Uzumasa Limelight (2014)

Uzumasa Limelight (2014)

Dir. Ken Ochiai.

Kamiyama is an ageing kirareyaku, a bit-part actor whose job is to be killed dramatically by a film's lead, to exist just outside the limelight while helping someone else look good.

The waning popularity of jidaigeki films in his native Japan means Kamiyama's usefulness in the industry to which he's devoted his entire life is destined to soon end.

Having a real life kirareyaku (actor Seizô Fukumoto, who's died onscreen over 50,000 times in a very long career) in the role gives the Kamiyama character an authenticity that cinema rarely manages to capture. It's also extremely fitting that he should be the lead actor in a film centred around people who never are such.

Likewise, even though it's from the opposite angle, that same authenticity can be found in Chihiro Yamamoto, who's starring in her first film, as a fresh-faced actress who fits into the new template preferred by producers.

Her role is more than just that, however. She's also a kind of bridge between the old and the new, she's youth respectful of the legacy left by the previous generation, an anomaly in an industry that throws out anything it no longer sees as being profitable.

Because Kamiyama's time on set is limited there are a number of action scenes that lack context, but that's not a problem and is actually beneficial to the story. For actual context, you need only look at the patience with which he approaches scenes, noting the sacrifices he makes in order to ensure they're the best they can be, the emotional response he elicits in his contemporaries, and the neglect he suffers when youthful directors and/or producers call the shots.

The sadness in the story is nicely offset by a genuine underlying warmth, a feeling of real love for an era that doesn't deserve to be forced into retirement.

I wanted Uzumasa to be something very special. It didn't quite reach the level that I hoped for (at least not on first viewing, it may on subsequent ones) but it's still a fantastic film that deserves to be seen by fans of the genre. And it makes me smile to know that Seizô Fukumoto got an opportunity to elevate the importance of the kirareyaku in the public consciousness.

In closing, I feel that when CGI swords and CGI blood completely replace real props and squibs we'll have arrived at a place that has no soul or, at the very least, a soul that isn't even aware of its own existence. With luck, there will always be filmmakers that insist things be traditional.