mchenry-crisis.org Chapter 268 Filming wrapped
Chapter 268 Filming wrapped
Chapter 268 Filming wrapped
The crew of "Shall We Dance?" officially began filming at a real location in Tokyo.
Shin Kitahara, Akina Nakamori, Rie Miyazawa, and Nanako Matsushima and Takako Matsu, who were only there for cameo roles, all joined the crew. There was no grand opening ceremony or the usual flamboyant noise from the outside world; under the direction of director Masayuki Suo, the entire crew quickly got into work mode.
According to the filming plan, the first scene to be filmed was the most crucial scene in the entire film, which was also the first major scene where the fates of the male and female protagonists intersected.
The photography studio was set up as a slightly old-fashioned ballroom dance classroom with a strong Showa-era feel. The wooden floor had a patina from years of wear, and yellowed ballroom dance posters were pasted on the walls.
Kitahara Shin changed into a slightly oversized, outdated gray suit and carried a dull black briefcase.
The moment he walked out of the dressing room and stood in front of the camera, the staff on set couldn't help but hold their breath.
His sharpness, confidence, and the aura of a high-ranking person were completely stripped away.
His back was slightly hunched, his shoulders slumped limply, and his eyes revealed a deep weariness and numbness. This was the quintessential image of Sugiyama Shohei, a middle-aged Japanese office worker whose soul had been drained by mortgage payments and the monotonous grind of daily work.
Action!
Accompanied by the crisp sound of the clapperboard, the camera slowly zooms in.
As usual, Sugiyama Shohei finished his stagnant workday and dragged his heavy steps off the crowded commuter train. His life was already set in stone: a suburban detached house with a mortgage to pay off for decades, a wife who followed the routine, and a daughter in school. Everything was perfect, so perfect that it left him feeling suffocated and empty.
Until one evening, he sat on the tram, numbly looking out the window.
The camera then pans to a second-floor window of a dilapidated building next to the railway tracks.
Akina Nakamori plays Kishikawa Mai, a dance teacher, who stands quietly by the window. She wears a form-fitting black leotard that accentuates the graceful lines honed by years of dance training. Her hands rest on the windowsill, her gaze fixed on the distant trams rushing by. Her eyes are unfocused, filled only with an indescribable sense of loss and desolation.
That was because after suffering a crushing defeat at the highest level of the Blackpool Dance Festival and being abandoned by his dance partner, he was heartbroken and completely lost faith in dance and life.
Sitting on the tram, Sugiyama Shohei saw this beautiful woman, as if imprisoned in a glass box, through the dim night and the tram window. In just one glance, her aloof and melancholic figure was like a pebble that had crashed into the stagnant depths of his heart.
In order to figure out what the woman was looking at, and to find a spark of respite in this suffocating life, this honest and simple man, as if possessed, walked up the narrow, dimly lit staircase and pushed open the door of the ballroom dance studio.
Under director Masayuki Suo's cinematic language, the color tone undergoes a noticeable shift here.
The scenes of Sugiyama Shohei at the company and on the train are all in a cold, gray-blue tone, oppressive and dull. But when he pushes open the door, hears the melodious waltz music coming from the gramophone, and sees the crowd dancing on the wooden floor, the filter of the whole scene is instantly covered with a warm, bright orange.
Akina turned around and looked at the uneasy middle-aged man who was still clutching his briefcase tightly. Her eyes regained their professional indifference.
"Excuse me, are you here to register for the beginner's class?" Her voice was flat, and she handed over a registration form in a businesslike manner.
Kitahara Nobuyoshi perfectly captured that awkwardness of "being attracted to beauty" coupled with the timidity typical of middle-aged men. He hurriedly avoided Akina's gaze, stammered a reply, and signed his name on the registration form.
Takako Matsu and Nanako Nanako also make an appearance as background figures in this scene. They play lively young students in a dance studio, dressed in brightly colored tutus, chattering excitedly about the steps, injecting a vibrant energy into the otherwise somewhat somber space. This energetic atmosphere contrasts sharply with the lifeless, corporate-weary demeanor of the male protagonist.
The dance studio scenes were filmed very smoothly. The push and pull between the two, Akina's aloofness in the early stages, and Kitahara Shin's comical mistakes in stepping off the beat during his dance lessons were all perfectly captured by the camera.
