A Man Vanishes March 16, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s, Shohei Imamura , trackback
The fallacy of truth in cinema is as much the main subject of Shohei Imamura’s A Man Vanishes as the investigation into the disappearance of a Japanese businessman that initially appears to be the focal point of the 1967 film. The director, whose films have been the subject of a Brooklyn retrospective the past two weeks, made his initial stab at nonfiction filmmaking with this rarely seen examination of a missing plastics salesman, Tadashi Oshima, who unexpectedly vanished in April 1965 while on a business trip. Oshima left behind a fiancee, Yoshie, and joined the hundreds of Japanese businessmen who dropped out of sight without any obvious motive or warning. Imamura was intrigued by this growing phenomenon, called “Johatsu,” and randomly selected the police file of Oshima as the subject of his filmed case study.
The first three-quarters or so act as a typical, straightforward exploration into why Oshima may have disappeared. We’re introduced to the woman Oshima was to marry, Yoshie Hayakawa, and her sister Sayo, who both play large roles throughout the film. Imamura employs an interviewer (professional actor Shigeru Tsuyuguchi) who travels with the camera crew to speak with friends and family of the missing man, as well as police detectives and Oshima’s boss. We learn that he had been caught embezzling from the company and this is discussed as a potential reason for the disappearance. A past romance and the idea that he may have been unsure about marrying Yoshie are also considered as possibilities. A female shaman (who provides some strikingly eerie moments throughout the film) is consulted in an effort to summon Oshima or otherwise provide some answers to the many questions swirling around the vanished man.
It’s all shown in a very matter-of-fact, documentary style, as though the filmmakers are attempting to get to the bottom of the situation while gathering information that might help them in their pursuit. At first, the camera is almost an afterthought, a necessary evil to drum up interest in Oshima more than a probing, opportunistic distraction. Then we see a group of men in a small room, apparently the filmmakers, discussing the project and the film, not the disappearance or search for Oshima. Their disdain for Yoshie, whom they call “The Rat,” becomes obvious and you can see the slight shift from a film about Oshima and the phenomenon of Japanese men who suddenly disappear to a film about the filming of such a movie. Any hint of objectivity, an idea Imamura almost certainly is arguing as a false concept in documentary filmmaking, has been destroyed.
The film takes a step into near absurdity when the on-screen interviewer questions Yoshie about whether she has fallen in love with him. She replies that she believes she has. It’s a small jolt, bordering on hilarity, as the film up to that point had retained a procedural sincerity when confronting interviewees. Everything I read about the film beforehand made a point to mention the development of Yoshie proclaiming her love for her interviewer, but it’s shown with such nonchalant casualness that it still feels oddly unexpected. The scene has little ramification for the rest of the film and serves only as one piece of evidence that A Man Vanishes is much more ambitious than it initally seems.
The picture above shows an omnipotent Shohei Imamura peering over the shoulder of his interviewer, perfectly illustrating the director’s chosen role as a puppetmaster silently pulling the strings without explicitly inserting himself into the action. Imamura eventually removes the curtain to reveal the utter fictionality of his movie. The two sisters and a fishmonger eyewitness argue over whether Sayo had been Oshima’s companion on a particular occasion and, thus, possibly involved romantically before the teahouse they’re in is revealed to be nothing but a movie set with collapsing walls. The remarkable scene gives the audience a headscratching revelation worthy of any famous magician. Immediately, the viewer’s mind races to figure out what was real and what wasn’t. Imamura himself tells us that what we’ve just seen is fiction based on truth.
The argument continues in the street outside though, as Sayo maintains that she never walked with Oshima despite the fishmonger’s assertions to the contrary. In these, the film’s final moments, repetition and frustration set in, shedding no new light on an already impossible situation. Oshima is gone, probably never to return and possibly dead, and the phenomenon of Johatsu is just as much an enigma now as before the film began. We’ve learned the details of Oshima’s existence prior to the disappearance only through recollections of people who we know as neither trustworthy nor duplicitous. In making an examination into the nature of truth in cinema, Imamura has crafted his own spin on Kurosawa’s Rashomon, but without actors or a script.
The persons interviewed are real people, but the question remains whether they’re playing themselves or being themselves. There’s never any way to know these answers for certain in documentary films and the filmmaker is always free to skew the footage however he wants. The on-camera discussions among the filmmakers in A Man Vanishes remind us that every little filmic choice affects the audience’s perception of these “characters.” It’s essentially impossible for the viewer to be sure that a nonfiction film is ever reflecting truth since the line is constantly blurred between what is real and what is the reality intended for audience consumption.
By giving his audience this insightful experiment, Imamura blends truth with fiction and the perception of reality with the realization that everything we’ve seen is staged, to varying extents. It’s a brilliant and thought-provoking look at film as a medium unable to show unfiltered truth. The director’s patience to produce a 130 minute exercise, where the vast majority of the running time makes the film look like an ordinary missing persons investigation, was a daring thing to do to his audience, who may feel uneasy by the lack of a resolution. While the time spent investigating Oshima’s disappearance is never uninteresting, it’s the reveal near the end that catapults Imamura’s film from a curiosity to an essential.
(Like most of Imamura’s films, A Man Vanishes is unavailable on DVD with English subtitles. An interesting and worthwhile trailer, showcasing the wonderfully spooky score, can be found on YouTube for this fascinating film.)
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