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.