAD to see it.
Jun Ichikawa's film of Murakami's tale of a lonely man whose wife cannot stop buying clothes is wonderfully minimal. Set to a suitably sparse piano score by Ryuichi Sakamoto it's shot in muted greys and with stylised panning shots seperating each quiet scene. Two actors play the four main characters with only their interjections into the spoken narrative providing most of what amounts to dialogue. Hardly anything happens, but that doesn't matter one bit. Now THAT's film making. What's more you get to see some beautiful clothes.
To think, if this chain of coincidence hadn't alerted to me the existence of this film, I might never have seen it. Wowser.
Life is strange sometimes...