All God’s Children Can Dance 2 stars
Jason Lew, Joan Chen, Tzi Ma
Directed by Robert Logevall
Shows again June 11 at 3 p.m.
Short stories don’t plod.
But movies sometimes do.
The film adaptation by director Robert Logevall of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami's short story “All God’s Children Can Dance” is a plodding translation to the screen.
Murakami is a deft, disciplined, lyrical artist. Logevall is not.
There are very few brilliant short stories that are made into brilliant movies. A Julio Cortazar short story that was made by Michelangelo Antonioni into Blow-Up (1966) is one; but it is a rarity.
The next to last line of Murakami’s story is, “A gust of wind set the leaves of grass to dancing and celebrated the grass’s song before it died.”
How do you put that on the screen? The answer is, you don’t, or at least Logevall couldn’t. A conventional shot of a tracer going through the sky doesn’t do it.
All God’s Children Can Dance is the story of search for identity. Kengo (newcomer Lew), a young Asian-American, has been raised without a father, so his mother (Chen) has insisted he is the son of God. This is done less blatantly in Murakami’s story.
As a boy Kengo becomes a member of a religious sect, which he eventually leaves. Then he goes on a search when he sees a mysterious figure who may be his father.
Chen and Lew are adequate, but the actor who provides the most much-needed humanity is Tzi Ma, who portrays Kengo’s mentor.
Logevall is not served well by his screenwriter Scott Coffey, who blunders through Murakami.
Coffey changes all the names from the original story, and he relocates the story from Asagaya, Japan, to LA. But, most damaging of all, he changes the mood, unity and sensibility of the story.
His joke at the end about a big cock takes material out of context and makes a crass joke of Murakami.
A bad screenplay of a great story is a shame.
Logevall is not strong on context or he wouldn’t have cut the earlier scene he shot of Kengo’s frog-dancing, which foreshadows the climactic dance.
Logevall, in his initial feature, can be an able filmmaker—All God’s Children Can Dance is visually effective.
But, Robert, in the future avoid short stories, and get a new screenwriter.