However, when the shooting schedule was turned to the next page and the scene changed to Sugiyama Shohei's house, the atmosphere of the entire crew suddenly changed.
Rie Miyazawa changed into a simple house apron early in the morning and casually tied her hair back. She plays the wife of Shohei Sugiyama, a traditional housewife who is flawless and manages the household perfectly.
The lighting technician removed the warm, soft light from the dance studio and replaced it with the stark, cold overhead light of household fluorescent lamps.
The camera was set up at the end of the narrow restaurant corridor, silently watching the family with a fixed long lens, similar to a spy camera.
Shin Kitahara plays Sugiyama Shohei, who, dragging his aching legs from secretly practicing dance, pushes open his door late at night.
"You're back." Rie came out of the kitchen and took his briefcase and suit jacket with practiced ease.
Her face wore a gentle smile, without any accusation or complaint.
"Yeah, I worked a little overtime today." Kitahara Shin changed into slippers, lowered his head, and lied in a dry voice.
On the table sat miso soup that had been reheated twice, along with simple side dishes. The family of three sat at the small table, the only background noise being the monotonous ticking of the clock on the wall and the occasional soft sound of chopsticks hitting the porcelain bowl.
There were no arguments, no domestic violence, not even a single loud accusation. But it was precisely this extreme politeness, this deathly silence of repeating the same conversations every day, that, through the lens, permeated a deep-seated sense of oppression.
Rie placed a bowl of rice in front of Kitahara Shin and casually asked, "You seem to be coming home later than usual lately. Is work that busy?"
As she spoke, she continued serving food to her daughter without even looking up. But this seemingly casual, everyday inquiry carried an invisible pressure, like an impenetrable net tightly gripping the male protagonist's neck.
Kitahara Shin paused slightly, took a bite of rice, and mumbled a reply: "It's almost the end of the year, and the pressure to meet performance targets is immense."
Rie didn't press the matter. She calmly cleared the dishes, but as she turned to walk into the kitchen, her gaze lingered for half a second on her husband's shirt collar. There, a faint, lingering scent of perfume, not belonging to this home, remained.
In the original script, the wife discovered the scent of perfume on her husband and the occasional smell of dance floor wax on his shirt, leading her to mistakenly believe that her honest and law-abiding husband was having an affair. She eventually hired a private investigator to follow and investigate him.
Rie portrayed the wife in a state of doubt with remarkable depth. She didn't resort to crying,闹事, or threatening suicide; instead, while washing the dishes, her movements were slightly heavier than usual, the sound of the running water particularly jarring in the quiet house. She precisely conveyed the panic and suspicion of a perfect housewife suddenly discovering that her carefully constructed fortress of life might be collapsing from within through her eyes and body language.
Behind the monitor, Masayuki Suo watched this suffocating family drama and silently nodded.
On one side is a brightly colored dance studio, full of physical contact and musical rhythms, with a cool and charming female teacher and waltzes that can make people temporarily forget the troubles of reality; on the other side is a pale and quiet home, where you can only hear the ticking of the clock, with a virtuous wife who is unable to enter your heart and heavy responsibilities that must be borne.
With an extremely restrained and realistic performance, Nobukazu Kitahara, Akina, and Rie tear open the core dramatic conflict of the film—"the struggle of ordinary people facing the stagnant pool of life, the desire to break free yet the inability to change it"—and lay it raw and bloody before the camera.
As filming progressed, the movie's plot reached a crucial turning point.
In the dance studio, Sugiyama Shohei's little "lust at first sight" thoughts were quickly and ruthlessly exposed by the female lead, Kishikawa Mai.
This scene was filmed in the corridor of the dance studio. Akina Nakamori, wearing a fitted trench coat, exuded an icy aura. Looking at the middle-aged man trying to invite her to dinner, her tone was stiff and wary: "If you think that paying tuition means you can just ask your teacher out to dinner, you're sorely mistaken. If you have such frivolous intentions, please don't come back again."
Kitahara Shin perfectly portrayed the embarrassment, awkwardness, and shame of an adult being exposed to their true feelings. His face flushed red, his lips twitched a few times, but in the end, he said nothing and turned away in a disheveled state.
Normally, a man whose pride has been wounded would choose to give up. But Sugiyama Shohei did not. To prove that he was not the kind of frivolous jerk, and also because of the influence of his eccentric classmates (such as a bald colleague who wore a wig and danced Latin dance wildly, and an obese but incredibly confident aunt), he actually started to seriously pursue ballroom dancing.
