Terayama’s Pastoral Hide and Seek is a post modern meditation on the nature of truth and memory. Totally surreal, a man’s childhood populated by bizarre circus troupe, nuns with eye patches, strange fascinations with clocks. Then the director gets fed up with the deceptiveness of his own vision, so then he tuns up inside his own childhood and tries to mess about with it. Odd but oddly affecting
Imamura’s A Man Vanishes starts out as a documentary surrounding the disappearance of a plastics salesman but eventually becomes a discourse on truth, reality and cinema. We begin in documentary fashion by paying a visit to the police station and having the details of the missing man related to us. We then hear from the man’s fiancée who it seems is very keen to find him, and his family who are worried but also hurt and disappointed. It transpires that Oshima, the absent centre of the film, had many secrets those closest to him did not know. He had previously been suspended from his place of work for embezzlement, though the money had been repaid and the matter settled. He was also a drinker and according to his friends had been expressing doubts about his planned marriage, either because he did not want to marry or because he disapproved of his future sister-in-law’s supposedly ‘immoral’ lifestyle. There is also a rumour he’d been having an affair with a waitress which resulted in a pregnancy.
All this information uncovered and still no real clue as to Oshima’s whereabouts, Imamura takes the bold step of deciding to put the fiancée on television. After this things start to change, the fiancee seems to have lost her zeal to find her intended and, as it turns out, has developed feelings for the interviewer on the documentary (who is actually an actor). Shortly after this they visit a kind of spirit medium who claims the future sister-in-law has poisoned Oshima and disposed of the body because she too was in love with him and did not wish to share.
This ultimately leads to a showdown in a tea house in which the fiancée confronts her sister with the evidence so far and seems unwilling to believe her denials. Except at the climactic moment Imamura orders the set to come down around them and we see they’re just in a pretend tea house room in the middle of a soundstage. This ‘reality’ was fabricated, and other filmmakers will come here to make their fictional truths or untruthful realities. We thought we were watching fact, but it was a construction.
The final scene of the film then follows this up further, Imamura announces what we’re watching is a reconstruction, a fiction, as a man swears he saw Oshima going up the stairs with the sister, which she flatly denies. Another witness then shows up and reaffirms his testimony about having seen Oshima and the sister, and the debate continues with some of the participants becoming quite irate. Can we believe anything we’re seeing here, what or how much of this is truth? What is truth anyway, what is reality?
Was there a man who vanished, are these the people in the his life? If they are, are they themselves or have they begun to play versions of themselves more suited to film? Imamura later said this film might more rightly have been called ‘When a Woman Becomes an Actress’, and it is true that you can see a definite change in the fiancée after her television appearance. Or can you, is it just the way Imamura presents it or has the change really taken places since the woman became a ‘character’ watched by the TV audience? Just as we’ve been unable to reconstruct a accurate picture of Oshima through the descriptions of those who knew him, our vision of the major players, the fiancée and her sister is also clouded by Imamura’s presence.
Imamura’s assertions that objective documentary making is pointless and that greater truth can be displayed through fictional film making are carried right the way through the film. What you largely have are ideas which are then reconstructed by the film maker in the editing suite. It’s a document of real people and real lives but only from one perspective. Fictional film making, in Imamura’s view, is better able to articulate human truths than this patching together of material which cannot be a fully accurate representation.
A Man Vanishes is one of Imamura’s most intriguing films but nevertheless has been unavailable with English subtitles for a long time. Thankfully Masters of Cinema will be releasing a new version on DVD in a couple of months the viewing of which will, hopefully, help to clear things up a little (but then again, maybe not).
An inverted retelling of Sophocle’ Oedipus, Funeral Parade of Roses has become a landmark in Gay Japanese Cinema. Eddie (geddit?), a transvestite living in Tokyo makes her money at a gay bar and has begun an affair with this boss. This has created an awkward situation with the boss’s ‘wife’ who runs the club and has become increasingly jealous and antagonistic towards Eddie. Something from Eddie’s past is also haunting her and will turn out to have major repercussions for herself and others.
Funeral Parade of Roses is notable for its explicit detailing of 1960s gay life in Tokyo. Eddie and her friends have wild parties where they take drugs and discuss avant-garde films from America whilst watching distorted pictures of the student riots on the TV. The films even breaks with its narrative to interview various people, including a couple of the the actors, about gay life.
This is just one of many of the post-modern techniques that Matsumoto employs, often breaking up the narrative with vox pop sessions, inserted signs etc. He often repeats scenes or sections of scenes and sometimes breaks them off only to return at exactly that point later on. The overall timeline of the plot only becomes clear near the end when you’re able to piece these scenes together into a coherent narrative. An important and influential film, Funeral Parade of Roses is a must for fans of Japanese Cinema.
