A Man Vanishes March 16, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s, Shohei Imamura , add a comment
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.)
Pigs and Battleships March 12, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s, Shohei Imamura , add a comment
Shohei Imamura’s breakthrough film Pigs and Battleships (translated onscreen as Hogs and Warships) is a grimy tale of the underbelly of a Japanese port town under American occupation following World War II. Released in 1961 (though not until the 1980s in the U.S., following the director’s first Palme d’Or win at Cannes for The Ballad of Narayama), the film now appears to be a precursor of things to come from Imamura and his fascination with the criminal lower class of postwar Japan. The four previous efforts from Imamura had been studio assignments and were much less indicative of the style for which the director later became known. With its mixture of anarchic, frenetic plot and dizzying, technical bravado filmmaking, Pigs and Battleships fits perfectly in Imamura’s claim that he liked to make ”messy films.”
The film’s characters are unspectacular and common, noteworthy only for the truthful way Imamura approaches them. Kinta, a young man involved with selling pigs on the black market, stupidly agrees to take the fall for the yakuza in exchange for a significant amount of money. He has also impregnated his girlfriend Haruko, whose family wants her to prostitute herself either literally or in the form of marriage to some American sailor who can provide for her. These are not noble people or even worthy of sympathy in the hands of most filmmakers. Yet, Imamura seems to find comfort in the working class, regardless of how low down the food chain they are, and nearly forces the audience to share his empathy.
By balancing out the careless and greedy villains among both Japanese and American characters, the film seems to be conceding that Kinta and Haruko may be far from perfect but at least they’re harmless by comparison. I see it as sort of a white-collar crime vs. blue-collar crime argument where there’s no real defense for the minor improprieties of the common criminals, but their actions ultimately pale in comparison to the evil doings of military, corporate and organized malfeasance. The bumbling yakuza that Kinta tries to impress and the obnoxious American soldiers who act like overgrown frat boys are the real source of the problems presented in the film. The lower class who’ve developed some ideas of ambition (even if they have to sacrifice an honest living) are merely trying to adapt to the changing climate of Westernization and take advantage of the opportunities given to them, whether it’s working with organized crime or servicing the sailors who are stationed nearby.
Kinta may appear to be a dimwitted kid more interested in the lures of money and promise of Western-type material riches, but is he really the one to blame? Certainly it would be inaccurate to attempt to victimize him or shift the responsibility for the personal choices he makes. Nevertheless, as in many of the director’s films, Imamura somehow paints a heavily flawed character as our protagonist, one who’s comparatively not so bad and whose heart is mostly in the right place. He seems committed to Haruko and supportive of her decision to defy her mother by rejecting a passive, secondary role as wife/whore to an American sailor. While their relationship does appear to be more out of circumstance than genuine love, Kinta and Haruko still share a common bond of experience and hope for a better, more independent future.
It’s with the character of Haruko that any hope to be found among the denizens of Pigs and Battleships must begin and end. The final shots of her literally meeting and passing by the hookers awaiting the incoming ship of sailors is both symbolic and affecting. Her rebellious encounter with a trio of Americans earlier in the film left her ashamed, but also more certain of what she wanted from life. When the opportunity presents itself to either stay where she is, doomed to a fate she doesn’t want, or set out on her own, Haruko displays an empowering self-reliance by choosing the latter. The character is like any number of young women from small towns all over the world - ordinary and average, but not content to spend forever stuck in an endless routine.
That all of this happens within a film usually referred to as a comedy or satire is all the more impressive, showing Imamura’s ability to blend absurdity with a bit of neorealistic poignancy. Though the climactic scene, where unleashed pigs (the animal variety, not the comparatively less innocent humans Imamura draws parallels with throughout the film) wreak havoc in the street, and the overall tone of the film are both laced with obvious elements of farce, Pigs and Battleships arguably defies being identified within any one genre. Just as there are moments of pure comedy, such as a well-placed insurance advertisement billboard, there are also heartbreaking scenes, drained of any humor, that allow the viewer to remember that Imamura wants you to laugh only after you’ve understood the seriousness of what’s at stake.
The film’s overall lively tone veers only a little from the irreverence you’d expect after repeatedly hearing John Phillip Sousa’s ”Stars and Stripes Forever” (part of a wonderfully playful score) in a film where everything American comes with negative connotations. Instead of seeming inconsistent, those forays between the harsh realities of postwar occupation and Kinta’s wild interactions with the yakuza and the hogs breathe life into the film that established Imamura’s unique place in the film world. Wacky adjectives like “madcap” often infect descriptions of Pigs and Battleships, but it’s the searing examination of truth, told with daft sprinkles of humor and the hovering feeling that an audience should laugh to avoid darker emotions like anger or sadness, that really makes the film stick out.
(Pigs and Battleships remains unavailable on DVD in the English speaking world, with an impending release from the Criterion Collection due at some point in the future.)
