Oshima, Missed Encounter, Violence at Noon

I did not see Violence at Noon (Hakuchu No Torima - 1966). It was presented at the AFI Silver Theatre within the Oshima retrospective. It happened that I arrive at the theatre at two o'clock, to find that the screening had been the same day at noon. I didn't know anything about the retrospective by that time. I went then to see the movies that followed.


I found on youTube a video with the movie trailer. I cannot post it here as it does not fit with the allowable width of the blog. I captured some images from the video, and they are of a exquisite
artistry.


Here is what AsianVirusNet says about Violence at Noon:


It is based on the notorious nationwide killing spree of the Daylight Demon, a brutal murderer who took the lives of over thirty victims during the late 1950s, all women and all killed in the middle of the day. In Oshima's version, the killer is also part of a failed cooperative farm in rural Japan whose members include two idealistic women who become involved with the future killer.



Violence at Noon introduced a new formal complexity into Oshima's cinema, abandoning the extended long takes that were the staple of his early films to embrace a radically fragmented montage style that mirrors the women's attempts to understand their traumatic memories. A disturbing study of the criminal mind and a moving elegy to failed dreams, Violence at Noon is Oshima's first great masterpiece.






(Japanese New Wave)

Oshima, Fifth Encounter, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

(video by kasoooo)

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, made by Oshima in 1983. This time I thought immediately at D. H. Lawrence. Not so much at his famous Lady Chatterley's Lover: the movie reminds you rather of The Prussian Officer.

On the other hand Mishima (with his biography and all controversies) comes to mind as you follow one of the main personages (Captain Yonoi).

Java island, 1943: a Japanese camp of British prisoners. Besides the inherent harshness in such a place, the brutal clash of two very distant cultures; the other one is more than an enemy: an incomprehensible alien.

The movie is based on a book written by Sir Laurens van der Post, a British officer who was prisoner in the camp. So it's a Japanese director making the film to understand the mind of a British author who wrote his book to understand, among other things, the Japanese mind: Oshima is trying to understand the responsibility of his nation in the war, as viewed through the eyes of the enemy.

A heavy homoerotic suggestion passes throughout this movie: draped in brutality, fight for male domination or just for survival, need of affection, repressed desires.

To treat seriously such a theme one has to be very honest, which is always difficult. Beyond courage and openness: honesty. For an artist is to imagine himself in each personage he is talking about and go down to total identification: it's Flaubert in his Madame Bovary, c'est moi! And when one has arrived down there, then it's to look inside and understand the hidden demon.

It starts with the punishment of a guard who has made sex to one prisoner. The Japanese rules of discipline are strict: the raper must commit ritual suicide! The prisoner won't survive either: beyond obvious humiliation, he had found in the rape a proof of desperate affection.

This first episode is only setting the parameters. The main actors of the drama are other guys: the Mediator, the Jerk, the Sergeant, the Hero, the Samurai.

The Mediator is Colonel John Lawrence (Tom Conti): he has spent several years before the war in Tokyo, getting some knowledge of Japanese language and culture; more than that, he understands the vital importance of compromise. It is immensely difficult: sometimes Lawrence has more problems with his own comrades; there is among them the Jerk, a so-called British commander of the prisoners (the guy who happens to be the highest in rank, without any real authority of course). This guy is stupidly arrogant and makes always things worse. By the way, it is played by a very decent actor, Jack Thompson :)

Lawrence works much better with the Sergeant: the chief guard. Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano) is brutal, moody and very effective. He knows that for keeping discipline he has to be tough, and he is. In other conditions he would have been a good husband and father, managing his farm; the war made him the chief guard of the prisoner camp and he is just doing his job.

The Samurai is Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto) the commander of the camp: a young aristocrat obsessed with his system of values; military honor, discipline, self sacrifice, abnegation. Is it not something deeper in him? Something he is trying to escape from, something he is ashamed of? Something he does not have the courage to acknowledge? The arrival of a new prisoner unleashes the demon.

This new prisoner is the Hero: Major Jack Straffer Celliers (David Bowie) is different from Lawrence. He is not a reasonable guy searching the compromise. By the contrary, he volunteered in the war and fought in guerrilla missions: looking always for trouble, for punishment, for death.

A male of a strange beauty, blond, with blue eyes, and an impossible smile: seductive while distant. Should we wonder that Captain Yonoi finds an ever growing attraction for the stranger? Why is that? Is it because Celliers is unquestionably a hero? A prototype for Yonoi's system of samurai values? Well, it could be, but Celliers is the enemy! Does this detail increase the attraction Yonoi is feeling? Maybe. This attraction becomes physically and mentally intolerable for Yonoi, who finds desperately an answer: the stranger is an alien god! Only a god can be so beautiful, so heroic, and, well, so strange.

A blond god, with blue eyes, who came from the remote Albion to torment Captain Yonoi?

Actually Celliers himself is fighting with his own demons: long time ago, in remote childhood, he did not protect his younger brother who was kind of an androgyn and thus the target of cruel jokes from other kids. Years had passed, Celliers had become a successful lawyer; women were finding him very handsome, only he was not interested in them. He felt the arrival of war as the long sought occasion to free from his own obsessions.

Eventually Celiers would make the supreme gesture to get punished: he would kiss Yonoi in front of everybody, so he would be condemned to death and buried alive; relieve would come at last, with his agony ... while Yonoi would approach him and cut a lock from his blond hair - to bury it later in the familial shrine:

In the Spring,
Obeying the August spirits
I went to fight the enemy.

In the Fall,
Returning I beg the spirits,
To receive also the enemy.

