Limited Edition Blu-ray of “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” Now Available!
To compete against a rival fashion magazine who found profound success after hiring a famous gymnast as their spokesmodel, an ambitious fashion company sees potential in amateur golfer Reiko Sakuraba with her beauty, grace, and a decent enough golf game. The only problem is Reiko has not won a championship. The fashion company representative and Reiko’s sport’s columnist writer/manager/boyfriend Miyake strike a deal to get intensely train and mentally exhaust Reiko to be the best by the next tournament. When Reiko outperforms the tournament’s veteran players, she instantly becomes a fashion icon and celebrity that leads to her own show for the magazine, photoshoots, and a large house in the middle of the suburbs. Miyake’s aloof behavior continues even after Reiko’s success and while he drives her back home, he hits-and-runs a woman form the neighborhood who blackmails and guilts Reiko into letting her into the rich and famous lifestyle. Reiko’s mental health slowly declines as pressures mounts.
“A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” is a tale of how the sudden rise of fame and fortune can quickly lead to world of hurt through inexperience, obsession, misguided love, abuse, and the day-to-day tasks that can even burden even the most common person. The story also represents a dichotomy between fame and the mundane. The 1977 Japanese surreal drama is helmed by Seijun Suzuki, a filmmaker once blacklisted by the head of Nikkatsu Studios after his film for the company, “Branded to Kill,” was deemed terrible by Nikkatsu execs, and rode the filmic bench for nearly a decade until his theatrical release of the Shochiku Ltd. Released production that allowed him the freedom for artistic expression. Also concisely known as “A Tale of Sorrow,” the Suzuki picture is written by Atsushi Yamatoya based off manga by Ikki Kajiware and produced by Yoshiki Nomura, Kenzo Asada, and Tokuya Shimada.
Yoko Shiraki steps into the tragic golf-cleated shoes of golfer-turned-spokesmodel Reiko Sakuraba who finds herself unknowingly being exploited as object of marketable objectification. What’s interesting about Sakuraba is she’s totally alone amongst other adults in a real cutthroat and cruel way through her trajectory of success. In the fashion world, the magazine representative behind the concept (Masumi Okada, “The Living Skeleton”) only wants her for her beauty and success, her boyfriend Miyake (Yoshio Harada, “Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance”), and even an once starstruck housewife, Kayo Senba (Kyôko Enami, “Killer Whale”) who was struck by Miyake’s car and resents Reiko’s, blackmailing her way into the superstar golfer’s life by forcing her hand to relinquish all from her worldly possessions to her mind, body, and soul. Shiraki gifts Sakuraba the fault of inability to say no with her innocence and naivety ravaged and exploited beyond the point of no return and beyond repair but Sakuraba clings to dear life, perhaps even sanity, because of tone person that too only reacts negatively around her but since their blood reaction is thicker in the watery connections manipulating her, Sakuraba’s hand is forced to do much all of the golfing and modeling hell for her adolescent younger brother Jun (Tetsu Mizuno), a smart yet reclusive boy with off screen aggression getting into fights with school bullies stemmed likely by his sister’s constant absence. Sakuraba’s not only a slave to external obsessions of success, image, and greed but also a slave to internal obsessions with Mikyake who deprives her of the most basic primal needs for financial gain and for manipulative control. Kôji Wada, Shûji Sano, Noboru Nakaya, sao Tamagawa, Tokie Hidari, and Jô Shishido co-star.
“A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” is Seijun Suzuki’s tour de force return to feature films. A linear narrative speckled with surrealistic doses creates an unsettling and bizarre atmosphere of strongarm manipulation on the unassertive character of Reiko Sakuraba. Her raw talent is mined and minced without much consent and pushed past mental exhaustion and collapse in what is an all too true theme surrounding the early television era of celebrity branding with esteemed figures being puppets for large scale companies in order to sell their promoted products. Money, image, and success steer the helm without any due remorse to the elegant centerpiece of the room, driving Suzuki’s social commentary to extreme levels of misappropriation of a human person with feelings and ambitions of their own. Instead, Reiko’s meekness is measured by Suzuki’s fabricated milieu of mistreatment represented partly in a behavioralism of semi-surrealism – Miyake’s stoic aloofness, Senba’s brazen hijack of Reiko’s fame and wealth, and even Jun’s withdraw and reclusion are all good archetype of strange conducts illegitimizing Reiko as person. She’s dehumanized so much so she stops whatever little rationality she had to begin with and becomes a vessel of command that allowed those around to walk all over her. Suzuki’s suburban reach toward fame theme is satirical for “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness’s” thin blanketing of dark comedy and the filmmaker often accentuates the moments with elongated sequences, randomized bits of eccentricity, and highly stylized contrasts of sex and violence as well as commercially sensationalized imagery versus Stepford wives’ expectations.
A bleak absurdist dream, “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” becomes rightly a part of the Radiance obscure, high level lineup with a new, limited-edition high-definition transfer Blu-ray release. The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50 receives the high definition transfer from the Shochiku Corporation, who currently distributes a fair amount of Anime and since “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” is adapted from a Ikki Kajiware’s Manga, the film fits right in, and is presented in by Radiance in the original aspect ratio of a widescreen 2.35:1. Radiance’s image quality surpasses expectations as visually bold in a wide variety of contrasting colors, especially in primaries of yellow and reds juxtaposed against achromatic shades of brilliant whites and deep blacks. The original print is beyond pristine with virtually no dust, dirt, scratches, or any kind of visual impediments in what appears to be a well-preserved 35mm reel. Skin tones appear naturally organic and textures pop in their specific fabrics inside an overlay of natural stock grain for that bare-faced aesthetic of clear based film strip. The Japanese uncompressed mono PCM audio, again, surpasses expectations with a diverse mix through a single output that creates excellent note individualism rather than an indistinct amalgam. The omitted compression codec provides the original audio framework comfortably upholding against the test of time without a flurry of issues in the single layer. Hissing, popping, crackling and other types of interference are kept either suppressed or to a bare minimal in another pristinely kept transfer. ADR dialogue clearly affixes to the images with synchronous efforts being no worse compared to other films of the era out of Japan. The newly improved English subtitles render without error, are compositionally more-or-less within syntax range of translation, and pace nicely throughout. Special features include a new audio commentary by film historian and author Samm Deighan, a new interview with assistant editor Kunihiko Ukai, and the film’s trailer. The clear Amaray case contains Sam Smith commissioned artwork on an obi-strip included reversible sleeve – primary cover composition is of a live still of exhausted Reiko Sakuraba lying next to a bunker with a spirally title font and the reverse cover is more NSFW with a partially nude Reiko with boyfriend Miyake portrayed in soft, dreamy glow. The white and red disc is pressed with eye-pleasing contrast and the inserted 31-page color booklet provides cast and crew credits, essay “Sorrow, Sadness, and the Sweet Smell of Excess” by Radiance regular contributor Jasper Sharp, an archive essay “The Realisation of a Seijun Sizuki Film” by Atsushi Yamatoya, and the Blu-ray acknowledgements. “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” Radiance Blu-ray has a runtime of 93 minutes, is unrated, and since Radiance is a UK boutique label, collectors and film aficionados will get the best of both worlds with a region A and B playback.
Last Rites: Seijun Suzuki’s return to theatrical feature films with “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” is a remarkable comeback for the ages and the decade interruption didn’t even cause a missed step for his artistic expression of exploitation and consumerism control ruining young, raw talent which is a clear-cut archetype of sorrow and sadness.
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