Wow!

This film was made just after the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Toshiro Mifune plays an old man who wants to move his family to Brazil to keep them safe from the effects of an H-Bomb.  His family thinks he is insane and doesn’t want to move.   Really, they don’t want to move because they will lose their ineheritance.  So they declare the old man financially incompetent in order to maintain it and the courts reluctantly agree.

Clearly, the man isn’t incompetent, he’s shrewd.  And if you get right down to it, every Japanese citizen has irrational (but possibly completely rational) fears about the destructiveness of the H-bomb.

It’s silly, perhaps, but those were my thoughts when I was very young.  Why would man create such a thing?  I was of the generation that was taught to “duck and cover”.    I  remember seeing a man shot in the head on a news cast when I was very young.  It must have been something very new because my mother was very upset that I witnessed it.   We hadn’t been immune to that sort of media coverage, yet.

I think that may be the point of Kurosawa’s film.  We become immune to what we should experience as completely outrageous.   Nakajima’s family has become complacent about living in fear and thinks their father insane that he hasn’t managed to obtain this same complacency.  The father can’t understand this complacency.

It is an interesting thought that Nakajima’s family can afford the complacency because of what Nakajima, himself, built.   Kurosawa welcomed Democracy.  What he didn’t welcome was the materialism that came along with the capitalism that came to Japan through Western Democracy.   Life itself was made less important than material abundance.

Think about 9/11.  We are far enough away from it to be somewhat rational about it now.  We gave up our freedom in order to secure our materialism.  Bush told us to go out and shop, go to Disney Land.  Distract yourself from the reality of what was really going on.

How much absurdity are we capable of rationalizing rather than seeing it for what it is?

Still making my way through Akira Kurosawa films and had to back up to his censored Post War films because I somehow missed Drunken Angel.  So glad I noticed I had missed it because I loved it! It stars Takashi Shimura and Toshiru Mifune who have been in most of the Kurosawa films I’ve seen so far.  They are both fantastic, especially Shimura.

Drunken Angel is set the Black Market area of Tokyo.  Supposedly, Kurosawa wanted to have all the action take place in a burned down section of the Black Market but the American censors wouldn’t allow it.  I didn’t fully understand why, but apparently one of the conditions was that the Japanese could in no way criticize the American Occupation.

Despite censorship, Kurosawa managed to get away with far more in this film than he been able to in previous films.   According to Lars-Martin Sorenson, they wanted him to get rid of the title because they believed Drunken Angel was blasphemous.  (That cracks me up!!)  They wouldn’t let him use a German song (Mack the Knife) he had intended to use because the Germans had sided with the Japanese against America.  (No filmmaker was allowed to use German songs in their films).   So Kurosawa wrote his own song (Jungle Boogie) which he did not submit in the script and was much worse than the German song in terms because it much more clearly represented the presence of the Occupation.

In 1948, when Drunken Angel was released, the Occupation had been in place for 2 1/2 years.  Living conditions were still extremely poor, so there was a lot of hostility toward the American occupation and Kurosawa shared in this hostility.   Sorenson tells the story about a strike at Toho, where Kurosawa worked.  There had been several strikes and in order to break it up, American soldiers arrived at the studio with tanks and fighter planes.   The event was totally hushed up in the Japanese press. Kurosawa saw this as extremely hypocritical.  On the one hand, Americans preach democracy.  On the other hand, they break up legal strikes with tanks and fighter pilots and heavily censor the press and the film industry.

Kurosawa wasn’t able to place the action in a burned down sector of the Black Market, but he managed to create a set that feels incredibly dirty.  It’s easy to imagine that the kids playing in the water could very well come down with typhoid.

This was Mifune’s first time to work with Kurosawa.  He plays a gangster who has come down with tuberculosis.  Shimura plays a drunk doctor who wants to help him, but the gangster is unable to help himself because he’s trapped by his Western/materialistic lifestyle.

Shimura’s character is a lot of fun to watch.  He seems to be completely unsympathetic toward his patients, but it becomes obvious that he has a deep concern for their well-being.  He calls himself a drunk angel, and in a sense, he truly is an angel even though he is not what most would consider angelic - not even close.

I’ve never actually read The idiot so can’t compare Dostoevsky’s novel to Kurosawa’s adapatation, but have seen this film several times.

