Black Rain - Critical Review

黒い雨　-　クリテカルレビュー
Director: IMAMURA shouhei (今村昌)
Writer: ISHIDO toshiro (石堂敏郎)
Cinematographer: KAWAMATA takeshi (川俣武)
Score: TAKEMITSU touru (武満徹)
Editing: OKAYASU hajime (岡安一)
Art Direction: INAGAKI hisao (稲垣久男)

Film: 35mm Black and White, 1.85:1 aspect ratio.
Genre: Drama, depressing
Release Date (Japan): 13 May, 1989
Run time: 123 minutes (2.05 hours, 0.085 days)

As a black and while film from the year 1989, Kuroi Ame - Black Rain - stands as a bit of an oddity.  Director Imamura Shouhei, after all, had material so difficult to handle that it makes perfect sense that this is not an ordinary film for its time.  Many before Shouhei had wanted to adapt Ibuse Masuji's 1965 novel to film, but Shouhei was the first to get an actual chance to do so.  Perhaps this explains well why the film seems to be living in two worlds at the same time: the world of the 60s and the outlook of a director on the cusp of the 1989 bubble.

In Japan, at the time of it's release, it was a very well received film.  For all its subtleties, the film is very much what one might consider "oscar bait."  It invokes Hiroshima, and one would expect such a subject to gain the film points just for that aspect alone.  I'm not so cynical as to think this was the reason the film was made, but I'm sure it did not hurt the film's chances at the pre-development stage - not in the slightest.  As it stood, it swept the Japanese Academy Awards for 1990, winning acolades for best actress, best cinematography, best director, best, editing, best lighting, best music score, best screenplay, best supporting actress, and best film.  While I cannot claim to have seen every film contending for these titles in the 1990 Japanese Academy Awards, I can attest to the film's brilliance in all of these aspects.  The film also won the Blue Ribbon Award for best actress, the Georges Delerue prize and Golden Spur at the Flandres International Film Festival of 1989, best actress at the Hochi Film Awards of 1989, best acress, best director, and best film at the Kinema Junpo Awards of 1990, best actress, best art direction, and best film at the Mainichi Film Concours of 1990, and best foreign film at the Sant Jordi Awards of 1991.  Actual box office numbers are not available to the general public that I can find, however.  While its recognition and quality would seem to indicate that it at least deserved to bring in large numbers, part of me suspects that many would have avoided because of it being shot in black and white.  However, these are likely not the people who would have appreciated the film in the first place.

The first few minutes of the film depict the daily lives of our main characters - or rather, the characters through which the plot is explored - directly before and during the detonation of the nuclear weapon Little Boy over the city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945.  As the confusion and fear of the incomprehensible attack continues, a black rain starts to fall over the area: the first of the fallout that hibakusha would refer to as kuroi ame.  Through a nearly seamless sense of editing, the story progresses to the early 50s - likely starting in the year 1950 due to references to the Korean War - and from there telling the story of the Shizuma family as they attempt to live in a transient world where radiation sickness may at any time take their lives and in which they garner little sympathy.  Shigematsu and Shigeko want to marry off their daughter Yasuko, but as hibakusha - survivors of Hiroshima exposed to its radiation - it is a difficult thing to do, and Yasuko herself has her own motivations.  Her relationship with the war veteran suffering from a severe form of PTSD makes things even more complicated emotionally and for the plot.

While the plot about the love life of Yasuko may seem like your average pot-boiler full of bromides, it serves as a structure for something else, and this sincerity is made quite clear within the first few minutes of the film.  Like Akira of the same year, the film opens almost totally silent to the title, superimposed in stark black letters against a background of islands in the midst of water.  These first few quiet minutes contain a good deal of sinking shoreline imagery.  A pelican walks along the shore, as water laps against the highly textured, saturated sand.  A crab moves, half sunk in a water filled depression, half on the wet ground.  Japan too is being swept away as fire burns cities away and those left live in a certain quiet.  Imamura sensei's direction adds to this sense, with his framing, his cinematographer's use of soft lighting and shadows, and little details like the indistinct conversation that provides some of the only other sounds besides the sparse expository narrations.  Then, with a flash of light, the bomb detonates, and for the first time a soundtrack is heard.  It's quavering violins and minimalist qualities remind me a great deal of the works of composer John Adams.  It serves to deliver a dramatic punch, though perhaps it's all a bit too much for it's own good.  Really, after something like that, there's little that wouldn't seem like melodrama.  For a film that otherwise takes such a hard line, it's surprising.

