© 2008 William Ahearn
Sometimes with film I’ll go on jags. Lately I’ve been watching hours and hours of movies from Asia in an almost random fashion instead of researching “important” films and then seeking them out. Somewhere along the line during the serial killer films marathon someone suggested “Vengeance Is Mine” and the flick made an indelible impression.
Then
I ran into “The Ballad of Narayama” and when I discovered
that Shohei Imamura directed both films, I decided to seek out his other movies
and see what else he had done. Imamura is now on my list of directors whose
work I want to see. That’s not to say every flick is a masterpiece,
only that I never feel as if my time has been wasted by watching his films.
Shohei Imamura was part of what has become known as the Japanese new wave.
At one time Imamura was an assistant to Yasujiro Ozu (“Tokyo Story,”
“Late Spring,” “Early Summer” and many others) on
several films. Ozu – at least in his postwar and better-known period
– centered his films on Japanese family life and the lives of ordinary
people and utilized stationary and low-set camera work with elegant compositions.
If Ozu’s sensibilities are defined by the tea ceremony, Imamura’s are defined by the drama of life as played out by people in disturbing circumstances. One of the elements that attract me to Imamura’s work is his fascination with story. He has stated that Ozu hasn’t influenced his work in any way and that is readily apparent in his work. The elegance of Imamura’s work isn’t in the teacups but in how undefined and unforeseen forces affect the lives of his characters.
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001) Based on a novel by Yo Henmi, this film tells the story of one man’s dying request and another man’s strange journey to find a golden trinket. Yosuke Sasano (Koji Yakusho) has no job, a nagging wife about to divorce him and no prospects when he goes to visit an old and dying friend who asks him for a favor. Describing a town and a house near a red bridge, the old man tells Yosuke of a valuable gold statue that he left behind. When Yosuke arrives in the town he meets Saeko (Misa Shimizu), a woman with a strange condition who lives in the house by the red bridge. This is a very odd love story and this would be a good double feature with “The Eel” or with Takashi Miike’s “The Bird People of China.” (Miike – who also directed the brilliantly terrifying “Audition” – was an assistant to Imamura as Imamura was once an assistant to Yasujiro Ozu.) Or Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Bright Future” (2003) or “Charisma” (1999).
Dr. Akagi (1998) Based on Ango Sakaguchi’s novel Doctor Liver and starring Akira Emoto and Kumiko Aso, this is the story of a doctor trying to cure hepatitis in a Japanese fishing village during the closing days of World War II. His assistant is a prostitute who is hiding an escaped prisoner from the nearby POW camp. The film also obliquely refers to the biological weapons research carried out in Harbin, China, by Detachment 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army. More on that is here. Some things do get lost in translation both in language and meaning. The reference to the “experiments” in Harbin apparently caused a stir in Japan yet will probably go unnoticed among non-Asian viewers. While knowledge of the events adds to viewing the film, not having a clue about the history doesn’t detract from the film as a film.
The Eel (1997) Takuro Yamashita (Kôji Yakusho) is just a regular guy who likes to go fishing at night every once in a while. Then he gets a note saying that his wife is having an affair while he’s out. He pretends to go fishing, then comes back and catches his wife and her lover. Takuro wounds the lover and brutally kills the wife and then takes the knife to the police and turns himself in. When he’s released from prison years later, the guards give him an eel that Takuro befriended in the prison pond. His parole officer takes him to a small town and convinces Takuro to re-open the barbershop. One of the attractions of Imamura’s films to me is that I never have a clue as to where they will end up.
Black Rain (1989) There was the flash, then the blast, then the ash and finally the black rain. This film deals with how the A-bombing of Hiroshima affected those living nearby. It centers on a family that is slowly showing the signs of radiation poisoning and their health as well as their social standing is changed as a result. “Black Rain” is the most conventional of all the Imamura films that I’ve seen so far and it’s shot in black and white and composed to give a sense of the time the story takes place. This is not an anti-nuclear bomb tearjerker but it is a sad film on a human level no what your politics may be.
Ballad of Narayama (1983) This is an incredibly good film and if you have any interest in recent Japanese cinema, you want to see it now. Keisuke Kinoshita did a 1958 film that was also based on the stories of Shichiro Fukazawa and called “Ballad of Narayama” and while I haven’t seen his version I doubt that Imamura remade the film in any conventional sense. Kinishita is from the traditional school of Japanese film (along with Ozu) and his version is done in Kabuki style. (All I’ve seen so far of Kinishita is “Twenty-four Eyes” and it’s the story of a teacher in a remote fishing village who watches her class of students grow up and go off to WWII. Beautifully shot, sentimental and touching if that’s your cuppa tea.) Imamura’s version of “Ballad of Narayama” – that tells the story of survival in a village in the mountains – is beautiful, brutal, shot on location and may be one of the best films that I’ve ever seen. Starring Ken Ogata, Sumiko Sakamoto and Aki Takejo, this is a fabulous movie.
Why Not? (1981) The Shogunate is falling apart. Japanese society is in tatters and Genji (Shigeru Izumiya) who has just spent six years in America through no fault of his own has returned to Japan and is trying to reunite with his wife Ine (Kaori Momoi). She’s now working in a peepshow and is about to be sold off. This is a sprawling, boisterous, sexy, earthy flick that is a lot of fun to watch. If Fellini ever made a Japanese film, it would look like “Why Not?”
Vengeance Is Mine (1979) Having seen almost fifty serial killer flicks, I’ve grown tired of the generic and pedestrian. This film will rivet you or disgust you depending on how realistic you like your crime dramas. It is also an amazing piece of filmmaking from the script to the non-traditional sequencing to the standout performance by Ken Ogata. Based on the true story of Iwao Enokizu, this flick is not for the faint of heart. It’s one of the best crime films I’ve ever seen.
The Pornographers (1966) Some films are so clever that you don’t get it until you’re deep into it. Technically, this is a film within a film. Based on a novel by Akiyuki Nosaka, it’s about an independent pornographer that is trying not to get taken over by the mob. There is also his domestic life with wife and children and the threat of thieves and the police. This is a story about sex and voyeurism that slips into almost surreal territory. It’s an amazingly wonderful flick and the story is told without the usual exploitive slant. This is the story of a man who makes skin flicks in post-war Japan and is far more than a titillating tale.