Unlike Stray Dog, this movie is cold, cold, cold!!  The origination of the plot for the film is given to us in various ways: some of it is written in third-person narrative; some of it in spoken third-person narrative; and some of it we figure out through the actions of the characters.  I’m not sure I’ve completely followed the purpose of the various forms, but it’s interesting - kind of like reading a novel while simultaneously watching the action unfold in front of you.

The film starts out in written narrative: “Dostoevsky wanted to portray a genuinely good man.  It may seem ironic, choosing a young idiot as his hero, but in this world, goodness and idiocy are often equated.  This story tells of the destruction of a pure soul by a faithless world.”

I’m laying out the plot just to try and get it straight in my mind…

The idiot, Kameda, was accused of war crimes he didn’t commit and was sentenced to death.  At the last minute, the sentence was revoked, and he went crazy from the shock of the pardon.  He developed epileptic dementia and had so many fits he eventually became “an idiot”.  He can’t recall what life was like before his idiocy.

Akama befriends Kameda and tells him about Taeko Nasu, whom he fell in love with because he had been repressed as a child and took one look at Taeko Nasu which immediately released all of those pent up passions.  He stole money from his father to buy her a diamond ring and this so outraged his father he disowned him.  But his father died and so Akama has recently come into his fortune.  Both he and Kameda are headed to Sapporo.  Kameda is going to see Mr. Ono, his only relative, who is tied up in some ugly business regarding Kameda’s ranch, I think.  The military had reported Kameda as officially dead, and it seems that somehow, Mr. Ono sold the ranch through Kayama?  But that has me a bit confused.

Taeko Nasu is apparently a woman of ill-repute.   Supposedly, she’s been Tohata’s mistress since childhood.  Fearing for his reputation, Tohata has offered a dowry of 600,000 to marry her off, but doesn’t really want to let her go.  Taeko Nasu, like Akama, feels like a caged animal.  Akama feels this way because he was forced to repress his emotions, Taeko Nasu because she has been a kept woman since childhood and has likewise has had to repress who she is.

Kayama is about to marry Taeko Nasu in order to get the 600,000 yen dowry and this somehow involves Mr. Ono - maybe because he sold the ranch through Kayama?  I’m not sure.  According to the film, Kayama isn’t really a scoundrel, he’s just an unassertive coward.  Secretly, he’s in love with Ono’s daughter Ayako.

There are lots of twists and turns that keep twisting and turning.

SPOILER WARNING!!

So, Akama ends up with Taeko Nasu, but it isn’t pretty for either one of them.  They look like the Adams Family but with hateful passion rather than joyful, loving passion. The doors creak of their large home creak and everything is dirty and dark.  Really dark.  Kameda ends up in love with Ayako who is likewise in love with him.  But she can’t let go of her jealously toward Taeko Nasu who Kameda also loves, but not in the same way he loves Ayako.  Ayako promises she won’t let her impetuosity get in the way, but of course it does.

Desire, rather than reality, rules the outcome of everyone’s destiny.  Nothing is allowed to be what it is.  Instead, everything is judged on image.  Emotions are repressed and come back to bite in a big way.

Like I said, I haven’t read, The Idiot.  But this sounds a lot like what I know of Dostoevsky’s story.  He was sentenced to death and somehow managed to escape and likewise suffered from epilepsy.   Dostoevsky had some sort of mystical experience during his imprisoned days that made him feel connected to all that is.   He de-magicalized the sacraments and re-framed them within existential terms.   You see a lot of those re-framed sacraments within this film.

The idiot represents Christ and the isolation that is experienced by someone who is “good”.  People recognize the “good”, but they can’t accept it because to accept it requires too deep of a look at their own lives.   Akama’s love is solely based on passion, and this eventually kills Taeko Nasu.  But Kameda’s love for Taeko Nasu is based on the Christian ethic of forgiveness.

This sort of turns the norm around - where the upper class thinks of itself as “good” while the lower classes are “bad”.  This thinking was true in both Japan and Russia (and in the U.S. although the U.S. doesn’t like to acknowledge class differentiation.)

Kurosawa is compassionate toward the suffering of those who get stuck in situations they had little control of but maintains that human beings still control their destiny through the choices they make.  It’s the existential malaise:  we are responsible for who it is we are - no matter our circumstances.  And, what we think of as good and bad has been socially conditioned - it isn’t absolute.   Those who consider themselves to be “good” and superior to those who are “bad” have no right to claim that superiority.  Those deemed “bad” by society remain worthy of compassion and are very often “bad” thanks to the actions of the “good” who refuse to acknowledge their darker sides and what it is they have contributed to the actions they deem unworthy.

