Sitting in the sturdy (yet remarkably un-sturdy looking) orange chair in Andy’s condo on Saturday evening, I watched the first 6 minutes or so of The Gift unfold on the computer monitor in front of me. The Gift is a very complex and mesmerizing story in the Ashita cannon. It’s probably the story that the audience will have the most difficulty with because of its dark context and the open ended questions it presents to the viewer.
The story is about a couple whose marriage and relationship has deteriorated into estranged oblivion, The Gift is tail end culmination of that couple’s relationship. Toshio, who hasn’t see his wife, Meiko, for almost a year flies from Tokyo to Toronto to serve his wife with divorce papers—the only way Meiko would agree to a divorce is if her husband bring the papers himself. He catches a red eye from Tokyo and plans to leave the very same day. He is not pleased with having to hand-deliver the papers on the extravagant, eccentric whim of his wife. Meiko is pensive and distant as she sits in her apartment smoking her cigarette waiting for Toshio. When he arrives, they are cold and distant to each other, it’s almost hard to see that they were once in love except for the cold memories each brings up in the conversation. As they talk and each increasingly tries to smooth out the uncomfortable air between them, Toshio gets increasingly annoyed and Meiko gets increasingly vicious towards him. The raises as Toshio explodes into violence towards his wife, yet Meiko accepts his physical attack with sexual gratification and to further hurt him, she presents him with a gift… when he sees the gift Toshio is left viscerally emasculated and emotionally destroyed.
What a story indeed. Toshio is played by Toronto contemporary artist tomolennon, whose portrayal of the alpha male on the verge of a nervous breakdown is stunningly accurate. I found his ability to portray the annoyance, bitterness and scorn of Toshio quite remarkable. The part of Meiko was played by Yukiko J. Tamaki with equal brilliance. The sadness and confusion she brought to the character were powerfully shocking. The conflicting nature of Meiko will leave the audience much like they leave Toshio and Yukiko’s ability to do was frightening in stature. In watching Andy’s early cuts of the scene, the powerful acting of both Yukiko and tomolennon rings true to the nature of the script.
When I was watching the early cut of the scene on Saturday night I felt very uncomfortable—which is good, there is a lot of tension in the room with Meiko and Toshio and everything in the early pointed to that tension and I really felt the impact of the acting, camera and editing. Watching The Gift was like remembering a bad memory, which is essentially what I wanted the feeling to be.
To me, while writing and making The Gift, I had to visit some very dark parts of the human soul (I know my actors had to go there as well). Relationships are always very interesting, yet there is almost something obsessive about how they end. In retrospect it always seems silly later on, but in the heat of the moment—that very fine, precise moment when you know the relation is dead it’s a rather catastrophic feeling. I’ve been through my fare share of relationship based issues and I’ve had relationships and friendships end and I wanted to capture that feeling—that empty anger people feel at the end. I think studying that empty anger is important, because it then when we cease being the logical free thinking human beings that we are and we revert to an instinctual sate of attack and defense. The main reason that I was uncomfortable watching this scene, is the same reason I was uncomfortable writing it; I don’t want to accept that I can one day be in that situation. Furthermore I want to completely deny ever feeling that angry or vulnerable. Human emotion is completely brilliant and baffling all at the same time. I think that the honesty in The Gift is the strong point in the story. Watching these characters fall apart is a reminder of how fragile and tragic our lives can be.
My greatest inspiration when writing the gift was the brilliant film Kramer vs. Kramer as well as Michael Mann’s urban epic Heat. These films are all shocking reminders of humanity and relationships going straight to hell. The characters in these films, much like the characters in The Gift are not characters any of us want to be, but in the same sense, they are characters that we may turn into. Of all the stories in Ashita, The Gift was the quietest to shoot. What do I mean by that? Well, it was the one with a closed set. On set were the actors, Izumi my producer and wife—she was on set as my only crew, and me. The social interaction on set was minimal and the shooting long and intense. Even the rehearsals were done separately. Jenny and tomolennon were rehearsing separately as to deliberately not see each other to increase the distance of their characters.