Silence Has No Wings follows the journey of a butterfly from it’s larval phase in Nagasaki to it’s eventual fate in a small boy’s butterfly net on Hokkaido. Well, it’s much more complicated than that. The butterfly is also deeply associated with a female atomic bomb survivor whilst at the same time becoming the centre of a yakuza/triad disagreement. The film also mixes several styles and genres, at one moment a documentary – stock footage/taped interview of bomb survivors, another time a surreal gangster comedy or a social comment and even romantic melodrama. It’s truly a film that defies explanation and deserves to be seen
Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff is one of those films that has many times been cited as among the greatest ever made. Based on an ancient folktale, Mizoguchi places the action during the Heian era where a feudal lord is being stripped of his position for daring to speak out about brutal treatment of the peasants. The lord will be exiled but his wife and children will travel to stay with relatives until sent for. Parting from his children he entrusts to them a statue of the goddess Kanon (goddess of Mercy) and instructs them to remember to show mercy, be kind even if it causes you personal pain.
Some time later the mother and her two children set out to join the father with only one servant and no resources to help them get there. Having failed to find lodging in the town (taking in travelers has been banned because of the bandit/slaver problem) they prepare to make camp in the woods. An old lady priestess offers them food and lodging for the night and apparently knows a quicker way to their destination if they’re prepared to travel by sea. Of course, it turns out that the old lady’s motives were far from altruistic and the family are quickly separated, the mother and female servant in one boat and the children dragged away elsewhere. The slavers have great difficulty finding a buyer for these wealthy children, being so small they won’t be as productive, especially considering their background makes them unused to physical labour. Eventually the children are sold to the notorious Sansho, who shows no mercy or consideration for the children’s youth and is determined to get his money’s worth.
As time moves on the children struggle to adapt to their new conditions, the girl clinging to memories of the past and the boy wishing to forget. He casts aside his father’s teachings and seeks to become closer to Sansho until the illness of another prisoner, coupled with the echo of his mother’s voice, reminds him of his better nature and sets him off on his path to redemption.
Sansho the Bailiff is a morality tale about the importance of compassion and of standing up for what is right over what is expected. Cruel men like Sansho, who can regard people as objects and are without the ability to understand the point of view of those who might raise questions, are much in favour with the feudal lords who see nothing except their profits. The profit of the lords must be maintained, those who make suggestions that might interfere with those are removed. Sansho is valued because his turnover is so high, more humane procedures would necessarily reduce this and so are out of the question. Who cares about a bunch of lowborn ‘cattle’? they aren’t like us, they are not us, so we need not concern ourselves with their lives, their feelings or their souls.
When Zushio has committed himself to the path of mercy, vowing to bring down this economy of exploitation, he again finds himself effectively powerless. Although he has achieved the necessary status, the will of the other lords will always win out. Taking drastic action wins him a small victory in the immediate area, but it’s not clear how long this will last or if any permanent change will occur. He’s no better off as a lord than he was with Sansho, he’s still a slave just in a nicer cage. So abandoning his position he sets off in search of his mother.
Finally mother and son are reunited, but the reunion is bittersweet. Zushio exclaims that he could have come here as a fine, important man and taken her away back to the life she once knew, but instead he kept to his father’s teachings and has nothing. She replies that she’s sure that if he had not obeyed they would never have met again. In the end their only victory is to have survived and found each other, but it’s the victory of the pure soul.
Pitfall, Teshigahara’s 1962 ‘documentary fantasy’ is a difficult film to describe. It begins with the story of a poor migrant worker and his son, skipping out on an ill paying prospect the worker travels to another mine but discovers he doesn’t have the necessary papers. Despite this he is offered another job, however this turns out not to be the stroke of luck he hopes it might be. A strange man wearing a white suit and gloves begins to follow him and around and eventually spreads confusion throughout this strangely desolate landscape.
The film is deliberately vague and offers no answers to the problems it poses. Though its political intentions are quite clear through the use of actual documentary footage of mining accidents and malnourished children the more surreal aspects remain unexplained. Exactly who is the white suited man, and who (if anyone) has given him his instructions? In this ghost town that is both literal and figurative, where identities are confused and long for events always arrive too late is there something strange and unnatural going on, or is it just the surreality of everyday life? The figure of the boy is also problematic, why does he only react to the death of the man who resembles his father but isn’t? Though perhaps if he’s the type of boy to pull the skin of frogs and watch a rape impassively through a small hole in a wooden wall the answer to this may be self evident. As he runs off alone down the winding road at the end of the film, what or whom is he running from or to. Is it his childish passivity that’s saved him, for the moment at least, from from the adult’s internecine warfare or is it just blind dumb luck that might just be leading him deeper into hell.
