Lost In Translation

The Eel

The Eel by iconoclastic director Shohei Imamaura shared the 1997 Cannes Palme D'or with Kiarostani's A Taste Of Cherry. It is an interesting character study, but somewhat flawed in my opinion. A seemingly typical salary man, played by Koji Yakusho (who also starred in the popular Shall We Dance? in 1997) discovers that his wife is cheating on him and kills her in a fit of rage and jealousy. He is released to small town in Chiba and tries to star life over as a barber in the small town. He saves a young woman from an attempted suicide and she becomes his assistant. There are a number of quirky villagers and some comedic scenes that seem out of place in the mostly somber look at atonement, retribution, hope and facing up to the troubles of life. Yakusho is excellent in his role.

The Ballad of Narayama

Even though The Ballad Of Narayama is an adaptation of a novel by Shichiro Fukuzawa and a remake of a film by Keisuke Kinoshita-it is unmistakably the product of Shohei Imamaura. Several of his favorite themes and motifs are present-lower class peasants ruled by their animal urges, a strong earthy female, the sociological or anthropological distance of the camera, and motifs of animal nature reflecting the actions of the humans. Life in Imamura films reflects the Darwinian adages of survival of the fittest. The actual experiences of living are Hobbesian-infanticide, abandoning the elderly on the mountain top, and punishing theft with murder. There is also some beautiful cinematography, striking images, and powerful performances from Ken Ogata as the dutiful son who is required to carry his resilient mother, Sumiko Sakamoto, to the mountain top to be relieved of her burden. There is some broad comedy related to his younger brothers, one who is a bit of a lady’s man and the other who is not permitted to marry and is desperately trying to achieve satisfaction at the expense of domestic animals in the near vicinity. This film was awarded the Palm D’Or at The Cannes Film festival in 1983. It is a fascinating look at the harsh survival practices of an ancient rural mountain community in Japan.

Vengeance Is Mine

Shohei Imamura’s reputation is growing in my mind the more films I see by him. I recently saw the impressive 1979 film Vengeance Is Mine (a film that is included in Roger Ebert's Great Films). It has an impressive performance by the lead actor Ken Ogata (who would go on tot star in several other later Imamura productions) as Iwao Enokizu a thief, con man, lady-killer, and murderer who went on a 78-day killing spree throughout Japan. The events are based on a true story. This film contains many of the themes that have come to be associated with Imamura-lower class criminals, prostitutes, incest, and tortured criminals. Enokizu is unrepentant killer who felt no remorse for his crimes, but is essentially a coward who killed weak people rather than those who he hated like his father and his mistresses sadistic lover. Thus, Enokizu doesn’t get his vengeance, but the title refers to a quote from the bible that suggests that it is god that gets vengeance in the end. Enokizu has been brought up as a catholic, but it has never stopped him from committing transgressions. Instead it is his father who holds out against taking Enokizu’s discarded wife as a mistress until his wife dies. He holds himself responsible for Enokizu’s transgressions. At the end there is an odd Imamura touch to the film where the killer’s father and ex-wife travel to a mountain to throw his bones from the cremation from the peak only to have them suspended in air as if the earth is rejecting his evil remains.

Intentions of A Murder

Shohei Imamura’s Intentions of Murder (1964) is yet another example of his coolly detached study of a woman seemingly trapped by her environment. She is badly treated by her common law husband and his family and is serially raped by a thief who is obsessed with her. In the end she solves all of her problems and takes control of he destiny. Another fascinating portrayal of the lower classes and the real version of Japan. Like the other films in the series there is a conversation between Imamura and critic Tadao Dato, an interview with critic Tony Rayns, and an essay by film critic James Quandt.

The Insect Woman Redux

I was intrigued by Shohei Imamura and his preoccupation of the lower classes the first time I read about him in Ian Buruma’s book Behind The Mask. Insect Woman is the first film I saw at a retrospective of Japanese film at The Japan Foundation. Now seeing it in context to two of his other films (Pigs And Battleships and The Pornographers), I can see it as being fairly representative of his vision as a film maker. The Japanese title is “Nippon konchuki” or “Japanese entomology,” and this suggests a sort of scientific distance from the subject. Imamura also has a penchant for sensuous women who survive in the face of struggle through her resilience. Tome, the heroine, has lead a difficult life by the time she has escaped from her agrarian existence and birthing of a bastard child to Tokyo where she manages to find some success and happiness, as a Madame of a brothel before falling again. The introduction and closing provide bookends to story showing an insect and woman struggling up hills. I find Imamura’s films fascinating because he chooses to chronicle the unofficial version of Japan that of pimps, prostitutes, and other people from the underbelly of society. The Criterion edition includes the usual excellent bonus material: a fascinating essay by Dennis Lim, a conversation between Shohei Imamura and critic Tadao Sato, and an interview with critic and historian Tony Rayns.