During this time, though we are introduced to the people who are to be the main characters in the later film, their experience is portrayed as part of a greater whole.  During these first few minutes, there are no main characters except the concept of the victims of the bombing as a whole.  While the film invariably requires its main characters for it to function, for this opening sequence, we are set up to the events of the bombing as a whole - an experience shared by many.  It sets up the context for the rest of the film quite well, without breaking the narrative flow.

We are, however, eventually introduced to the main plot of the film: the story of the Shizuma family.  Like their neighbors in the villiage around them, they are trying to live after the fact, both in a literal and figurative sense.  Cancer and other complications can appear after the fact many years later to claim lives, and it's as if each and every one of the survivors is merely waiting for their time to come, as it must eventually.  Imamura goes as far as to state this explicitly with his repeated references to the Buddhist sutras recited at the funeral, exploring the idea that in this transient world of suffering (いみは｢世｣です、そう思いますか), all men must move on sooner or later.  Personally, I can't decide whether or not this is such a healthy way to live one's life, but then again, that's the question the movie seems to be exploring as well.  How do these people handle it?

How one character handles it is to spend the last of his days fishing for a certain legendarily large carp with his friends.  When he's called a "happy-go-lucky" person for his making the best of the bomb, he asks why such as he are no longer pitied but looked down on.  The response:

"It was before the war ended.  Everyone said things like that.  Don't complain now."

Many have this opinion.  Through the film, the director inserts seemingly inconsequential background events to drive some of his points home.  A cart drives down the street advertising a rally against nuclear energy.  Later, though I foolishly forgot to write down the timestamp, I believe it's Shigematsu who comments:

"Everyone forgot how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed.  They forget the fire and brimstone and go to rallies."

 Around this time, another background event happens: a man carving jizou statues feels compelled to attack a passing bus with a fake bomb as if it were an American tank.  While at first it seems inconsequential, this introduces the character of Yuichi: a veteran of the war whose experiences we discover have led him to fear and loathe the sound of engines for their similarity to the sound of an approaching tank.  Perhaps it says something that a character like this would be introduced in such a way.  It's as if the movie could have picked any number of these small background events to focus on, but this was the one that just happened to be important to the rest of the plot.  In a way, it shows how through the story of these characters, we are being related the story of many people, living many different individual lives, all under the same circumstances.

As the film continues, Imamura focuses in more, and while continuing to explore in greater depths the film's overall themes, it puts more effort into resolving the plot of the main characters, until its purposefully open-ended final scene, with the now aging father staring out at the ambulance as everyone but him leaves with the dying Yasuko for the hospital.

While it was made in the late eighties, the film has almost no visual cues except for the quality of the print to indicate this.  There are no period hairstyles or shirt collars, or other anachronisms to date the film.  However, this does not count the fact that this film was made in 1989 and reflects the lessons learned over the decades about how to frame scenes and set up lighting, all of which occasionally display things only achievable through late eighties technology.  The flare of the atomic bomb, the black rain, the great mushroom cloud, even more subtle things like specific ways of lighting the scene are all accomplished in ways and to degrees of success impossible for filmmakers of the true black and white era.  While it may take some of the superficial stylings of a film of the golden age of Japanese cinema, it most decidedly is not.

The sense of framing and shot setup here in terms of bringing light and movement together shows Imamura's experience and skill.  I think of the opening shots of the film, with the truck, and I think how well the lighting and framing works to bring elements of the shot in and out of emphasis, and keep everything tied together, as well as set the mood.  I notice, however, that there seems to be little use of depth of field: everything is done with lighting and camera zoom.  In this way, it feels a bit like a Kurosawa film, and this is probably one of the only ways it doesn't feel like a modern film in terms of construction.  As Imamura seems to have been one of Kurosawa's contemporaries, this is unsurprising.  It's interesting to note, however, that Imamura was an assistant to Ozu during his early career, though his films seem to be very different in style from Ozu's in terms of both technical aspects and lack of Ozu's taste for more placid subject matters.

Black Rain came towards the end of Imamura's long career, and it shows.  This is a movie made by not only an experienced filmmaker, but a man whose life has given him certain wisdom.  It's not only a film  rich in theme and meaning but also a very engaging story, which is something that few feature length films can ever claim to do simultaneously.  Perhaps this is no surprise: the story of Hiroshima victims itself is both significant and compelling.  I called the film's premise Oscar bait, and I stand by that, but that does not take away from the matter's inherent power.  It's Oscar bait for a very good reason.  At the end of the film, I imagine the audience will not be able to help to but at least sympathize with one of the director's last words, as spoken by Shigematsu:

正義の戦争より不正義の平和ほうがまだましあゆだな。
Unjust peace is better than a war of justice.

