Going to the movies
Recently I have enjoyed seeing movies that cost 1,500 yen per regular admission, and I have come to realize that I like watching movies. Before, I did not go to theaters at all, nor did I rent videos and watch them at home. But I don’t know why this was so — I did not dislike them. Maybe I just did nothing and had no interest. Once I had a go, I got involved and enjoyed the experience. Now I want to watch other movies, both famous and not so famous.
Last weekend, I went and saw “Day after Tomorrow” at Suzuka city.
The movie taught me that global warming is serious and dangerous. In the early part of the story, a group of workers who drill the ice of Antarctica find that the floor of the glacier they stand on is very thin, and that the drill pierces it easily. In the hole of the glacier, they see the Antarctic ocean heaving up. The scene surprised me very much, and later, the weather observers throughout the world recognize that the climate is becoming strange. And the… oh, I will stop telling the story here.
This movie warns us that we should pay much more attention to global warming. In this movie, as you may know, not only the U.S. , but also Japan, Great Britain, France and perhaps China appear and are described as nations that collapse instantly because of extremely abnormal weather; golf-ball or baseball-sized hailstones fall and the climate plunges into another ice age.
You may say that it is just a movie: it may be exaggerating situations with computer graphics. But once you watch this movie, you might say that it is not just a movie, but something that might happen in the future.
I have one question on the title of this movie, “Day after Tomorrow.” What about the day after tomorrow? I could not understand it, so I would be very glad if someone who has seen the movie could explain its title to me.
And another thing about watching movies. If you have any movie recommendations, please let me know.
Comments
graham :: June 14, 2004
It’s true, I did not like this film. It’s awful. I give small credit for pointing out that the US has not supported the Kyoto Accord at all, but the rest is pointless.
As for the title, I remember there was a film about nuclear war called ‘The Day After’, so maybe they had to allow for that, but I think Rudolf is right that it’s merely a way of saying ‘in the future’. I wish they would have changed it to ‘Asatte’.
Did anyone think that ‘Chiyoda District - Tokyo’ looked like something out of ‘Austin Power’s: Goldmember’?
Save your time: go and see Cutie Honey, and at least get a bit of entertainment.
mercyskye :: June 15, 2004
Rudolf offers a really nice explanation of the title, one I hadn’t considered before.
However, I always felt it was a simple play on the extended weather forcast. You know… “Today’s high will be 83 with an overnight low of 56. Tomorrow, a high of 85 with a low of 60, with a chance of scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. The day after tomorrow, strong chance of thunderstorms with a high of 82…” (etc) What I thought the filmakers were trying to say with the title might be that we are usually only interested in tomorrow’s forecast, as the “day after tomorrow” stood a greater chance of changing. Maybe this reflects an opinion of humankind’s well-documented short-sightedness when it comes to matters of the environment… or at least one’s personal well-being.
I am disheartened to learn that this movie tanked in most reviews. I thought it would be a good movie simply for the effects… but I need a decent plot, also. Can you tell me if the plot made the movie any better or worse for you?
Mercy! Why — Welcome back!
Actually, I like your reading of the title a lot better than mine because it connects much more closely with the movie’s subject matter. But different interpretations needn’t exclude one another.
For anyone confused about the temperatures in Mercy’s forecast, here’s a handy Fahrenheit to Celsius Converter. So let’s see: 80° Fahrenheit is … 28.3° Celsius.
Off topic: The British have converted to metric now because of the European Union (except for the pint of beer). The Americans still use their fancy measurements.
I think ‘the day after tomorrow’ means ‘near future’ for Japanese, because Daijiro says that the movie is about global warming.
Global warming is now serious, and now depletion of ozone layer is serious especially in Australia. So for Australian, this movie may impliy exact ‘the day after tomorrow’ as Mercy says.
But I do not see the movie, I do not have confidence in this opinion.
Recently I read a Japanese essay about environmental problems. The title is “one second breaks one year”. At first, I couldn’t understand what it means at all. But actually it has a very deep meaning:
It has been 46 hundred million years since the earth was born, and it has been only 4 million years since mankind was born. If you compare the period of the earth’s history, 46 hundred million years, with one year, surprisingly, mankind was born at about 5 pm of New Year’s Eve, 31st December. According to this calculation, mankind has lived on the earth only for 7 hours. Also, mankind went along with the earth for most of the 7 hours. So, the most recent 200 years in which environmental proplems have occurred is just one second in 1 year of the earth’s life. So “One second breaks one year” means that we are destroying the earth for just one second for one year of history of the earth .
I think the writer makes a title with deep connotations which attract readers and put a serious matter before us.
I know the similar story about ‘one second breaks one year’. Maybe Japanese students learn about it in their junior high school days. My history teacher brought a roll of paper, and then he extended it as long as possible. Then he said, “this one inch is the age of human beings.”
Our civilization is too short.
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I haven’t seen the movie nor am I planning to go and see it, but I think I can explain the title.
You’re familiar with metaphor, in which one thing is substituted for another because it is similar. You can say, for example, “This child is a little lamb” — not because it is an animal, but because it resembles the animal: it is mild, meek, peaceful.
Now, if you substitute one thing for another because it is closely related, you have metonymy. For example, instead of “the Japanese government says” you can write “Tokyo says” — that isn’t because the Japanese government and Tokyo resemble each other in any meaningful way, but it’s because they’re closely associated: one exists within the other.
“Tomorrow”, thus, is a metonomy for “the future”, and it’s one of the most widely used types of metonymy in which the part stands for the whole: one future day stands for all future days.
Similarly, the “day after tomorrow” stands for the not-so-distant future; it isn’t the immediate future but sometime soon.
Most reviews I’ve seen of the movie were fairly negative. Graham for one saw the movie and disliked it a lot. He recommends Cutey Honey, though.