Why do films about salarymen tend to be either heavy-footed, with the principals rarely cracking a smile or otherwise dispelling the black clouds hanging over them, or air-headed, with the hero and his pals goofing off at every possible chance?
Having worked with and around salarymen, in the movie business and elsewhere, I¡¯d say the truth lies somewhere between, though more clouds hover now than in the bubble days, when coffee shops and theaters were filled in daylight hours with salarymen and other hataraki bachi (worker bees) killing time on the company dime. (Then again, all those guys perusing sports papers or snoring through yakuza movies may have been doing market research.)
Hideyuki Hirayama¡¯s ¡°Lady Joker,¡± a film whose heroes either missed the brass ring of success or fell off the merry-go-round entirely, supports this view. Though set in the present, it was inspired by the 1984 kidnapping of a candy-company president that launched a nationwide manhunt and generated massive media coverage, but was never solved. Its whodunit element, however, is less important that its examination of men (and at least two women) caught in a downward spiral of corruption, discrimination, poverty and death.
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