Image via Complex Original
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Ulay and Marina Abramovic. Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz—the history of art wouldn’t be the same without some of its most famously passionate couples. Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer brings yet another dynamic duo to the forefront: Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, the Japan-born and New York City-based artists whose tumultuous 40-year marriage is at the center of this 2013 documentary, which will compete for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar this weekend.
Though the Shinoharas have not (yet) gained the same level of recognition as those previously mentioned paramours, Cutie and the Boxer just might change that. Noriko is an artist in her own right (she’s the author of a quirky “Cutie and Bullie” illustration series), but she has spent the past several decades putting her own artistic endeavors aside to support her alcoholic husband and son. Her charismatic but often troublesome husband Ushio, the titular “Boxer,” has experienced a fair amount of success for his unique style of creation, in which he dons a pair of boxing gloves to create performance-style murals. His other works include colorful, misshapen sculptures of strange creatures and distorted motorcycles and aggressively vibrant drawings that ride the line between expressionist paintings and graffiti.
Despite his wife’s ongoing support, and the fact that Ushio has exhibited his work at galleries around the world, the Shinoharas’ story is one of constant struggle—creatively, financially, and emotionally. And the resulting film—which is streaming now on Netflix—is a fascinating look at the sacrifices artists must make to pursue their passions and the effect these choices have on the people around them.
Before the Oscar winners are announced on Sunday evening, here are 10 Things You Should Know About Cutie and the Boxer.
RELATED: The 25 Best Documentaries Streaming on Netflix Right Now
10. The film's road to the Oscars began at Sundance.
Cutie and the Boxer got off to a great critical start when it was selected to premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Heinzerling won the fest’s highly coveted Best Director Award, and the film was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize.
9. The film was five years in the making.
Though the bulk of the footage seen in the documentary was from Heinzerling’s final year of filming (he shot the film as well as produced and directed it), he followed—and filmed—the couple for five years. “So much of their personalities came out of these everyday things, whether it was making art or making dinner,” he told Indiewire. “Everything had this real sense of purpose and character, so as a cinematographer it was a dream project. As a character study, it was a project I knew had a lot of potential, but I had to wait for things to happen, and that's really why it took five years, the time for a story and narrative to develop and for Noriko to open up and for the truth and vulnerability and deeper layers of her character to reveal themselves in front of the camera.”
8. Zachary Heinzerling had no idea what Ushio and Noriko were saying.
Fact: Ushio and Noriko speak in Japanese throughout most of the film. Also fact: Heinzerling doesn’t speak Japanese, so it wasn’t until the transcripts of their conversations were translated that the director knew what they were saying. “I probably had 10 different people translating footage over the course of a year-and-a-half,” the director told Spin. “I made a concerted effort to spend three months basically subtitling everything. At first we actually had a Japanese editor, but for my own sake I wanted to have it subtitled. I was always just doing the scenes that I knew were significant based on my understanding of communication via body language, and via what I understood of the scene.”
7. The movie is as much about relationships as it is about art.
Anyone who has ever been in a long-term relationship knows that there are often sacrifices that come with that. In the case of Cutie and the Boxer, it's Noriko who has chosen to set aside her own creative goals in order to be the support system that her family needs. The various roles she plays in the film—wife, mother, partner, confidante, nemesis, and muse—ultimately show her to be a true partner. Art is their profession, but marriage is their life. It's this relationship that is the heart of the film.
6. Noriko is the real star.
Though Ushio may have been the one with the name recognition when the project started, Heinzerling doesn’t hesitate in stating that it’s Noriko who turned out to be the film’s real star. “It’s really told from her perspective,” he told The L Magazine. “Ushio is obviously a central character and their relationship is the center of the film, but it’s really Noriko’s journey that creates the arc and the narrative of the film from the beginning where she’s seen mostly as an assistant to the end where she’s establishing herself as an artist and an individual and rebelling against the pain and the suffering that she’s been through as a result of being Ushio’s wife.”
5. All artists are exhibitionists.
The Shinoharas didn’t set many boundaries in terms of what they would—or would not—let Heinzerling film. So don’t be surprised to see the cameras follow the couple into the bathroom, or observe conversations that for other couples might be deeply private. But Noriko says that exhibitionism comes with the territory of being an artist. “Art work comes from inside of the artist, so to show how I eat and how I sleep, it’s insight,” she told The Huffington Post. “If the artist makes work and nobody looks at it, the artist is not happy, even if the artist pretends he likes solitude—to stay in the mountain or countryside. As an artist...it's exhibitionist. Since I’m not a famous artist, I have no choice. I have to look for the chance."
4. Ushio's favorite part of his newfound fame is all the meat!
An Oscar nomination is great and all, but all the traveling they've done to promote the film has been particularly exciting to Ushio for one major reason: “[At home] in New York, we don’t really eat meat that much,” he told Tonight at the Movies. “Now that we are traveling, I even eat meat in the morning.” (To which his wife countered: “But you make hamburger all the time!”)
3. "Cutie and the Boxer" led Heinzerling to Beyoncé.
Though Cutie and the Boxer marked Heinzerling’s directorial debut, his ability to translate the artistic process to the big screen gained him some big-name fans. Beyoncé among them.
As a follow-up to Cutie and the Boxer he was hired to direct the series of mini-documentaries released with Queen Bey’s surprise December iTunes release. “I worked with the producer, Carly Hugo, a long time ago, as an assistant editor on a film that she made, and she ended up producing one of Beyoncé's music videos,” Heinzerling told Spin of how he landed the enviable gig. “She was tasked with finding someone to make these videos that would announce the launch of the album and sort of explain what it was all about because Beyoncé wasn't doing any press. Carly showed [Beyoncé's team at Parkwood] Cutie and they were interested in me, I think, because it was a different kind of documentary and a different way of looking at artists."
2. The Oscar nod has brought the couple recognition, but no guarantee that they can pay next month's rent.
"I am excited by the people's excitement," Noriko told The Hollywood Reporter of audiences' reactions to the film. And while she admits that the film's success has helped their financial situation, she isn't counting on it as a permanent solution to the financial woes that are part of the documentary's narrative. "Now I can pay rent," she says, "but it's still very expensive. I don't know if I can pay in April or May. But more people are coming after the Oscars, so I hope the results will be good."
1. Don't bother asking Ushio "Who are you wearing?" on the red carpet.
To say that Ushio has been in the game for a while would be a gross understatement. It was back in the 1960s that the artist landed his first gallery show. To celebrate the achievement, he purchased a tuxedo. "He went out and bought a tuxedo for the opening [of his first gallery show] because he thought he needed one," Heinzerling recently told The Fresno Bee. "That same tuxedo still fits him 50 years later, so that's what he's wearing."
Noriko had planned to wear a traditional kimono, but designer Issey Miyake has created a kimono-inspired dress for her big night.