Unless I got the Japanese totally wrong.  Which is always a possibility.

Sources:
Bock, Audie. "Shohei Imamura." Google Books. Toronto International Film Festival Group, 1997. Web. 16 Nov 2011.
Moulinette. "Black Rain (Japanese Film)." Wikipedia. 59th Ed. Wikimedia Foundation, 2006. Web. 16 Nov 2011.
"Black Rain (1989)." IMDB. Amazon.com, Inc, Web. 16 Nov 2011.
Kim, Nelson. "Shohei Imamura." Senses of Cinema. Senses of Cinema, 15 Dec, 2010. Web. 16 Nov 2011.

Idealism vs Realism in the Golden Age of Japanese Film

日本映画の黄金時代のリアリズムたいアイデアリズム

It's always problematic to assign traits universally to the body of work of an entire nation.  In the end, nations do not define individuals, and for all the Buddhist and Shinto influences throughout the golden age of Japanese cinema, the creation of art remains the most individualistic act imaginable.  This does not mean, however, that Japanese cinema as a whole does not possess certain fascinating traits, stemming from its history of theatrical art, social dynamics, the world (if this were in Japanese, I'd use the word "yo") around them, and it's the confluences of all these things coming together that makes Japanese cinema (and Japan in general) so fascinating.

One of the things that keeps appearing in Japanese film is its relationship to romanticism and idealism versus realism.

(Note, just so that it's clear, when I talk about romanticism and realism in this essay, I generally mean the style of art, not their more commonly used definitions.)

Maybe the first film we watched even provides an interesting example involving experimental filmmaking.  A Page of Madness - 狂った一ペイジ - is a highly unconventional film for a number of reasons.  One might talk for many thousands of words about its use of film theory, but this is perhaps related still to something more underlying: a will to not only express an idea but to express it from a certain point of view that is not the point of view of an objective observer.  From the very first scenes, we are shown a vision that is not the cameraman's but of a character.  By Kinugasa sensei's use of juxtaposition and imagery, something is presented to us in a way that is fully aware that it is a presentation, and which uses it to show a world not objective but subjectively a construct of the ideas of a certain character.  Yet, though this is not the "real world" being shown, the film (however vaguely) attempts to say some things about the real world, emotionally and as commentary.

The katana was an elegant weapon for a less civilized age.

Still, that's not exactly what I'm talking about.  Maybe the most interesting example that immediately comes to mind is the Seven Samurai - 七人の侍.  In a very real way, this film is attempting to reconcile an idealized, subjective view of the samurai with the social realities of the time, which is reflected in, among other things, the film's imagery.

When we are introduced to the samurai, it is evident that all except for Katsushirou and Kikuchiyo are experienced soldiers of many battles.  Their profession is war, and they've spent their lives honing their skills.  It defines them.  Their mission is a noble one.  Yet, through the course of the film, we find out that these warriors have only survived so long not only because of skill - no amount of skill will make you that lucky - but because they're of the run-away-Sir-Robin school of combat.  Kyuuzou's grace with a katana is sublime, and yet, as the actual battle begins, it's a noisy, confused, dirty affair.  On a higher level even, the actor playing Kyuuzou had never held a katana in his life: the confidence and elegance he portrayed was itself very far away from any of combat's realities.  The peasants they fight for are disadvantaged and threatened by the menacing ronin, yet they are not all the meek common folk who the samurai bravely step in to defend.  Our peasants are very much flawed and human, doing everything in their power, unethical things, rash things.  These are our meek that the strong samurai defend, and yet they are also the result of the realities of feudal Japan.  Even as the film ends, the ronin routed, and the day won in ways both heroic and ignominious, Kanbei stands under the graves of his comrades and realizes the truth: for all their seemingly heroic actions, the Samurai are all going to die alone and lonely, either on the battlefield or, without knowing any trade besides war to support them, enfeebled and desperate on the town streets.

Stop.  Kyuuzoutime.

In the imagery of the film, this is reflected as well.  We see sweeping, composed, larger than life shots on a regular basis.  Heck, this film is the trope codifier for the now common shot of bad guys riding silhouetted over the hilltop.  Images in this film are highly romanticized as a rule.  Yet at the same time, despite the stylization, they often portray things that are not in any way idealistic or even romantic, but in the end, realistic.  Though the battle in the rain is a choice made very much out of stylistic judgement, the effect it has is to illustrate some rather ignominious things.  Really, stylistic choices like these seem to occur quite often in Japanese film for a couple of reasons, but that's a topic for another essay (one that I'd like to write after we've seen Akira and Spirited Away).  Anyway, even though its an example of realism in that Seven Samurai is a film trying to make a point, it has this competing current of romanticism flowing right along side it, and yet, the two don't seem to conflict.  Seven Samurai is a very complicated film in that regard.

