What to Watch (or Not): Ballard, Perfect Days, Billy Joel
Ballard (Amazon Prime) — I liked Bosch, so I had high hopes for this spinoff. The core premise—a team of misfits solving cold cases—is solid enough but the writing is unimaginative and lazy. In one scene, Ballard is told she needs to get a confession. We expect clever interrogation tactics. Instead, she walks in and bluntly asks, “Did you shoot Yulia Kravetz?”
Maggie Q is charismatic but the writers don’t write for her. She’s exceptionally slim, for example, yet the show repeatedly asks us to believe she can physically overpower men twice her size. I have no problem with that in a superhero movie but it’s off putting in a show that pretends to be grounded and gritty. If you’re casting someone with that physique, write her as sharper, more cunning, more insightful—not as a female stand-in for macho Bosch.
Worst of all is the ending: a killer reveal that comes out of nowhere, with no foreshadowing or internal logic. The writers don’t understand the difference between a twist and a cheat. Disappointing.
Perfect Days (Hulu, Amazon) — a 2023 Wim Wenders film that won the award at Cannes for “works of artistic quality which witnesses to the power of film to reveal the mysterious depths of human beings through what concerns them, their hurts and failings as well as their hopes.” The film follows the life of Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho, who won at Cannes for best actor) as he cleans public toilets in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. You will not be surprised to learn that the movie proceeds slowly. The toilets and the cleaning are the most interesting part of the first hour! I say this not as critique–I liked Perfect Days and the toilets really are interesting–only to illustrate the kind of movie that it is.
It helps to know the following from a useful Sean Burns review:
Komorebi is a Japanese word for the dancing shadow patterns created by sunlight shining through the rustling leaves of trees. There’s no equivalent term in English, and it’s tough to imagine any American caring enough to come up with one. But every afternoon on his lunch break, Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) takes a picture of the komorebi from his favorite park bench using an old Olympus film camera. Back at his apartment, he’s got boxes and boxes of black-and-white photos of the same spot, every one of them unique. Subtle shifts of the light and swaying branches in the breeze make similar snapshots strikingly different every time. Indeed, the whole concept behind komorebi is that it can exist only in a moment, never to be repeated. “Next time is next time,” Hirayama’s fond of saying, “Now is now.”
Although I would disagree with Burns slightly because there is an English term for something related to komorebi and that is crown shyness, the phenomena where trees grow in such a way that their branches keep from touching one another creating a canopy of closeness yet also distance. Indeed, I would argue that crown shyness expresses more of what the movie is about than komorebi.
A key question that divides reviewers is whether Hirayama is happy or content. The standard interpretation is that he has found, as Davis puts it, “beauty in the routine,” stopping to smell the roses. Yes, that is one aspect, but the routine is also a narcotic for the lost. Hirayama is estranged from his family. Barkeeps like him but all his relationships are superficial. He plays a game with a “friend” he never meets—distance and disconnection are everywhere.. In two scenes he finds meaning and joy in looking after a child but in both these scenes the child’s mother quickly rips the child away. Hirayama’s work partner disappears in the second half of the film. He almost makes connections with three women but in each case, crown shyness intervenes. He takes pride in his work but is operating well below his ability. He is isolated, alone, and without someone else to share a life, he is incomplete.
There are great scenes and music in Perfect Days, including a beautiful scene in which a Japanese hostess (Sayuri Ishikawa) sings House of the Rising Sun.
Billy Joel: And So It Goes (HBO) — 52nd Street was one of my favorite albums as a youth and it was fun to revisit his career. Billy Joel’s first wife, Elizabeth Weber, was the muse for many of his early songs including Big Shot and Stiletto:
She cuts you hard, she cuts you deepShe’s got so much skillShe’s so fascinatingThat you’re still there waitingWhen she comes back for the killYou’ve been slashed in the faceYou’ve been left there to bleedYou want to run awayBut you know you’re gonna stay‘Cause she gives you what you need
She is indeed, fascinating! Wow. Even today, she comes across as formidable.
I thought a lot about genetics while watching And So It Goes. Joel’s father was a classical musician, though his only notable comment on Billy’s playing was to knock him unconscious for taking too much liberty with a piece. The father left when Billy was eight. Not much nurture. Years later, they reunite in Vienna—where Joel discovers he has a half-brother, Alexander Joel, a successful pianist and conductor.
Joel grew up poor, but his paternal grandfather had been a wealthy Jewish businessman in Germany until the Nazis forced him out. His mother, Rosalind, was also musical, but her primary inheritance may have been bipolar disorder. Joel’s mental health struggles are never explicitly named in the documentary, but the signs are everywhere: an early suicide attempt, alcoholism, repeated motorcycle and car crashes of a self-destructive nature. The emotional cycles also help explain the pattern of intense, short-lived marriages to beautiful and accomplished women—Weber, Christie Brinkley, Katie Lee, and Alexis Roderick. In his highs, he was irresistible. In his lows, unbearable. He goes to extremes.
Critics didn’t always love Joel’s music, but his catalog has become part of the American songbook. Proof of something Tyler and I often discuss, the power of simply keeping going.