Pigs And Battleships

Pigs and Battleships was  Shohei Imamura’s breakout film. Imamura was an assistant director under Ozu before striking out on his own and the two directors couldn’t be more different in style and content. In this film Imamura has a moving camera and one that retracts to give an anthropological view of the proceedings taking place within the screen. Ozu focuses on the middle class and such conflicts as leaving family for marriage, but in this film Imamura looks at the poor inhabitants of Yokosuka that live near an American Navy base and depend on them for their livelihood. The main character, Kinta, is a low-level yakuza member who is helping the yakuza raise pigs with scraps from the American Navy base. His girlfriend, Haruka, is what would become the typical plucky Imamura heroine, wants him to quit the gang and get a straight job at a factory in nearby Kawasaki. Conversely, she is being pressured by her mother and sister to become a kept woman for one of the sailors on base, but is reluctant to do so. In this film and subsequent films (I’ve previously seen The Insect Woman's [1963] original title translates as Entomological Chronicles of Japan, and the subtitle of The Pornographers [1966] is Introduction to Anthropology) Imamura focuses on the lower orders with an anthropological view from a distance. It is also a black comedy, one of the yakuza bosses thinks he is dying and provides comic relief. Imamura see the Japanese as the pigs and has little regard for these people who are ruled by their pursuit of material wealth and an easy life. The Americans fare no better, the half-Japanese American middleman from Hawaii swindles the yakuza and deserts his mistress. The rest of the Americans are seen as simple brutes only looking for a good time.  Imamura takes on some big themes with good results, and my only criticism would be some sloppy action scenes where violence takes place and some over acting in places. Otherwise a very satisfying look at postwar Japan-warts and all. This Criterion edition (part of the Pigs, Pimps, and Prostitutes box set) contains an interview-like special from French television, an interesting essay by film critic Audie Bock, as well as a discussion segment from critic Tony Raynds.

The Pornographers

I recently watched Shohei Imamura’s film The Pornographers (1966) and it is an interesting film in that it examines the underside of Japanese society. In this film he details the life of a producer/distributor of porn films. He sees his job as benefiting society by satiating men who need the pleasures of food and sex to exist.  He has been common law husband to a widowed hairdresser, Haru, and lives with her and her college age son, and her rebellious high school aged daughter.  Along the way he is harassed by the police, the yakuza, sees Haru go mad and eventually die, while seducing her daughter eventually marrying her and running orgies which he cannot participate in.  he gives up on real live women in the end and makes a “Dutch wife.”  It is a strange and intriguing film with several new wave cinematic moments like the inclusion of surf rock music in the scene where Haru goes insane, plenty of stop action, and close up of the carp that Haru keeps thinking that it is the reincarnated soul of her former husband. It is certainly something to see.

Shohei Imamura Retrospective

Shoehei Imamura has a retrospective showing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Rose Theaters thsi month. I have long been interested in seeing more of his films ever since I came across a lively discussion of his themes and motifs. To date I have only seen The Insect Woman (the still above is from that film), but I would enjoy purusing his filmography, too bad I don't live in New York. Terrance Rafferty discusses the esteemed auteur's work in the NY Times:

THE great Japanese director Shohei Imamura died last year after nearly 80 years of living and of watching people and nearly 50 years of filming them, and there’s no indication that anything they did ever shocked him, even a little. He once told an interviewer, “I’m interested in people: strong, greedy, humorous, deceitful people who are very human in the qualities and their failings.” And the 20 films on view in “Pimps, Prostitutes, and Pigs: Shohei Imamura’s Japan,” a monthlong retrospective beginning Friday at the BAM Rose Cinemas at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, display a pretty spectacular variety of human qualities — mostly failings. It’s a compendium of barbarities, both primitive and thoroughly modern, a vision of life reduced to its brutal basics: violence is constant; sex is urgent, sloppy and profoundly unromantic; and the struggle to survive makes men and women appallingly creative in inventing ways to mistreat one another.

Mr. Imamura’s movies are often funny, usually beautiful, and always — surprisingly — rather sweet-natured. His composure, in the face of so much terrible behavior, is genuinely touching.

This quality is not, however, to be confused with the serenity and formal rigor of older-generation masters like Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu (on three of whose pictures Mr. Imamura labored, unhappily, as an assistant). When Mr. Imamura hit his stride as a director, with the 1961 gangster farce “Pigs and Battleships,” it was immediately clear that tea ceremonies, polite bows and anxieties about the marriage prospects of proper young women would not loom large in his repertory, and that the moods and rhythms of his films would probably never be described as contemplative.

Film Notes: The Insect Woman

This last weekend The Japan Foundation put on a film festival called When Masters Were Young-60's. All films were screened with subtitles. There were several films that I wanted to see (Sing A Song Of Sex by Nagisa Oshima and The Toyko Wanderer by Seijun Suzuki). But I only made it to Shohei Imamura's The Insect Woman:

IMAMURA Shohei is an internationally renowned director, having twice won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or for his “The Ballad of Narayama” (Narayamabushi-ko)(83) and “The Eel” (Unagi)(97). Imamura’s works in the 1960’s such as ”Pigs and Battleships” (Buta to Gunkan)(61) and “The Insect Woman” helped to define his unique style that came to be known as the “serious comedy”. This masterpiece depicts the life of a middle-aged woman with lots of vitality, but told with the detached clinical style similar to a scientific observation of an insect. The movie's portrayal of the lives of formidable women during and after the war reveals human nature and desire in their rawest form. HIDARI Sachiko won the Best Actress Award at the 1964 Berlin International Film Festival for her role in this film.

I thought the themes(prostitution, women being kept as mistresses, women's sexuality, nontraditional families with children born out of wedlock, interacial marriage-one character had an American boyfriend and later married a Korean) must have been pretty shocking for 1963. It is an evocative social commentary on society and the hardships many women had to endure in the postwar struggle for survival. I'd be curious to see some of Imamura's other films, he doesn't flinch from controversial material