Interview 052307KW

Illness and his own life perspective

Watanabe plays a successful businessman Masayuki Saeki who suffers from presenile Alzheimer's desease, and together with Kanako Higuchi who plays his wife Emiko, the story depicts the reality, grief, and hope for life of Saeki.

"We all know the name Alzheimer's desease, but its reality is in fact not well undersood. We did a lot of research, and found out that it is quite a personal illness. Each patient has different symptoms, and they often reflects his/her personal history. I thought we probably can face the patients in better way if we understand these personal aspects and provide appropriate support. I wanted to make this film a small starting point for the desease to be better understood.

When we were working on the script, we were indecisive about whether to leave the scene where Saeki gets cheated in the pottery class. Then there was a real incident that a house reform company cheated seniors with dementia of millions of yens, so we decided to depict the harsh reality, showing the people in general who are not family or close friends would see the patients in such a manner."

If he sounds very enthusiastic, it is no coincident. After achieving a huge popularity with the leading role in a TV samurai drama "Dokuganryu Masamune", he was working on what was supposed to be his first leading role feature movie in 1989, when he was diagnosed as leukemia. Not only his acting career but also even his life was at stake. He successfuly came back from the treatment, but he battled the illness for a long time, and it deprived him of opportunities to work intensely on major works during his precious 30's. To this day, he still nurses Hepatitis C, which he contracted during the leukemia treatment, so he knows all the agony and frustration of the patients.

"Nobody likes illness, and many people think it is a loss in one's life, but that is not the only thing. Illness doesn't mean the end of the world. You are still a human, and your life goes on. I may have gotten this idea through my own illness experience.

Alzheimer or memory loss is often misunderstood by others, and it is natural that you are afraid of it. But you still have lots of people around you, like your family and friends, who continue to support you. I wanted people to feel through this film that even in such a difficult situation, you are still cherished by someone else. Ending of this movie may look sad, but I wanted to weave in a small hope, that maybe Saeki meets his wife newly again and start loving her all over again. I had a warm feeling when I read the original novel, 'ah, it is so precious to be alive.' So I wanted to deliver this tiny candle flame to the viewers as a producer."

It started in a bookstore in L.A.

Watanabe's encounter to this story, however, was rather coincidental.

"I have had a desire to play a real-size human like me, after some historical and large scale story or characters for some time. Then I met this novel coincidentally. One day I happened to go to a Japanese bookstore here (in Los Angeles) and picked up 5 books. The outline of the story sounded very serious and heavy, so I did not read it until the last, but once I started, I read it very quickly. It occured to me that this type of story should be made into a film. It is not what people want to see, but it is an important story. At that time, I was only thinking of playing the role, and not becoming a producer, but anyway, I started with what I want to make, and just ran with it."

Promoting like a flow of a river, Hollywood style

Producer's role was also his first experience in this film, and he says his Hollywood experience with Tom Cruise and Clint Eastwood helped him.

"During the filming, I did not feel much difference being a producer. Even as an actor, I usually talk to the director and help changing the script. But before and after the filming was totally new, and particularly after the filming. I put a lot of thoughts as to how the film should be made into a final product and how to deliver to the audience. It is such a heavy-themed movie, so if I just put it in front of moviegoers, they would probably avoid it as difficult and dark, just as I did for the original novel. So I came up with the idea of a promotion like a flow of a river. First we show it to patients and their families, then screened it for the association of caregivers, then to several big corporations, to be covered in their PR magazines. Finally we opened it to the media, such as film critics, TV, newspaper and magazines. We did it in pretty much a hand-made way, starting small and flow into a bigger river. I think it worked.

I can call it a Hollywood style. What I learned most in Hollywood is marketing, even more than acting or filming. I felt it was great that they cherish the film so much. There are so many ways to promote films as there are so many movies, but they all start from the love of the film. So in this movie, I was lucky to be involved from the start as a producer and could keep the same principal with the same love throughout the promotion."

So how would Americans receive this film?

"It has been shown here several time already, and the reaction is almost the same as in Japan. The only thing is that for people who are more familiar with Hollywood-style movies, the ending may be too tragic, so some say they wanted to see a bit happier ending. But the depiction of the real human's feeling during the film is all the same.

I want the people of my age to see this film. It was the same thing in Japan. Men in their 40-50's don't watch movies, probably because they are too busy, but I wanted them to see it, then flow out to other generations."

A Precious Night

And at the end of the interview, he recalls his precious night with Shuju Otaki, a veteran actor who plays a pottery teacher in Saeki's youth, with so much emotion.

"Otaki-san is 82 years old, so at first I was a bit concerned of his health during the filming in a hot summer night. But when I watched his live-action stage one day, he was so quick in talking and acting, so I thought 'sorry!' (laughs)

Anyway, that was such a special night for me. We became real pottery teacher and Saeki. We ate baked onions and drank hot water instead of real sake (rice wine), but it felt like everything I ate, drank or saw was so fresh and was giving me life. So I did not want to leave the location. We finished filming at 2am, and then we were supposed to go back to our hotel and rest before coming back there for early morning scene. But I asked the staff to leave me there and spent the night in a car, then started filming again in the morning, with all the dirt on my clothes. I was enjoying it that much."