This month the BFI have put together a season of films produced or distributed by the Art Theatre Guild of Japan. This includes many new wave and independent art films that have either not been previously screened in Britain or have been unavailable with English Subtitles for quite some time, if they ever have been at all. To launch the season a panel discussion was held featuring Tony Rayns, Ronald Domenig, Yuriko Furuhata, and Julian Ross regarding the work and influence of the Guild.
The Arts Theatre Guild was launched in the early sixties during a time of crisis in Japanese cinema as television started to steal audiences away and the old studio system was crumbling. The Guild originally had the idea of buying in the more artistic foreign films which many distributors would no longer touch because they needed to be more sure of a profit. However they soon found themselves supporting Japanese art cinema and eventually producing it themselves. These films were obviously very low budget, and ATG supplied only 50% the other half the directors had to find themselves and should the project go over budget ATG would offer no additional support. Despite this many new young directors were eager to work with them for the comparative freedom they received from the big studio. Likewise they could only afford to hire unkown actors but as the prestige of the projects began to rise filmstars became eager to work on them and can often be found in smaller parts in these movies.
Each of the panelists chose a clip from a film in the season. Tony Rayn’s clip was especially interesting because he had appended a two minute section from a Terayama performance art show in Tokyo to a brief clip from Pastoral Hide and Seek. Yoriko Furuhata’s clip from Funeral Parade of Roses demonstrated the intersection of all the avant garde underground art and politics in this period. A brief except from Silence Without Wings showed the new directorial techniques, fast cutting and rapid POV changes. This definitely looks like a series to look forward to.
Pedro Almodóvar’s debut film may not be as polished as his later work, in fact it may be a bit messy and very rough around the edges but the trademark energy, wit, and charm are all here, and in abundance. Pepi (Maura), is listening to some music and playing with a sticker book when a policeman calls because he’s been noticing her funny looking plants. Fearing prosecution Pepi offers him other compensations, but the policeman takes things further than she was thinking, raping her and ‘stealing’ the virginity which she’d been planning to sell! Seeking revenge, Pepi enlists the help of her friends in a punk group, including Bom (Alaska), to beat him up, but it doesn’t quite go to plan. Later Pepi runs into the rapist policeman’s wife, Luci, (Silva) and convinces her to give her knitting lessons, where she finds out that Luci is a masochist upset that her husband treats her like his mother. These are our three crazy girls trying to make it in La Movida. The film is extremely funny, though dipping a little into poor taste at times which may spoil it a little for some. Even if it’s not an especially well made film, and its lack of budget and complicated production circumstances are very much in evidence it’s still a lot of fun and it’s very interesting for fans of Almodóvar’s more recent work to look at where it all started.
After the film the BFI brought out the actress and singer Alaska (Bom) to talk and answer a few questions about her work on this film. She began by commenting on the film’s genesis, that she was offered the part because she was friends with some artists that were also friends of Almodóvar’s and had read the script and recommended her. As there was no money at all to make the film filming would take place when enough money had been raised to buy the negative, consequently the film took a few years to actually complete filming here and there when possible. Other than Carmen Maura and Felix Rotaeta most of the cast were not professional actors but friends and other people from that particular underground scene at the time. Someone from the audience asked if she’d influenced her character seeing as there was a superficial similarity there with Alaska’s also being in a punk group, to which she replied no. She provided her own clothes/look etc seeing as there wasn’t a costume designer or stylist or even any money for costumes but the character was already 100% scripted before she got the part and Almodóvar was very strict about sticking to his script and did not allow any deviations from it whatever. However she did mention that the seen with the postman was originally intended to just be ‘hello’ but that the actor decided to go for it, much to the consternation of the producer because they only had the right amount of film for what was already planned out, but Almodóvar liked it so it worked out in that instance. A few questions also raised the question of how Alaska felt at the time regarding the changes in Spanish Society, whether she felt herself to be living in momentous times, she replied that being only fifteen or so at the time she just didn’t really react to it in that way. She felt sure that other people did, but being so young she was just really living her life. Someone then asked how she felt about Spanish society at the moment and she answered that she was old enough now to see that each generation criticises the next one for failing to react enough but perhaps it was just a case of times moving on and general apathy. Another questions asked if the film was representative of the youth of Spain during La Movida but she she pointed out that no, this was a definite minority subscene of people that were seen as ‘weird’ and that maybe the film was adopted by youth culture a bit later but at that moment didn’t really reflect it at the time of making. The question of reviews and reaction to the film was also brought up and it was pointed out that the film was more or less panned everywhere, there was not a good reaction anywhere. The film was screened at a couple of festivals where it received an adverse reaction particularly from feminist critics. One of the last questions asked for clarification on the film’s message and purpose, which in Alaska’s opinion (one that she was sure Almodóvar would share) were nil. She felt that if there was a message or purpose it was that there wasn’t one, and if anything simply a statement of intent – we are here and this is who we are, this is how we choose to live. What better message could there possibly be?
Windows on Worlds 