Masayoshi Suo made a name for himself directing such hit comedies as "Shall We
Dance," which Hollywood picked up and re-made with Richard Gere and Jennifer
Lopez, and "Shiko Funjatta," the tale of a hapless university sumo team that
makes good.
Suo is about to release his first movie in 11 years. It's going to be called
"Sore Demo Boku ha Yatteinai (I Still Didn't Do it)," a flick about a man
falsely accused of groping a female commuter.
The movie traces the accused man's story as he battles his case through the
courts and has the unfair verdict handed down against him upheld for political
reasons in a work damning of the Japanese judiciary.
Suo started working on the movie about four years ago. He was inspired by a
newspaper story about Takashi Yatabe, a company worker whose conviction for
molesting a female train commuter was overturned after it was revealed that she
had made up her accusation against him.
Japanese courts hand down an inordinately high number of guilty verdicts.
Rather than having police and prosecutors prove beyond doubt that a defendant
is guilty of a crime they are charged with committing, it's up to the accused
to demonstrate to the court that they are innocent.
Sunday Mainichi says Suo used Yatabe and his family as the model for the stars
of his new movie, as well as spent countless hours researching at bar
associations and in courtrooms.
Suo's message for the movie is that anybody at all can be wrongly accused of a
crime they haven't committed and that their lives can be drastically changed
according to the judge assigned to hear their case.
It's rare for anybody to openly tackle the Japanese legal system and almost
unheard of for a movie to do so. Yatabe, the falsely accused groper, added a
shot of his own earlier this week with the release of a book co-authored with
his wife Atsuko, detailing their battles with the legal system.
Suo's movie will be released nationwide on Jan. 20.
"Contemporary Japanese society made me make this movie," Sunday Mainichi quotes
Suo saying at a sneak preview of "Sore Demo Boku ha Yatteinai." "There are
loads of different things about the judicial system that we should all be
thinking about. I want to continue looking into court cases and making movies
about the ones that get me really riled."
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