For a bit of a more mono-dimensional take on the same dichotomy, we have Mizoguchi sensei and his Sansho the Bailiff - 山椒大夫.  Mizoguchi sensei's filmmaking is naturalistic but highly planned, with its long yet well framed takes and distant crane shots.  It is not as obviously stylized as Ozu or Kurosawa sensei's works, but it's also quite evident that everything is very well planned and staged.  He is not a filmmaker where the elements of his art can be easily distinguished but one where you'll find yourself surprised if you start imagining how different any given shot would be like if it were even the slightest bit altered.  In a more literal sense, this is a bit of a "realism vs idealism" dichotomy, but really that's not what I mean.  Really, Sansho the Bailiff pretty much pure realism, what with the melodrama serving mainly to illustrate sociopolitical points, but it's the fact that it also comes with these wistful, romanticized shots that makes it an example at all.  Were it only more genuine...

On a side note, the "disadvantaged" of Sansho the Bailiff are dealt with in an equally interesting manner.  It seems that Mizoguchi sensei had few illusions as to the nature of peasants either.  Maybe another paper could discuss how Japanese films of this era, often with such liberal agendas, can at the same time be so even handed about the lower classes.

｢ゴジラだ!　逃げて，今逃げて!｣
｢でも．．．すごいな〜｣

One film in which there are some somewhat romantic elements that serve to increase the effectiveness of a point is the (original Japanese version of) Godzilla - ゴジラ.  Here, it's not so much that there are two concurrent currents, but rather what I think is the more common occurrence in Japanese cinema of the time: wherein a film is about something emotional or visceral but has applicability - on purpose - so that it may also be considered to have elements of realism.  With Godzilla, the film is about a nigh unstoppable force, raising its way across Japan, melting away the JSDF and brushing off their small arm and artillery fire, playing to the still fresh memories of the vast formations of American B-29 strategic bombers dropping firebombs, and eventually, nuclear weapons over their regrettably flammable cities.  This, in other words, is a film about fear and uncertainty in the face of an unstoppable, incomprehensible power.  That is the theme at its center, and as such, it would not be inaccurate to call this film, in many ways, an example of romanticism.

However, that would be a misrepresentation of the film as a whole, because it's most certainly a film with a message and a purpose other than the exploration of an idea.  In case you didn't notice, Godzilla is nuclear warfare, and the conventional military is useless to deal with such a paradigm shift, and most people's fate is simply to be swept up.  Honda sensei's metaphor is absolutely nothing if not clear (even if it's a bit schizophrenic).  However, unlike Seven Samurai, the two currents are not interweaving but parallel to each other: one does not particularly affect the other.  Actually, that's not quite accurate either, because it's more like the idea of the film is what empowers its more realism like features.

Things happen in Japanese cinema that simply don't with any frequency anywhere else, and the golden age of Japanese film represents a time when there was enough money in the market to make films that could compete with their foreign counterparts in terms of production values - when the two had equal footing.  It was a time of ideas and auteurs that wanted to express them, and moreover had the money and freedom to do so.  It's really no surprise at all that cases like the above were common.

Come to think of it, I might be tempted to make the argument in a later blossay that Japan had another sort of less recognized and visible golden age during the late eighties and nineties - this time, in animation - but we'll see.

The Magnificent Seven Samurai

Intro Post

This is a blog solely intended for the purpose of writing for the Fall 2011 class known as EAS 299: Contemporary Japanese Film.

Or is it Japanese Contemporary Film?

Anyway, I've been meaning to write some more analytical pieces on the various games, films, and anime I've seen (besides posting more of my awful awesome awful short stories), but now I actually have an excuse.  Well, actually, it's more like I have someone telling me to actually do these things.  But that aside, I might actually post some things here that aren't necessarily assignments but are just thoughts on things that I've recently seen that are related to what we've been discussing in class.  All I could think of as Prof. Mizenko was discussing some of the general themes of the class - and Japanese cinema in general - was how many things I'd already seen that would fit some of the discussions we'd be having perfectly.  I have a mind to challenge myself to see how many of my posts here I can work Evangelion into.  Actually, that'd be too easy...what about Garzey's Wing?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Until next time.