In the end, The Gift asks: Where did life go? Why did it have to run away? Why do things have to change?
The story is about a couple whose marriage and relationship has deteriorated into estranged oblivion, The Gift is tail end culmination of that couple’s relationship. Toshio, who hasn’t see his wife, Meiko, for almost a year flies from Tokyo to Toronto to serve his wife with divorce papers—the only way Meiko would agree to a divorce is if her husband bring the papers himself. He catches a red eye from Tokyo and plans to leave the very same day. He is not pleased with having to hand-deliver the papers on the extravagant, eccentric whim of his wife. Meiko is pensive and distant as she sits in her apartment smoking her cigarette waiting for Toshio. When he arrives, they are cold and distant to each other, it’s almost hard to see that they were once in love except for the cold memories each brings up in the conversation. As they talk and each increasingly tries to smooth out the uncomfortable air between them, Toshio gets increasingly annoyed and Meiko gets increasingly vicious towards him. The raises as Toshio explodes into violence towards his wife, yet Meiko accepts his physical attack with sexual gratification and to further hurt him, she presents him with a gift… when he sees the gift Toshio is left viscerally emasculated and emotionally destroyed.
What a story indeed. Toshio is played by Toronto contemporary artist tomolennon, whose portrayal of the alpha male on the verge of a nervous breakdown is stunningly accurate. I found his ability to portray the annoyance, bitterness and scorn of Toshio quite remarkable. The part of Meiko was played by Yukiko J. Tamaki with equal brilliance. The sadness and confusion she brought to the character were powerfully shocking. The conflicting nature of Meiko will leave the audience much like they leave Toshio and Yukiko’s ability to do was frightening in stature. In watching Andy’s early cuts of the scene, the powerful acting of both Yukiko and tomolennon rings true to the nature of the script.
When I was watching the early cut of the scene on Saturday night I felt very uncomfortable—which is good, there is a lot of tension in the room with Meiko and Toshio and everything in the early pointed to that tension and I really felt the impact of the acting, camera and editing. Watching The Gift was like remembering a bad memory, which is essentially what I wanted the feeling to be.
To me, while writing and making The Gift, I had to visit some very dark parts of the human soul (I know my actors had to go there as well). Relationships are always very interesting, yet there is almost something obsessive about how they end. In retrospect it always seems silly later on, but in the heat of the moment—that very fine, precise moment when you know the relation is dead it’s a rather catastrophic feeling. I’ve been through my fare share of relationship based issues and I’ve had relationships and friendships end and I wanted to capture that feeling—that empty anger people feel at the end. I think studying that empty anger is important, because it then when we cease being the logical free thinking human beings that we are and we revert to an instinctual sate of attack and defense. The main reason that I was uncomfortable watching this scene, is the same reason I was uncomfortable writing it; I don’t want to accept that I can one day be in that situation. Furthermore I want to completely deny ever feeling that angry or vulnerable. Human emotion is completely brilliant and baffling all at the same time. I think that the honesty in The Gift is the strong point in the story. Watching these characters fall apart is a reminder of how fragile and tragic our lives can be.
My greatest inspiration when writing the gift was the brilliant film Kramer vs. Kramer as well as Michael Mann’s urban epic Heat. These films are all shocking reminders of humanity and relationships going straight to hell. The characters in these films, much like the characters in The Gift are not characters any of us want to be, but in the same sense, they are characters that we may turn into. Of all the stories in Ashita, The Gift was the quietest to shoot. What do I mean by that? Well, it was the one with a closed set. On set were the actors, Izumi my producer and wife—she was on set as my only crew, and me. The social interaction on set was minimal and the shooting long and intense. Even the rehearsals were done separately. Jenny and tomolennon were rehearsing separately as to deliberately not see each other to increase the distance of their characters.
In the end, The Gift asks: Where did life go? Why did it have to run away? Why do things have to change?
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