I am wondering why Akira Kurosawa chose Richard Gere to play the part of Clark in Rhapsody in August.
I am thinking of some popular APIA community complaints of alleged "Yellow Face," or even "Brown Face," for not all Asians are "yellow." I'm not yellow.
Hyphen Magazine editor Harry Mok has just posted some of his thoughts on the casting call for the new Kung Fu, and so I think about David Carradine as the original Caine, whose mother is Chinese and whose father is "American." By "American," I see they mean "white American."
I have also been hearing of a David Henry Huang play currently running in Los Angeles. The play is titled, Yellow Face.
I have also recently come across Philip W. Chung's two-part article, "The 25 Most Infamous Yellow Face Film Performances," in AsianWeek. Links: Part 1 | Part 2.
This is not to say that I think Akira Kurosawa was committing an act of "Yellow Face."
I am trying to say that I am interested in discussions on casting and racial politics, which are oftentimes or frequently pretty subjective, and I think perhaps suffering from political correctness. I am wondering why some roles get a pass and others don't, particularly when Hapa/Mestizo actors are involved. There are so many Hapa actors who've played "full-blooded" Asian characters. Various roles taken by Russell Wong, for example. John Lone as the Emperor Pu Yi in The Last Emperor. Ben Kingsley as Mahatma Ghandi.
I am saying these things because I note the presence of Rob Schneider on Chung's "Yellow Face" list, and I note that Chung notes Schneider's Filipino ancestry. I see omission and inclusion having to do with the offensiveness of the Schneider's character, for there's the complete opposite of offensive, Mahatma Ghandi.
Chung also says Schneider should "know better" than to play such a racially offensive character. Then again, we also know full well that in order to work, actors take what roles they can get. And of course, we can also look at the self-effacing and ridiculous comedic roles which seem to be the niche that Schneider has made for himself or in which he's found himself in Hollywood.
But that is a digression. Richard Gere isn't Hapa.
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So on Kurosawa's selection of Gere as Clark, who is Hawaii-born of a Japanese father and a white American mother. As with Kurosawa's casting of Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh in Dreams, I imagine this has more to do with reaching into the popular Western/Hollywood film industry than it has to do with racial politics. I am reaching into my cultural memory, thinking on whether Gere was particularly hot in Hollywood at the time.
In the end, all of the above aside, Gere ended up working well in the role of Clark in Rhapsody in August. In fact, his arrival marked an upturn in the film's static framings and stagings, droll pacing, and overexpository narration and dialogue. I get the point of this overexpository narration and dialogue; Kane, the film's Grandma, is a Nagasaki survivor, and her urban, Westernized grandchildren (complete with American place name and college t-shirts) spend the beginning part of the film learning what this all means. They are tourists, and so they speak in tourist/tour guide language. It seems their parents never told them much, and we wonder why that is. We see this disconnect will come into play later on in the film. Here, all this information the grandchildren are processing out loud is also meant for an audience of urbanized, modern, West-directed young Japanese folks, and also for us, a mainstream Western audience.
Prior to his arrival in Nagasaki, all we know of Clark we know from pictures (we see how wealthy he is from the pictures of his estate, which his long lost Japanese cousins have taken upon meeting him), and from his letter to Kane, who is his long lost aunt. This letter is written in what I imagine is his elementary or rudimentary writing in katakana, and so this says something of his fluency.
He arrives and he is speaking Japanese. And if Gere's Japanese is sounding Americanized or broken, then it works in favor of his character, who has never previously visited his long lost recently found Japanese relatives. They are mutually discovering one another, for Clark's father migrated to Hawaii long before WWII and they subsequently lost contact. Clark's only now learned about Kane, that she is a Nagasaki survivor, and he's come on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the bombing. He comes with a compassion which is absent from his generation's Japanese counterparts who are portrayed as petty and materialistic; he wants to know, understand, and ultimately to be able to be a part of that troubled history.
The way Clark reaches out to his aunt, and to his nieces and nephews is sincere, and this is a sharp contrast to his cousins' petty chatter and materialism. They make it quite clear among themselves and their spouses that their uncle's and Clark's wealth as pineapple plantation owners is something from which they can greatly benefit. In fact, it's their plan to exploit their mother Kane, Clark's aunt, in order to insure their closeness to Clark.
Ultimately, I think this film suffers from its clinical treatment of the history. Still, I think Kurosawa is making a definitive and sharp statement here about generational and historical disconnect. He is of Kane's generation, and this means WWII exists in his memories, and subsequent generations are left to learn about the war in classrooms and through tour guides.
I think this film also suffers from those infernally slow pacing and static composition shots. He does this in Ran, but it works there as the story, Lord Hidetora's sanity, and the realization of the depth and gravity of his decision's many interrelated consequences, are meant to unravel slowly.
I think it fails in Rhapsody in August because, even while there are some really touching if not over-neat composition scenes — Kane in the center and two grandchildren on either side, sitting together on a bench, gazing at the full moon with their backs turned on the petty chattering grown-ups — I think this over-composition in combination with the clinical treatment of history just doesn't make for creative, well executed storytelling. They feel more documentary and instructional rather than creative.