The next scene shows Sugiyama Shohei alone on a subway platform late at night, clumsily but earnestly practicing basic waltz steps to the rhythm of the train's rumble.
In this pantomime performance, Kitahara Shin demonstrated top-notch physical control. Despite possessing exceptional athletic ability, he deliberately disrupted his body's coordination, creating a comical effect of stiff limbs but devout attitude.
Under the guidance of Kitahara Shin, Nakamori Akina also experienced a breakthrough in her acting skills.
As a singer without formal training, Akina often needs a long time to prepare her emotions when facing the camera. But Kitahara Shin understood her perfectly. When filming scenes between the two, Kitahara Shin completely took control of the rhythm of the entire shot. He used pauses in his eyes, slight tilts of his body, and even the frequency of his breathing to guide Akina to give the most natural reactions.
It feels like a real duet, where the male steps steadily control the direction, and the female steps simply need to confidently surrender herself.
In the story, Kishikawa Mai stands on the overpass, silently watching Sugiyama Shohei practicing his dance steps diligently below the platform.
Akina leaned against the railing of the overpass, watching the honest man below, sweating profusely, repeating the monotonous steps over and over again. Under Kitahara Shin's highly infectious performance guidance, Akina didn't need to deliberately "act." She recalled the purity of her own early days of ballet, and the ice that had frozen in her eyes because of the competition defeat began to melt quietly.
She suddenly realized that the reason she had lost her passion for dance was because she had treated it as a rigid tool for competing for fame and fortune; while this clumsy man in front of her was enjoying the vitality that dance itself brought in the simplest way.
At this moment, the two people achieved a profound redemption and exchange of souls.
Then, the plot moves to the biggest climax of the entire film: the amateur ballroom dance competition.
The production crew booked a large indoor stadium, with over a hundred extras. Colorful spotlights shone on the polished wooden floor, and energetic ballroom music echoed throughout the venue.
-
This was the most brilliant moment in Sugiyama Shohei's otherwise bleak life. Dressed in a sharp tailcoat, his hair meticulously combed, he danced gracefully with his slightly plump dance partner in the center of the dance floor.
The camera gave Kitahara Shin a close-up of his face.
That face, which used to always look numb and tired at home and at the office, was now radiant. His eyes were bright, and a genuine, joyful smile played on his lips. Every spin, every glide, was filled with a renewed love for life.
At the same moment, at the highest point of the audience.
The wife, played by Rie Miyazawa, secretly arrives at the scene with the help of a private investigator.
Rie gripped the strap of her handbag tightly, her gaze piercing through the throng of people, fixed on the familiar yet unfamiliar man in the center of the dance floor.
She had initially assumed her husband was having an affair, spending money on other women behind her back. But now, she saw a completely unfamiliar husband. The man who rarely spoke at home, so lifeless, was now smiling like a child in front of hundreds of people.
Rie released her shock, grievance, and deep sense of defeat entirely through her reddened eyes. Her husband hadn't betrayed their marriage, but behind her back, he had a happy world where she didn't need to participate at all, and where he even kept a close watch on her. This emotional alienation was more devastating for a traditional housewife than physical infidelity.
In the center of the dance floor, the music was reaching its climax.
Sugiyama Shohei and his dance partner completed a beautiful series of spins. Just as he looked up, his gaze, across the vast sea of people, unexpectedly met that of his wife in the audience.
The flow of time seemed to be infinitely stretched at this moment.
Kitahara Shin's smile froze instantly, his pupils contracting sharply. His previously fluid steps became chaotic, and he was like a child caught stealing candy, overwhelmed by immense panic and shame.
"Click."
In his panic, he tripped over his partner's long skirt. With a gasp, the two fell heavily to the ground in the middle of the dance floor, tumbling comically into a heap. The surrounding dancers stopped in their tracks, the referee blew his whistle, and all eyes on him felt like countless thorns.
Sugiyama Shohei scrambled to his feet, looking disheveled. He didn't reach for his dance partner, nor did he look at the judges. He didn't even dare to glance at his wife in the audience; instead, head bowed, he pushed through the crowd like a stray dog and fled.
Two worlds that he had deliberately separated collided and shattered at this lavish ball.
After the game went wrong, the film's plot entered its most depressing low point.