Vengeance Is Mine February 4, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1970s, Shohei Imamura , 1 comment so far
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. - Romans 12:19-21
Shohei Imamura’s 1979 film Vengeance Is Mine takes its name and some of its subtext from the Biblical passage quoted above, part of Paul’s contribution to the Book of Romans. On its surface, the film concerns a serial killer named Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata, in an impressive performance) who eludes capture for 78 crime-filled days despite being prominently listed as one of Japan’s most wanted fugitives. It was adapted from a popular Japanese novel that recounted the true story of Ryuzo Nishiguchi, whose name was changed for the book, and his gruesome killing spree. What makes the film so interesting, though, is Imamura’s approach to the material and his almost total lack of concern for any element of suspense.
Instead of teasing the audience with pounding music and frequent cuts to a helpless victim, Imamura treats us to a movie where the killings are far from the focal point of the story. Some of the murders are seen onscreen while others are not, even if the victims are anticipated such as the elderly lawyer we later see lifelessly crouched inside a dresser. The character of Enokizu is a soulless sociopath, as likely to selfishly take a taxi the attorney has waited for in the pouring rain as he is to enjoy a meal and a bottle of wine in the old man’s apartment after he’s murdered him. Yet, by often not explicitly showing the killings, Imamura automatically devalues any shock or suspense element otherwise required for a typical film about a serial killer.
Through this approach, the director is able to emphasize the sociopathic nature of Enokizu as someone who finds no more excitement or rush in his violent crimes than in other mundane tasks, with the idea being that oftentimes neither are important enough to show onscreen. Instead, we frequently see Enokizu engaged in sexual acts and he’s repeatedly shown to have a voracious carnal appetite. He obviously uses sex, not murder, as his main form of pleasure, thus making his multiple killings even more difficult to understand. Maybe Imamura is making some other statement in regards to Enokizu’s apparent addiction to sex, but I’m not sure what else it might be. Enokizu’s manner in each activity sharply contrasts the other since he clearly kills out of opportunity more than necessity, but seems to openly crave, even require, sex.
Part of what makes Vengeance Is Mine
It’s that idea that seems to provide the inspiration for the title of Vengeance Is Mine. It’s clear that the general interpretation of the Biblical passage the film takes its name from places God as the ultimate taskmaster for seeking vengeance and instructs His followers to meet evil not with the desire to seek retribution, but with a defiant nature of acceptance and goodwill. The title of Imamura’s film, therefore, appears to be derived from the idea that Enokizu’s actions, whatever his reasons, are completely contrary to the Biblical idea of overcoming evil with good. The people we see Enokizu kill are not threatening him or engaging in horrible activities, yet they suffer anyway. Some of his victims are actually kind to him, fulfilling the command to feed your enemies, but are still not spared a senseless death.
I also wonder if Imamura is slyly taking a jab at Christianity by having Enokizu’s father, Shizuo, who had converted years before from Buddhism, adhere to his religious values and refuse the advances of his daughter-in-law Kazuko, the killer’s frustrated wife. Even though Shizuo’s wife is terminally ill and he shares an attraction to Kazuko, he apparently abstains from that temptation. His reward is to have his son, who had become ashamed of him at a young age when the father allowed his boats to be taken by the navy without a fight, disgrace the family and disrespect him personally.
Throughout the film, Imamura employs a somewhat disjointed and unconventional narrative technique. He frequently jumps from time and place, putting dates and locations on the screen in the style of a documentary to let the audience know when and where he’s moved the story. This can be a tad disarming for first-time Western viewers, unfamiliar with Japanese names and geography, who might have difficulty keeping straight the significance of each new location or person. It doesn’t prove overly distracting though, and it certainly fits the cold, clinical feeling that Imamura seems to want. This method also is consistent with the director’s larger body of work, since he spent ten years exclusively directing documentaries after one of his other projects proved to be an epic flop.
Aside from his blending of fiction with fact, Imamura is known for exploring the seedier side of post-war life in Japan. He had worked with the legendary Yasujiro Ozu as an assistant, but had no interest in the domestic middle-class films the elder director was known for. Imamura instead chose to make noteworthy films with titles such as Pigs and Battleships, The Insect Woman, and The Pornographers. The latter is the only one of his early films, from the era coined the Japanese New Wave, that’s available on DVD in R1 and it’s a bare-bones edition from Criterion. Theatrical screenings are starting to pop up though, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) cinématek will be having a retrospective of the director’s films during the month of March entitled “Pimps, Prostitutes, and Pigs: Shohei Imamura’s Japan,” including a full week run for Vengeance is Mine.
In the land of R2, the Masters of Cinema label gave Vengeance Is Mine an outstanding DVD release in 2005 that certainly built upon their increasingly impressive catalog. The audio and video are both excellent, but it’s the informative and worthwhile supplements that really set the package apart. There’s a highly regarded Tony Rayns commentary, a 6-minute introduction from director Alex Cox that mostly skims the surface while pointing out a few things of interest, and, finally, a 36-page booklet (with the startlingly unexpected cover image of a topless woman alongside Ogata) that includes a great, lengthy essay from Jasper Sharp and a much more dry, less rewarding one by Alastair Phillips. Since Janus Films has the distribution rights to the film in R1, it seems only a matter of time before the Criterion Collection releases its own version, though I hope they also decide to release additional Imamura titles since the MoC disc is put together so well already.
UPDATE - Criterion will be releasing the film on DVD in May, though the MoC appears to have the advantage in supplements.