--------------------------

Is it a movie about our hidden demons? No, it's rather about our frailty. And about hidden moments of intense humanity: after some years, Sergeant Hara would be put to death as a war criminal; Lawrence would visit him in prison - the British had once been sentenced to death himself, and saved by Hara, in a moment of drunkenness, You know who is Father Christmas? I am, and I forgive you. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Merry Christmas!



(Japanese New Wave)

Oshima, Fourth Encounter, In the Realm of Senses

In the Realm of Senses (I no corrida, made in 1976), a movie that's extremely painful to be watched. One hour and a half of hard porn. What starts casually is getting more and more horrible, down to the intolerable end.

I already knew Oshima from the other three movies I had watched, so I tried to get a clue. I knew him as a rebel against any values, any taboos, so I thought this was a deconstruction of Japanese cultural traditions, that aesthetic with delicate sexual suggestions, all geisha poetry and so on; no, says Oshima, all these traditions are just bulshit, it's a voyeuristic society, sexually obsessed. Well, it is some symbol like this in the movie - only it's wrong to focus on this path: it's not the main idea.

The movie takes place in the thirties: Japan was living the pleasures of conquering one Asian country after another: a hedonism of war and victories. Was Oshima creating here a symbol for their military drunkenness, leading ultimately to self destruction? Well, maybe - but this interpretation doesn't lead you too far, either; it's just to simple to reduce this movie to history and politics.

Actually the movie narrates a real case that took place in Tokyo in 1936. I found it on the web: Oshima did not add anything. The owner of a hotel started a casual affair with one of the maids. What followed was a period of uninterrupted sex and an ever growing mutual dependence. She was forbidding him to leave even for peeing.

Finally she began strangling him up to a certain point, as this was increasing his pleasure during orgasm. And he asked her to strangle him up to the end. After he died she cut his genitalia, to keep them for ever. As simple as that:)



Oshima just narrated the story, not adding anything, not forgetting anything. Hard porn in real life, hard porn in the movie. Did he want to challenge us? Our stupid conventions, our shameful lies, our two penny principles? Maybe. Still I think the movie is more profound.

Did he want to study the dynamics of an affair that started casually to become madness? To find out the truth about all that love means? Pleasure of sex, pleasure to dominate, pleasure of being dominated? Search for pleasure, search for absolute? Or just to pull out a moral lesson? After all, once common morale considers extramarital sex a sin, there is no more a compass to tell you where to stop once you're in.

How to find a sense in a fact beyond common sense? I think it's much simpler: this movie is just a narration of the fact. Oshima did not make judgments, he just told the story, as it was. A reenactment. Letting aside the common sense and celebrating all the five physical senses. I know it sounds horrible. But a story beyond good and evil deserves just that, a honest narration: which is a celebration. And believe me, this movie is a gorgeous celebration.

(Japanese New Wave)

Oshima, Third Encounter, Max Mon Amour

Max Mon Amour, the movie made by Oshima in 1986: this time it's Buñuel who's coming in mind (and Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie). Anyway, the screenwriter is the same (Jean-Claude Carrière) for both movies.

But it's more than that. After watching Max Mon Amour I realized suddenly what Buñuel meant in the creative world of Oshima: it's like the famous we all came out of Gogol's Overcoat; here the overcoat was Le Chien Andalou. All Oshima is there, in the Chien Andalou, his attitude toward classics, towards cinema, himself, us, towards the system, all.

This time, in Max Mon Amour, he is unexpectedly mild. A farce that becomes grotesque and remains mild and just funny, in the same time. A great balance.

A family of the upper class. Monsieur (Anthony Higgins) is a British diplomat, in service at Paris. Madame (Charlotte Rampling) is a very cool French. Each one has a long-term extramarital affair. The lovers are so to speak part of the family; they attend the festive dinners, among the other friends.

Only, for some time Madame has a peculiar behavior. Each day she disappears for a couple of hours. A detective (Pierre Étaix) is hired and finds some data: Madame rented a small apartment where she goes daily. Monsieur gets the address and finds her nude, with an unknown partner in the bed. Could it be sex? Monsieur asks, Madame refuses to give explicit details.

Monsieur invites Madame to bring the new partner home, so it would be better for all. The question remains, whether there is sex or not, but eventually Monsieur realizes that this is irrelevant: Madame loves him anyway. The perfect ménage a trois.

A small detail: the new partner is a chimpanzee.





(Japanese New Wave)

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)

Oshima, First Encounter, Night of the Killer

Muri Shinju: Nihon No Natsu (Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, aka Night of the Killer), made in 1967 by Oshima. His famous movies would follow, and I hope I will be able to see some of them in April: there is an Oshima each weekend at the AFI Theatre in Silver Spring.

It was my first encounter with Oshima and with a movie from the Japanese New Wave. I had read some insightful info in the monograph of Tom Vick (Asian Cinema). I will crystallize my ideas after watching several movies.

Some words about this one, the Night of the Killer: it called into my mind the first movies of Jarmusch (the kind of Stranger Than Paradise), however it's another animal; it is programatically against any value: any Japanese taboo, any Japanese myth, any concept of cinematic art; it's an anti-movie with an anti-plot, by an anti-author. A girl is looking for sex (well, it happens, you know), all males are jerks, so sex cannot be. And gangsters are the number one jerks (this is a movie with gangsters and there are a lot of Japanese movies cultivating the myth of the gangster, black dramas - here is a black comedy: gangsters are just cheap guys good of nothing, crazy violent impotent idiots; they think they're killers, actually they are not, they are too impotent to kill - however in the end some of them kill here and there, just to contradict even the logic of Oshima - as I said, he is an anti-author, whatever that means).



Kathie Smith has a very good chronicle about this movie in her blog.


(Japanese New Wave)