Bias, here in the form of graffiti, is a major theme of Kintsukurio, an independent docudrama. (Screenshot from Vimeo.)
By WOODY WEINGARTEN
Two ordinary families quietly cringe and join a line to the unknown. They don’t know it yet, but they’ll be penned in and guarded without formal charges or a trial, their activities monitored and severely limited, their private items minimized. For years to come.
Kintsukurio, a sympathetic Ikeibi Films docudrama that personalizes the Japanese internment in the United States during World War II, traces those families and their struggles — struggles against a bias that doesn’t disappear after they’re released.
Roughly 120,000 Japanese were interned in America during World War II by the U.S. government.
In a sense, Donald Trump’s current administration is mirroring the horror of sub-humanizing and incarcerating large blocks of people that the government or his allies are afraid of or simply don’t like. Specifically, in this case, by confining hundreds of thousands of undocumented, brown-skinned people it seeks to illegally deport as soon as possible.
Admittedly, the Nazis did even worse. They imprisoned millions of Jews in various countries, cramming them into the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and other forced-labor camps — killing six million innocents, all told.
Confusion is prevalent in long lines that lead to incarceration. (Screenshot from Vimeo.)
Kintsukurio humanizes the Japanese prisoners by focusing on the two familiar family units (including love, hope, and disagreements), albeit with actors who are sometimes stiff. It features thespians most likely unseen before, so the sense of reality becomes easier. Verbal cliches, rather than stopping a viewer, help that sense as well. So does the knowledge that the fictional story virtually replicates real-life tales.
After defining the title as “the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold” to make it stronger, which becomes an overt metaphor, it tracks them from being typical family- and legacy-oriented homebodies through their unpleasant time in confinement (although they can play baseball and dance).
Following their “repatriation,” they discover that anti-Japanese discrimination follows them wherever they go.
The independent feature, which was written and directed by Kerwin Berk and runs two hours and 18 minutes, sharply contrasts a young Japanese male who serves in the U.S. military with those in internment — a soldier who suffers from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, without that diagnosis being available.
In the final analysis, the film is an exercise in determining identity, specifically what it means to be a Japanese American — or, in fact, an anything American.
Kintsukurio isn’t screening in any local theaters, but a Vimeo can be found via www.asianamericanmovies.com
Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.comand https://vitalitypress.com. His books include Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer, aimed at male caregivers; MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of his newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that he co-authored with his then 8-year-old granddaughter.
