Gellar fondly remembers her initial meeting with the young Japanese director, whom she quickly learned had a delightful sense of humor that transcended the language barrier. “The first day we met he said to me, ‘My lady, your destination is approaching,’ and I thought maybe he was saying that I looked familiar. Then he explained to me that he learned what little English he knew from watching Star Wars,” she laughs.
“There was definitely a sense of being lost in translation at the start,” Behr says. “It was a bit of a challenge because you had to go through an interpreter to tell you exactly what Takashi was thinking and what he wanted from you as an actor. So you’d watch him speak in that wonderfully animated way he has and then the translator would tell you what he said in a sort of dispassionate, simplistic way. The lines of communication were a little jumbled at first. But Takashi and I both got used to it and eventually we developed a kind of shorthand between us.”
Mapother also had initial difficulties with the translation process. “I’d ask a question and wait a few seconds, like during an early overseas phone call,” he says. “It didn’t take long to realize that I had to be selective and to the point in my questions, which was better for everyone, believe me.”
Clea DuVall who had just finished working with the Spanish-speaking Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu on 21 Grams, had learned how to make herself understood and learn what she needed from that experience. “As a result it wasn’t that difficult to work with Takashi. Our communication was surprisingly fluid,” she confesses. “In a way it’s almost easier working with someone who doesn’t speak the same language because you don’t spend a lot of time over-analyzing. You’re not so much in your head about what you’re doing. You just kind of go with the experience instinctually. And because the director doesn’t understand what you’re saying, he has to focus on the emotions in your performance. Your face and your eyes can’t lie.”
Since most of his cast had never been to Japan before, Shimizu was able to transfer their real sense of disorientation to their performances. “Many of the actors had come to Japan for the first time,” he says. “I know that they were expecting me to have conversations with them about their roles, but I deliberately ignored them in order to heighten their nervousness. A great deal of that comes through in their work and it’s very real and very effective.”
Japanese actors Takako Fuji and Yuya Ozeki reprise the roles they played throughout the evolution of JU-ON in the English-language version The Grudge. “It was unusual to work with the same actors in the same roles over such an extended period,” says Shimizu. “It was also rewarding, because we were able to find greater nuances in those roles in each successive version. It was also amazing for us to watch the evolution of this story from a Japanese short to an American movie.”
Fuji plays Kayako the haunting female ghost who stalks all those who enter the house. “At the beginning, I approached the part for what it was—a three-minute test piece, so I had no expectations. But since then, the JU-ON series has evolved in ways I never imagined. I can hardly believe what it has become.”
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