Stray Dog is considered to be one of Kurosawa’s first great films.

It’s about a rookie policeman whose gun is stolen and used in several crimes.  The policeman recognizes his existential connection to the criminal early in the film and feels responsible for the crimes that are being committed.  Many more similarities between police man and criminal are presented further into the story.  But, there is one thing that differentiates the men and that is choice.

It is existential choice that defines us as human beings.  No matter how bad the circumstances (and the circumstances are terrible in Post WWII Japan!) we still have the ability to make choices and it is through our choices that our destiny is created.

Excellent film.   Somewhat reminiscent of Crime and Punishment - the heat is excruciating and the mental anguish experienced by Yusa is similar to that of Raskolinikov’s.

I’m still plugging away at Bergman and Kurosawa films.  Not sure how I ended up watching both directors at once, but it’s been fun!  They are roughly from around the same time period and both have heavy existential themes in their films.  I’ve started with the earliest works (at least those available on Netflix) and am watching them in chronological order.  (At least trying to watch them in chronological order.)

I recently watched Bergman’s Seventh Seal - again!  I seriously never get tired of that movie!!  (I wrote about previously).  The next film up is Virgin Spring which takes us into the 1960s.  It’s another great movie that I watched several times before sending it back to Netflix. (And, apparently, Bergman borrowed from Kurosawa’s use of silence for Virgin Spring.)

Virgin Spring is set in 14th Century Sweden.   I think that’s probably roughly the same time Seventh Seal is set because Bergman said he got the idea of a man playing chess with death from a Medieval Church painting from the 1480s.  It’s based on a medieval Swedish Ballad called “Töres dotter i Wänge“.   Virgin Spring is every bit as dark as Seventh Seal and then some!

SPOILER WARNING!!!

Karin is the main character.  She is the “light” child.  She has a half-sister named Ingeri who is the “dark” child and worships the Norse God, Odin.  Karin is somewhat spoiled - definitely catered to by her parents while Ingeri is Karin’s father’s child from a servant so is treated as a servant.  Ingeri suffers the indifference of her father and curses Karin.  The curse becomes a reality that greatly tests the Christian faith of the father when Karin is brutally raped (a scene which is extremely difficult to watch, even by today’s standards), and is killed.  There is an innocent young boy who watches, unable to do anything about what his brothers are doing to Karin.  Furious, the father kills the boy.  He has destroyed innocence just as his innocent daughter was destroyed.

As in the Seventh Seal, God is, of course, indifferent to human suffering and right and wrong.    The father has to relinquish the power he thought he had through his belief in a God that favored the good and punished the bad.  He must accept God’s indifference just as Ingeri has to accept his indifference.  “You saw it, God. You saw it. The innocent child’s death and my revenge. You allowed it. I don’t understand you. Yet now I beg your forgiveness.”

The part that got me was when the herdsman try to sell Karin’s clothing to her mother.  She immediately recognizes them and without any emotion whatsoever says, “I must ask my husband what a fitting price would be for such a valuable garment.”   That gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.  Could you imagine?  What must that mother have been feeling?   You can’t help but sympathize with the brutality of the father, but even the mother tries to save the little boy from that brutality.

It’s a gruesome movie and I’m not 100% sure I understand why the spring flows from the spot where Karin is killed other than that it’s part of the legend.  Ingeri, who is more like an animal than a human being, clearly feels guilt for what she has done because she cleanses herself in the spring.  And I think, like Seventh Seal and Bergman’s other films, there remains a sense of hope and faith in the face of human helplessness and rage.  It’s not just violence for violence sake.

The Quiet Duel kept me on edge! I liked it much better than Scandal. I suppose I’d agree that it is extraordinarily sentimental, but it’s a great story…

A young, virgin (pure) doctor contracts syphilis through a cut finger while operating on an infected patient during the war. He has to deal with the stigma associated with syphilis and the fact that he could pass it on to the woman he loves. He tells her he won’t marry her but never tells her why because he’s afraid that if he tells her, she’ll stay with him anyway but that staying with him will compromise her future.

