Review for Confessions Of A Dog (2 Discs)

Introduction

It's been a while since the last Third Window release in the UK. That's one of the drawbacks of practically being a one-person operation. Your average big studio releases countless titles, hundreds of discs a year in a relentless tide of plastic and merchandising. With Third Window Films, time not spent releasing films, is devoted to hunting down new licenses, which is why the past few months have been somewhat quiescent. Of course, have you seen the dross that big studios churn out? With Third Window Films, every new film is a treasure to be unwrapped, a gem to be admired. Of course not every gem is to everyone's liking, but when it comes to style, individuality, imagination, and sheer quirkiness, I have to admit that every one of Third Window's releases so far has been far from the ordinary. Scarce though they may be, I find myself looking forward to their releases more than any other label's. Last month saw the releasing season open up again with Third Window bringing Memories of Matsuko to Blu-ray after the DVD release in 2009. Looking ahead, we have titles like Sawako Decides, Cold Fish, and the critically acclaimed Confessions, currently playing in cinemas nationwide. But it's Confessions of another kind that constitute Third Window's first new title in 2011 to the UK market. Confessions of a Dog is the controversial Japanese independent film that has effectively been banned in its native country due to its close to the bone content. Third Window Films are releasing this in a limited edition boxset for the first 1000 copies, with exclusive, individual film cel postcards.


Hassei Takeda is a good cop, for about five minutes. He's a rookie on the beat, supposedly learning from his superior just how things work. His superior is a pervert, who likes to take advantage of his position to harass young girls. When a complaint about that reaches head office, it's noted how kind and helpful Takeda was in that situation, a fact that isn't lost on the Chief of Criminal Investigations, who decides to recruit Takeda as a detective. He isn't past buttering Takeda up either, putting him on the fast track to promotion, and making sure that he and his young and pregnant wife Chiyoko get all the perks that they are due and more. Of course there is a price to pay for all this, and Takeda soon realises that he has become part of a special club, a family, and that police work is less about serving the public than it is serving that family. It's simple, the police have targets to meet, have to be seen to be dealing with crime, and it's just an inconvenience when criminals don't comply by actually committing them. It makes it so much easier when the police have deals with criminal gangs to fill their quota of patsies, while they leave the lucrative crimes alone, for a price. It's also so much more convenient when there is an unspoken deal with the news media, so that they only report what the police want them to report. It doesn't hurt to have the judiciary in your pocket either. As Takeda learns, everyone's on the take in the police, it's just a matter of degree. It's just the way things are.


But there are some who find such a state of affairs intolerable. Freelance journalist Rikio Kusama first encounters Takeda during a carelessly scripted hostage crisis. It's where he also encounters press photographer Kitamura, who up to this point has been toeing the newspaper line of only reporting on what the police want reported. He isn't even driven to photograph the police openly tempting the hostage taker with a sachet of drugs until Kusama reminds him of how illegal such actions are. Soon Kusama is giving Kitamura a lesson in just how deep police corruption actually runs. It falls on Takeda to get these two committed journalists off the backs of the police. But there's nothing more dangerous to the police than an honest man. When things get out of hand, the police need a convenient scapegoat to sacrifice.

The Disc

Confessions of a Dog gets a rather unremarkable transfer on this DVD. The 1.85:1 anamorphic image is NTSC-PAL, soft for the most part, although with the grainy, realistic, documentary style approach to the film, it's not really an issue that causes any detriment. The DD 2.0 Japanese stereo track in also similarly low key, although in this case it's a matter also of volume level, which is certainly subdued on the disc. I had to whack my volume up to halfway before it was adequately audible. The subtitles are clear and legible throughout, with just a couple of minor typos worth grumbling about.


I had a problem on my set-up, the playback paused at 1.26:01, and again at 1.28:26 on my Sony player, and it wouldn't resume unless I pressed frame advance. On my Panasonic, I had layer change like pauses at those points, while on my laptop there was no issue. I e-mailed Third Window Films, and having tested the discs on a variety of set-ups, it turns out to be a predominantly Sony issue. You'd think with over ten years of DVD experience under their belts, these disc pressing companies would have gotten past incompatibility issues. Irony: Third Window Films uses Sony to manufacture their discs. Anyway, Sony DVD player owners need to be aware of this issue.

Extras

Disc 1 gets the film and some pleasant animated menus to look at.

The extras are on disc 2, beginning with the 3 minute trailer for Confessions of a Dog.

The Making Of comes in at 43 minutes. It's one of those light on context featurettes, consisting mostly of b-roll footage and scenes from the film. There's no voiceover, and no explanation of what is happening and why. It's just footage of people making a film, and the end results for comparison, with the odd interjection from cast member or director when they notice the camera. The final 7 minutes of this featurette are scenes deleted from the film.


Of greater interest to me were the interviews. The first sees director Gen Takahashi talking for 10 minutes about the film, and his friendship with journalist Yu Terasawa, whose work inspired the film.

The Panel Discussion featuring Director Gen Takahashi lasts 14 minutes, and is edited from a more comprehensive discussion about Japanese Cinema at the Ontario film festival. He talks about making independent movies in corporate Japan, and the controversy surrounding the film.

