Japan has always fascinated me. The food, people, streets, stores, films – everything. With millions of people living in Tokyo alone, the country is teeming with varying cultures and beliefs. Hell Bento is a 1995 short documentary directed by Anna Broinowski and Andrew Sully, that covers some of the different subcultures inside Japan’s underground culture.
This film does not focus at all on mainstream culture, so instead of looping postcard shots of Mount Fuji and Shibuya Crossing, we instead see the greenrooms of underground Japanese bands, and interviews with punks and sex workers. The only time I’ve really experienced this part of Japan, is when I read Ryu Murakami’s In The Miso Soup, which follows characters in the Shibuya underground nightlife scene. I remember being really surprised to see what lay beneath the country’s very sterile mainstream culture.
Even though the film is a documentary, it’s very stylised and shows a great deal of talent from the filmmakers. I loved the footage from what seemed like old Shochiku or Toho B- Horror films, and the music from bands such as Guitar Wolf and the 5.6.7.8’s. Even though the film is shot on tape, it doesn’t necessarily feel dated, but instead is even more stylisation to the film. Both the footage, music and use of tape added a lot to the bizarre nature of the film, and cemented the tone set by the filmmakers.
The subjects that the film discussed was also very brave. In a typically very conservative country, it’s so refreshing for the documentary to cover topics such as HIV/AIDS, S&M culture and drugs, and their place in Japanese culture. The interviewees lament on how many of these topics are shunned by the mainstream, and that underground and mainstream culture are in completely separate worlds to each other.
The pacing of the film is almost like someone rapidly flicking through a series of television channels, occasionally stopping to rest and focus on an interview or band performance. While this can suit some people, and also means that the film covers a larger variety of people, I think that it also meant that it was spread quite thin. All of the information was fascinating, but I felt like they could’ve spent a bit more time on each subject. Considering the film is literally just under an hour long, it would be very difficult to fit that amount of detailed information into that space of time. I would love to have seen a director’s cut or extended version, as I imagine the filmmaker would have had an enormous amount of footage.
Hell Bento is a very entertaining and fun documentary, to watch at this year’s For Film’s Sake Festival. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves to travel to fascinating countries like Japan, or youth who want to find more documentaries to watch.
By Nick Ward.
Hell Bento
For Film’s Sake Film Festival
26th – 30 April
