Oshima, Second Encounter, Death by Hanging
In an opinion poll organized in Japan sometime in the forties, 71% of those interviewed were against the abolition of capital punishment. Since then years have passed: we still have death penalty here and there, and still many people believe that in extreme cases such a verdict is justified. Have they witnessed an execution, ever?
Koshikei (Death by Hanging), made in 1968 by Nagisa Oshima.
I'm taking this time a totally non-systematic approach; trying to understand a whole cinematic current just by watching movies that are totally unknown to me. Each new movie as a new experience, adding just my own understanding to what I have already got from films previously seen (I mean, films of the Japanese New Wave).
It's refreshing while it makes serious folks crazy. I'm feeling like the illiterate guy who went to a movie first time in life and was impressed just by a little mouse who had been for one second in a scene: a tinny spot on one corner. Nobody else had noticed the mouse (even the authors of the movie, director, screenwriter, whichever).
What's more, Oshima seems to change the style with each new movie, so my way to see his works is hundred percent craziness.
I started to write this post just a couple of hours after watching his Death by Hanging. I had gone to the theater very tired and the extreme violence of Oshima's sarcasm made me sick. Though I felt it was a great movie (how could that happen? vibes, probably :)
So, I went the following day to watch it again. Crazy, isn't it? Well, not exactly. Believe it or not, I was rewarded this time: a great movie deserves to be tasted.
If The Night of the Killer reminded me of Jarmusch, this time the huge talent in building a universe of macabre insanity sent me to La Muerte De Un Burócrata of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (and to all great Latino-Americans). And Kafka, too, came into picture.
Is it a movie against the capital punishment? I think it's much more: it's the whole system; the system is just bullshit. I cannot remember now a more nihilist movie!
It starts in a strictly documentary style: the execution of a convict. The facts are clear as hell: the convict raped and killed two high-school girls.
The prosecutor is present, also the prison educational officer: he has had long discussions with the convict, to help him understand the gravity of the crimes.
A priest officiates the last rites. There is a small Buddhist shrine on the wall. It is now closed, as the convict is a Catholic. After the religious service is over, the convict is offered his last meal: cakes and fruit, along with a cup of tea; then the last cigarette.
After all this is done, the convict is blindfolded and handcuffed, then led to the execution room. A noose is passed over his neck. He is brought over a trap that opens at the signal made by the execution officer. The body falls through this trap and is throttled by the noose. A doctor establishes the absence of vital signs and pronounces the death.
The legal procedure carries an inherent solemnity and is carefully observed in all details: the system is acting to keep us safe; the system is in full control.
However, there is a little something this time: the vital signs do not fade! Usually it takes around twelve minutes, fifteen at most. Now, twenty five minutes have passed, and nothing: the body refuses to die.
Who will take the control? The prosecutor declines: his only responsibility is to witness. It comes to the prison commander: the convict should be hanged again. Impossible: he is unconscious. The convict must be aware of what happens, otherwise it would be no punishment, just killing. It comes to the doctor to resuscitate the convict.
The thing is that the convict comes back to life with amnesia. He does not know who he is, where he is, what's going on. So it comes to the educational officer. He starts to explain, but the convict is like a new born: he is completely ignorant of society, laws, morale, passions, and the like.
So the educational officer has to reenact the crimes in front of the convict, to make him understand what he's done.
And once the reenactment takes the stage there is no more limit to pure insanity: this film director, Nagisa Oshima, is nothing short of a madman genius. What follows is a mix of real and imaginary (because some facts cannot be recreated, only imagined), a mix more and more confusing for the personages on the screen: from a point on nobody there knows any more what's real and what's imaginary.
As the reenactment of the crimes advances the criminal himself seems more and more innocent, while the prison officials get more and more out of control; and the criminal cannot understand what's with this bunch of idiotic perverts with hidden sadistic desires and killer instincts, each one with a background of real war crimes. They are Japanese, for them he's just an anonymous R, the common nickname they give to each Korean immigrant (one more detail, just to add to this craziness: his real name is K, just as Kafka's hero).
The only person to keep cool remains Oshima himself, who's sitting at the invisible board of the game and pushes the controls, adding to real and imaginary a third dimension: the whole reenactment is so to speak reenacted again for us, as The film director knows when to cut the action and insert his own comments.
There is an amazing scene somewhere toward the end, like a complex musical structure with two parallel motives: the prison personnel got drunk and they chat about their own war crimes, ignoring the convict who is talking with his sister (reenacted through the imagination of the educational officer); little by little the convict understands from her what's all this about; meanwhile the officials are progressing in their drunkenness.
And in the end the convict will understand that he is just a creation of the system, he belongs to the system the same way the prison officials belong, the same way all of us belong. He understands he is guilty, because once in the system, each one is guilty; so he accepts to be hanged again, in the name of all R's in the world, i.e. in our name. And the noose remains empty!
Is it because the movie played all time between real and imaginary? Is it because we cannot distinguish anymore between real and imaginary? Oshima would probably say that everybody deserves capital punishment: killing everybody is killing nobody.