The Q & A with Director Gen Takahashi lasts 17 minutes, is again from the Ontario Film Festival, and takes place after a showing of the film. Here he mentions the reaction to the film in Japan, and more interestingly the reaction of the police.

Finally the disc concludes with trailers to 21 other Third Window Films releases.

Conclusion

Long movies always terrify me. The longer the film, the more I have to plan for it. Finding more than two hours in a day to actually sit down and watch a film is becoming a more and more difficult prospect, and the worry is that my butt will be numbed in the process, or worse, my eyes will keep flicking to the clock, wondering how much time is left. It's made all the worse with my usual ritual of standing in front of my DVD collection, trying to decide what to watch, which itself is a lengthy enough process these days. Confessions of a Dog comes in at 3 hours and 13 minutes. I noted that when I started watching it. I didn't look at the clock again until the end credits had rolled. Given the gritty subject matter, the realistic and downbeat storytelling style, and the independent and low budget cinematography, that's really saying something. Confessions of a Dog drew me in, and gripped my attention firmly for its runtime.


It's not the most approachable of subject matter. It's dark, relentless and grubby, much as you would expect films about police corruption to be. Part of this reminded me of Street Kings, a Hollywood film that I reviewed a few years back, with its family of cops above the law. Confessions of a Dog is what you would get if you took out all the Hollywood glitz and glamour, the exaggerated action, and the star performances, and instead set that story in a real world, without automatic weapons, stunts, and a high body count. Confessions of a Dog is police corruption in a real world setting, but your belief in that realism will continue to be tested through the film. This is corruption on an epic scale, a laughable scale, so deeply insinuated in the institutions, that to attempt to remove it would mean tearing down the institutions to start again from scratch. Yet the Japanese public, who these corrupt officials are supposed to serve, are practically complicit in maintaining the status quo, turning a blind eye.


Hassei Takeda is our introduction to this world, a surprisingly clean cop, who has just joined the force. That whiter than white nature is quickly stained when he gets headhunted by the chief of criminal investigations. Undeserved perks lavishly bestowed quickly indebt him to his superiors, and it isn't long before they ask him to cut corners, and bend a few rules in his line of work. Soon he's just as corrupt as the rest of the force, and breaking the very laws that he swore to uphold. Really, when your boss of all people, decides to name your newborn daughter after his first sweetheart, that's when you should start looking for a new career. It's a thoroughly rotten system, where the police are really just uniformed mafia. They have quotas that they have to meet, and to do so, they engineer the criminality themselves, working hand in hand with the criminal gangs, to arrange for the appropriate number of small crimes to be solved, and in exchange leaving the Yakuza alone as they do their real, more lucrative work. The judicial system is complicit with the police, the mainstream media agree only to publish the reports that the police issue, and anyone attempting a little investigative reporting is quickly censured.


What do you do when the mainstream media is silent, and the tabloids ignored? You have to go it alone, as freelance reporter Rikio Kusama does, when he recruits photographer Kitamura to help him investigate the depth of the sickness in the police. It doesn't really matter that there isn't a suitable outlet for what they may discover. The police just don't want them sniffing around, and it falls to Takeda to warn Kusama away. The problem is that despite being co-opted into criminality, Takeda is still at heart a nice guy.


It all gets so difficult to believe. It's a corruption that permeates every level of the establishment, from the chief of police all the way down to the newest recruits. The first thing that happens is that they get paired up with someone who isn't exactly whiter than white, to introduce them to a low level of corruption, skimming a little from the local gangs, taking advantage of a pretty looking female. They then get their first taste of illegality; with Takeda it was the rapid promotion from the ranks, with one young recruit, it's the chance to get back at the bullies that tormented him in school. Even the backroom staff is on the fiddle, falsifying reports and expense claims. It's laughable, it's ridiculous, it's just so far-fetched. And then you watch the extras, see the interviews with the director, and learn that while the film wasn't officially banned in Japan, the police reacted to the film by ignoring it completely, not wanting to give it the oxygen of publicity. Yet most independent cinemas in Japan found reasons not to screen it. It makes you wonder why. Then you also see in the extras that the film was based on the investigative work of journalist Yu Terasawa, and that most of the incidents that happen in the film, have indeed happened for real. Gen Takahashi calls this film a model of actual events.


Perhaps it's because of this that there are a couple of moments that take us out of the film into complete theatricality, when Takeda encounters events that shatter his worldview and he has to find a way of dealing with them. A spotlight focuses on him, and he gives a soliloquy, trying to redefine how he fits into this world, tries to explain his actions. These moments serve to take the viewer out of the film, but given the relentless, single note depiction of systemic corruption, these are almost like counterpoints to remind the viewer that this is after all, just a movie. But given the source material, and the context of the story, it really isn't just a movie. Confessions of a Dog isn't a film that strains your suspension of disbelief, but it is a film that you just don't want to believe. Similarly, it's not an easy film to like; yet it is a surprisingly easy film to watch. One thing is for sure; it's a film that will make you think.