I’d like to believe there are people around like Kyoji Fujisaki (played by Toshiro Mifune - very attractive in this film even if his character is far more uptight than the character he plays in Scandal.) But it still completely pisses me off when a man withholds the truth because he thinks he’s protecting a woman! Of course, we’re talking 1949 so I suppose we must be at least a little bit forgiving.

Scandal by Akira Kurosawa was quite enjoyable even if a little hokey. I loved Toshirô Mifune’s character as a rebellious motorcycle riding artist and thought Yoskio Yamaguchi was very convincing as the scandalized singer. Takashi Shimura was fantastic in Ikiru but his character in Scandal was extremely irritating. Excellent acting all around, however. Even by the minor characters.

Maybe this isn’t one of Kurosawa’s better works, but I enjoyed it.

I thought One Wonderful Sunday was, well, Wonderful!!

This movie is post WWII. Yuzo has come back from the war and has no money. His fiance Masako likewise makes very little money and has shoes that are extremely warn. But unlike Yuzo who has been changed by the war, Masako has a way of spinning something positive into everything seemingly negative. The holes in her shoes, for instance, allow for easy draining when the roads are wet.

Masako does get very down every now and then, especially when encountering the suffering of youth. But she shakes it off for the sake of a fun Sunday with her fiance.

It is a Wonderful Sunday only by sheer determination. Yuko only has 15 yen and Musako only 20. At one point, they are excited to discover they have just enough money to see a Schubert concert. But just before it is their turn to buy tickets, scalpers buy all of the tickets in their price range and sell them for twice as much.

Their spirits turn downward when they focus upon materialistic gain or lack thereof. But Musako somehow manages to steer the couple toward a more simplistic, far less materialistic focus.

At one point, Musako “breaks the fourth wall” and talks directly to the audience, asking us to clap in support of a young couple who wishes to marry but doesn’t have the money to do so. A bit hokey, but not overly dramatic.

At the beginning of the film, Musako claims that it is far better to imagine possibilities than give into stark reality. By the end of the film, she seems to have a definite point even though the film remains extremely realistic and there is no Hollywood ending making all dreams come true in the end.

No Regrets for Our Youth is Kurosawa’s fifth film, set just prior to WWII in Kyoko.

While The Most Beautiful was definitely a Japanese propoganda film, No Regrets for Our Youth seems to be Kurosawa’s attempt to work through what happened to his country during the 1930s with the focus being on the suppression of anti-militarist Kyoko University students.

Setsuko Hara is mesmerizing as the female protagonist, Yukie. She begins as a flirtatious, carefree daughter of an well-known professor who, to her surprise, is dismissed from his post by the government. From that point on, the oppressive nature of her society (which is becoming increasingly fascist and dictatorial) slowly begins to dawn on her. She follows her heart with the constant reminder that “Freedom demands sacrifice”.

Yukie is well-bred and wealthy, yet she discovers that this life leaves her unfulfilled and that she is actually more fulfilled through the hard work demanded of a peasants life. She gives up her social status and returns to the honor of a much more simple rural life and discovers her independence (which does come at great sacrifice).

Apparently, the film is based on the true story of Hotsumi Ozaki who was the only Japanese person to be hung for treason during World War II.

I must admit that I don’t know that much about this period in Japanese history so the historical part of the story was somewhat difficult to follow. I imagine this would have made far more sense to someone in Japan shortly after WWII.

My kids make fun of me because I have watched Wild Strawberries so many times. I LOVE this movie!!

I guess I relate to it in a lot of ways. It’s the story of an aging professor who comes to realize just how cold he’s been over the years. His wife leaves him and he has a distant relationship with his son. I don’t relate to those things - at least not yet. I may be deluding myself but I think I have a very close relationship to both my husband and kids.

But - go outside of my little family and my relations to my extended family are “cold”. We are amiable, but we are not emotionally close and will likely never be close as long as we maintain an idea of how the relationship “should be”. The relationship the professor has with his mother maintains a deep respect on both sides, but there is an icy formality that cannot be breached because of the inherent “shoulds”.

The professor, Isaak Borg, recognizes the cold, empty life he has been living and is ultimately redeemed through the forgiveness and love of his immediate family and through his extended family which he encounters through memory (not physical reality).

The end of the film, where he meets the memory of his mother and father happily waving at him from the shore, makes me cry every single time I watch this movie - which has been five or more times at least by now!!