Sugiyama Shohei completely withdrew from the dance studio, packed his meticulously maintained dance shoes into a box, and locked them in the deepest part of his locker. He continued to go to get off work and come home on time every day, his life returning to that stagnant, gray-blue hue. Only this...
This time, he didn't even have the courage to look out the window at the dilapidated building from the tram.
But beneath this suffocating calm, a silent thaw was breaking in the relationship between the couple.
Rie Miyazawa portrayed the wife's psychological transformation from anger and confusion to eventual acceptance with subtlety and emotion. When she saw her husband completely give up dancing and once again become that silent, zombie-like middle-aged man at the dinner table, she finally understood that it wasn't betrayal.
That simple dance studio and that clumsy waltz were the lifeline her husband used to save himself from drowning in a mediocre life.
The movie ends with the most tear-jerking scene of the entire film.
Akina Nakamori plays Kishikawa Mai, who, while teaching Shohei Sugiyama, is deeply moved by his pure love for dance and completely overcomes the shadow of her competition defeat. She decides to make a comeback and travel to England to participate in the World Dance Championship. Before her departure, the dance studio holds a grand farewell party for her.
She sent Sugiyama a farewell letter, inviting him to dance one last time.
The scene shifts to the Sugiyama family's living room. Rie, watching her husband sitting hesitantly on the sofa, calmly takes out a crisply ironed suit jacket and hands it to him. She doesn't say anything sentimental; instead, with a gentle yet firm look, she gives this man the confidence to face his true feelings.
The final, crucial scene was officially filmed in a lavish banquet hall setting.
Kitahara Shin, dressed in a suit, ran wildly through the night streets, finally pushing open the heavy doors of the banquet hall just as the party was about to end.
Warm, orange light streamed through the crack in the door, illuminating his sweat-drenched face. He breathed heavily as he made way for the crowd, walking step by step until he reached Akina, who was preparing to leave dejectedly.
The entire room fell silent. Kitahara Shin, having composed himself, straightened up and looked at the woman before him with bright and sincere eyes.
He didn't say any unnecessary words, but simply bowed slightly, extended his right hand in a standard and gentlemanly manner, and extended an invitation with the simplest and most relevant line:
"Shall we dance? (May I have this dance?)"
Akina looked at the man before her, a thin layer of tears welling up in her eyes. She gave a relieved and beautiful smile, and gently placed her hand in his palm.
The melodious strains of a waltz filled the hall. The two danced gracefully in the center of the dance floor.
This dance does not include any high-difficulty moves that show off skills, nor does it deliberately create any ambiguous relationship between men and women.
That is, two souls who have been hurt and lost in the cruel reality, completed a mutual redemption with the purest and lightest steps.
Under Kitahara Shin's guidance, Akina's dance steps were graceful and elegant, as if she had truly transformed into a swan about to take flight; while the fatigue and numbness on Kitahara Shin's face were completely washed away, leaving behind the composure and dignity of an ordinary person embracing life anew.
"Card!"
Director Masayuki Suo stood up from behind the monitor, his voice brimming with barely suppressed excitement, "I hereby announce that filming for 'Shall We Dance?' has officially wrapped!"
As the director finished speaking, the entire set fell silent for a second, then erupted in prolonged applause. Many of the more emotional female staff members even secretly wiped away tears while clapping.
This film, destined to be recorded in film history, was actually shot in just one and a half months.
In the traditional film industry, this speed is almost unbelievable. A typical art film might take three or four months just to get the actors emotionally aligned and adjust the lighting. But everyone on the crew who watched the playback on the monitor every day knew that the film's quality not only wasn't compromised in the slightest, but far exceeded expectations.
This inhuman efficiency is entirely due to Kitahara Shin.
He was like a pillar of strength in the crew. Not only did he never make a mistake himself, but he could also subtly control the rhythm during rehearsals, guiding Nakamori Akina's cold and broken character and Miyazawa Rie's repressed transformation to the most perfect climax.
What would normally require repeated takes to find the right feel for emotional scenes, they often captured the most delicate nuances of life in a single take thanks to the almost genuine chemistry between the actors. This natural, seamless cinematography made director Masayuki Suo reluctant to cut even a single frame in the editing room.
A waltz for ordinary people has come to a perfect end. And Kitahara Shin's trump card for conquering the highest hall of the big screen is now firmly in his hand.