AND THE MUD SHIP SAILS AWAY playing at JAPAN CUTS

Takashi (Kiyohiko Shibukawa)

And the Mud Ship Sails Away / Soshite Dorobune wa Yuku

Directed by Hirobumi Watanabe

Japan, 2013, 88 minutes

When: Saturday, July 11, 2015 @ 12:30 pm

Where: Japan Society

333 East 47th Street, NYC

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North American Premiere

This comedy centers on the "life" of Takashi Hirayama, who lives in the small town of Otawara with his elderly grandmother (played to hilarious effect by director Watanabe's actual 96-year-old grandmother). Nearing middle age, unemployed and with no apparent interest in ever working, Yashashi could be a poster man-child for the inveterate slacker.

Hiromi, Takashi's ex-wife, detests him for his uselessness and not surprisingly refuses to allow him to see his young daughter, Yoko. His only friend seems to be Shohei (Kaori Iida), with whom he argues over whether Takashi is 36 or 40 years old. Their live are so empty that sometimes at night they spy on couples having "car sex."

Yuka (Ayasa Takahashi)

Takashi, when he's not napping, is fond of playing pachinko or video games. At one game parlor he is repeatedly approached by a shady character who offers him 600,000 yen (a not inconsiderable sum) to go to South East Asia and "pick up some stuff," a euphemism for acting as a drug mule.

Takashi's life gets somewhat complicated with the unexpected arrival of Yuka (Ayasa Takahashi), a young woman from Tokyo. She has come looking for Osama Hirayama, Takashi's father who died two years ago. She claims that Osama was also her father, making her Takashi's half-sister.

Takashi's grandmother

The film is largely shot in black-and-white, although there is an Anti-Nuke segment in color. Somewhere a bit past the mid-way point, Takashi goes on a trip and the film seems to shift into another gear entirely. This structure immediately brought to mind Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970), which also abruptly and unexpectedly shifts gears, although the films are quite different in nature. 

Droll, dry and deadpan, And the Mud Ship Sails Away, is definitely well worth seeing.

AsianCineFest Rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars; highly recommended.

This screening of And the Mud Ship Sails Away is part of the ninth annual JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film.