Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC, 16:9 (720x480) VBR | 01:21:40 | 4.63 Gb
Audio: English/Japanese AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps | Subs: English (& HoH), Spanish
Genre: Documentary, Art History, Biography
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC, 16:9 (720x480) VBR | 01:21:40 | 4.63 Gb
Audio: English/Japanese AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps | Subs: English (& HoH), Spanish
Genre: Documentary, Art History, Biography
In 1972, Ushio Shinohara was a 40-year-old artist who had been living in New York City for three years and had won a small but distinguished following for what he called his "boxing paintings," created by dipping gloves in paint and literally pounding at the canvas. Ushio met Noriko Shinohara, a 19-year-old art student who had just arrived in the United States; the two fell into a relationship that was destined to become permanent when Noriko became pregnant a few months later. Four decades on, Ushio and Noriko are still together, but their relationship is not always a healthy one; he's an alcoholic who dominates the marriage and is clearly resentful that his career in art has not been more successful, especially since Noriko has caught the attention of critics with her own work, which uses comic-style images to express messages of female empowerment inspired by her own life. Filmmaker Zachary Heinzerling offers an emotionally intense look into the sometimes volatile balance between two talented but combative personalities in the documentary Cutie and the Boxer. The film received its world premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.Synopsis by Mark Deming, Allmovie.com
Zachary Heinzerling's feature-length documentary gathers force slowly, but with such wisdom and calm mastery that I found myself stunned, toward the end, by the beautiful vastness of it all.
The subject is, at its simplest, a troubled marriage that has somehow lasted for 40 years. Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, both born in Japan, live on the edge of poverty in a second-floor Brooklyn walkup. He is 80 years old, an artist of limited talent who had a passing flirtation with fame back in the 1960s as an action painter; his specialty was applying paint to canvas with boxing gloves. She is 59, an artist in her own right who has subordinated her abundant talent to her traditional Japanese role of supporting and serving her husband.
Yet nothing is simple in Mr. Heinzerling's debut film. The marriage serves both as canvas and frame for a complex story, enriched by film and video clips from the couple's past, that's about more things than you can count while you're engrossed in it—romantic illusion, self-delusion, reluctant devotion, passive aggression, naked anger, implacable perseverance, the fateful lure of the bohemian life, the transformational power of art and, against the longest and cruelest of odds, enduring love.
The title comes from a series of cartoon-style drawings that Noriko has been turning out with a mixture of inspiration and desperation. Witty, bold and bawdy, they use surrogate characters—Cutie for her, The Boxer for Ushio—to turn her turbulent life into vibrant art. They're so clearly appealing that feminists may cheer while movie fans may think of "A Star Is Born," with Noriko on the way up after all these decades of struggle, and Ushio headed inexorably down. (The visual pleasures of the film, which the filmmaker shot elegantly, include charming little animations of Noriko's wall-size cartoons. The musical pleasures flow from Yasuaki Shimizu's remarkable score, which includes a Bach cello suite as you've never heard it before.)
What's equally wonderful, though—maybe even more so—is that Mr. Heinzerling also brings us around to Ushio's corner. Yes, he's a drunk and a petty tyrant, an ex-popinjay who preened in a flickering spotlight and talked big about artistic accomplishments that seem smaller with each passing year. But one of the heartbreaking revelations of those early film and video clips is that he knew himself to be mediocre, and was haunted all along by the prospect of failure. (One of the countless questions that the story raises is whether Noriko's failure to confront her husband during all those years deprived him of a chance to grow.) Ushio at 80 is still at it, like a punch-drunk fighter, except that he's remarkably strong for his age and unbowed by bitter experience. Seen from one angle, he's a hopeless fool. Seen from another, he's a figure of gallantry. Viewed in its entirety, "Cutie and the Boxer" is more than a great documentary. It's a great film.Review by Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
IMDB 7,2/10 from 2 940 users
Wiki
Director: Zachary Heinzerling
Writer: Zachary Heinzerling
Cast: Ushio Shinohara, Noriko Shinohara
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
Special Features:
Deleted Scenes:
- "Daily Routines" (2:56)
- "I Don't Look Back" (1:39)
- "In the Swimming Pool" (2:00)
- "The Fish" (1:37)
- "Sleeping Arrangements" (1:13)
- "Shinohara The Last Artist" vintage film (23:17)
- Q&A at the Sundance Film Festival (8:06)
- "Action is Art: A Study of Ushio Shinohara's Boxing Painting" featurette (3:39)
All thanks to original releaser
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