James
Gibney’s Bloomberg op-ed
on Angelina Jolie’s new film Unbroken
is probably as evenhanded as it gets coming from an American. The writer not
only identifies it as “really much less about Japanese brutality than the
resilience of the human spirit” but also states that “(a)ny forthright exploration of Japan's
wartime cruelties, of course, must be matched by an acknowledgment of the
battlefield savagery of U.S. troops in the Pacific.” But why would he guess
that “‘Unbroken’ does not yet—and may never—have a release date” in Japan? Why not
take Universal Filmed Entertainment Group Chairman Jeff Shell at his word when
he says, “Obviously, the content of the book is a difficult one in the
Japanese market… So we're probably going to wait a little bit and release it
later in the year there than in the rest of the world. We're going to delay it
a little bit so we can have a different kind of launch there”? Why not come back
to this, say, the next New Year’s? In the meantime, the following is my
prediction and my reasons for it. It should be at least as reliable as my projection
of a Hosono-Nagatsuma runoff for the DPJ leadership election.
Unbroken will be shown in a very small
number of largely art film theaters, almost exclusively in metropolitan areas,
then go straight to DVD. I do not see a prison film that 1) has an unfamiliar non-Japanese
actor playing the hero, 2) takes place in a world that most of the viewers will
not be familiar with, 3) is not a comedy, and 4) does not feature a successful
breakout having much of a chance at the box office. But limited as it may be, I
do believe that there is a market for the film that will be amplified by the commotion
from the far-right that will flare up again when the release here is announced,
providing the film with publicity that would normally be unavailable. There’s
name recognition for the director, too. (Would the film even have been made if no
one with Angelina Jolie’s Hollywood connections and clout had been involved?)
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