(Japanese New Wave)
Koshikei (Death by Hanging), made in 1968 by Nagisa Oshima.
I'm taking this time a totally non-systematic approach; trying to understand a whole cinematic current just by watching movies that are totally unknown to me. Each new movie as a new experience, adding just my own understanding to what I have already got from films previously seen (I mean, films of the Japanese New Wave).
It's refreshing while it makes serious folks crazy. I'm feeling like the illiterate guy who went to a movie first time in life and was impressed just by a little mouse who had been for one second in a scene: a tinny spot on one corner. Nobody else had noticed the mouse (even the authors of the movie, director, screenwriter, whichever).
What's more, Oshima seems to change the style with each new movie, so my way to see his works is hundred percent craziness.
I started to write this post just a couple of hours after watching his Death by Hanging. I had gone to the theater very tired and the extreme violence of Oshima's sarcasm made me sick. Though I felt it was a great movie (how could that happen? vibes, probably :)
So, I went the following day to watch it again. Crazy, isn't it? Well, not exactly. Believe it or not, I was rewarded this time: a great movie deserves to be tasted.
If The Night of the Killer reminded me of Jarmusch, this time the huge talent in building a universe of macabre insanity sent me to La Muerte De Un Burócrata of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (and to all great Latino-Americans). And Kafka, too, came into picture.
Is it a movie against the capital punishment? I think it's much more: it's the whole system; the system is just bullshit. I cannot remember now a more nihilist movie!
It starts in a strictly documentary style: the execution of a convict. The facts are clear as hell: the convict raped and killed two high-school girls.
The prosecutor is present, also the prison educational officer: he has had long discussions with the convict, to help him understand the gravity of the crimes.
A priest officiates the last rites. There is a small Buddhist shrine on the wall. It is now closed, as the convict is a Catholic. After the religious service is over, the convict is offered his last meal: cakes and fruit, along with a cup of tea; then the last cigarette.
After all this is done, the convict is blindfolded and handcuffed, then led to the execution room. A noose is passed over his neck. He is brought over a trap that opens at the signal made by the execution officer. The body falls through this trap and is throttled by the noose. A doctor establishes the absence of vital signs and pronounces the death.
The legal procedure carries an inherent solemnity and is carefully observed in all details: the system is acting to keep us safe; the system is in full control.
However, there is a little something this time: the vital signs do not fade! Usually it takes around twelve minutes, fifteen at most. Now, twenty five minutes have passed, and nothing: the body refuses to die.
Who will take the control? The prosecutor declines: his only responsibility is to witness. It comes to the prison commander: the convict should be hanged again. Impossible: he is unconscious. The convict must be aware of what happens, otherwise it would be no punishment, just killing. It comes to the doctor to resuscitate the convict.
The thing is that the convict comes back to life with amnesia. He does not know who he is, where he is, what's going on. So it comes to the educational officer. He starts to explain, but the convict is like a new born: he is completely ignorant of society, laws, morale, passions, and the like.
So the educational officer has to reenact the crimes in front of the convict, to make him understand what he's done.
And once the reenactment takes the stage there is no more limit to pure insanity: this film director, Nagisa Oshima, is nothing short of a madman genius. What follows is a mix of real and imaginary (because some facts cannot be recreated, only imagined), a mix more and more confusing for the personages on the screen: from a point on nobody there knows any more what's real and what's imaginary.
As the reenactment of the crimes advances the criminal himself seems more and more innocent, while the prison officials get more and more out of control; and the criminal cannot understand what's with this bunch of idiotic perverts with hidden sadistic desires and killer instincts, each one with a background of real war crimes. They are Japanese, for them he's just an anonymous R, the common nickname they give to each Korean immigrant (one more detail, just to add to this craziness: his real name is K, just as Kafka's hero).
The only person to keep cool remains Oshima himself, who's sitting at the invisible board of the game and pushes the controls, adding to real and imaginary a third dimension: the whole reenactment is so to speak reenacted again for us, as The film director knows when to cut the action and insert his own comments.
There is an amazing scene somewhere toward the end, like a complex musical structure with two parallel motives: the prison personnel got drunk and they chat about their own war crimes, ignoring the convict who is talking with his sister (reenacted through the imagination of the educational officer); little by little the convict understands from her what's all this about; meanwhile the officials are progressing in their drunkenness.
And in the end the convict will understand that he is just a creation of the system, he belongs to the system the same way the prison officials belong, the same way all of us belong. He understands he is guilty, because once in the system, each one is guilty; so he accepts to be hanged again, in the name of all R's in the world, i.e. in our name. And the noose remains empty!
Is it because the movie played all time between real and imaginary? Is it because we cannot distinguish anymore between real and imaginary? Oshima would probably say that everybody deserves capital punishment: killing everybody is killing nobody.
(Japanese New Wave)
Labels: Japanese New Wave, Oshima
posted by Pierre Radulescu at
4:37 PM
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