More Kurosawa

Fortunately, I have begun to utilize Netflix instant streaming for something more substantial than watching reruns of the Office or bad mid-90s sci-fi (Johnny Mnemonic excluded, of course - review to come). Basically, Netflix feeds me all of the Kurosawa I can digest at the moment, and the latest was "Ikiru", a really nice piece about an elderly bureaucrat (the always-awesome Takashi Shimura) who discovers, after having wasted 25 years of his life in the department of public affairs, that he has stomach cancer and 6 months to live. He swings wildly from depression to benders to taking a young co-worker on dates and all the while his co-workers speculate as to what has gotten into him (he doesn't tell anyone he has cancer - not his co-workers, not his son).

The film makes a really nice turn when Watanabe dies and the last hour of the film alternates between his wake and flashbacks via his co-workers' memories of the last 5 months of his life, when he endeavored tirelessly to have a small playground built on the site of a cesspool in the middle of the city. As in 'High and Low', the question of values and morals looms large, and like in that film, it is difficult to ascertain just how ironic or subversive Kurosawa is trying to be with his story. Watanabe is seen ultimately as rebelling against the bureaucracy, but he does not cast off the shackles and rage against the machine, so to speak; instead, he submits himself fully to the bureaucracy, debasing himself to the various officials, politicians, even 'peons' as one wake-attendee notes - all in the service of creating this little park before he dies. It is an open question as to whether this is to be seen as truly heroic, or as ironically heroic. Is it absurdity that heroism is to consist of successfully navigating bureaucracies? Or is Kurosawa really identifying modern virtue in this manner? This may simply be a cultural divide between Japanses and American culture, but I feel that this kind of sentiment pervades most of Kurosawa's films, even those set in feudal times. A sense of absurdity certainly pervades the wake by its end, once the attendees are noticeably drunk: the younger workers vow to take on the bureaucracy and make it more efficient, doing so with the fervor of revolutionaries and urging one another, "don't forget this feeling!"

Double feature: Seven Samurai and High and Low

I have seen both of these films before, but had forgotten how good they were. They both, of course, feature Toshiro Mifune, but he plays nearly opposite character types. His samurai is recognizable from his turns in 'Yojimbo' and 'Sanjuro' though somewhat drunker/more reckless; but his wealthy shoe executive is more a study of cold rage transforming into ultimate bewilderment coupled with modern alienation. I had forgotten how his character basically disappears throughout much of the third act (except for the brief moment when the detectives come to his house and see him mowing his lawn and sweating through his dress shirt) until the final scene in which he visits the kidnapper/murderer in prison.

Both films are interesting studies on class, dignity, and (even in Seven Samurai, surprisingly) the shifting ground of morality in the modern age. Both films ultimately turn on questions of what should be valued in a culture, and how that value is redeemed. In Seven Samurai, the 'old man' chides Manzo for worrying about protecting his daughter's honor from the samurai, saying "your head is on the chopping block, and all you care about are the whiskers on your face". The end, too, reveals the ambiguity of values like honor and sacrifice, when Shimada, turning from the singing peasants planting their rice fields, looks upon the graves of the fallen samurai and says, "So. Again we are defeated. Victory belongs to the peasants, not to us."

They are both on Netflix instant. I didn't plan on watching them both together, but after Seven Samurai, I couldn't resist more Kurosawa and more Mifune.

Sunless/A List of Things that Quicken the Heart

Alright, so its been an embarrassingly long time since anything has been posted. I apologize profusely to my readership (ha!). A witty excuse would be apropos here... but alas, I have none.


Instead, we will discuss the film, 'Sans Soleil' by Chris Marker. I watched this last night in the documentary history course that I am taking, and I have to admit I was even more baffled by it than when I watched it the first time. Not that I understood it any better the first time; i think that I was just simply overwhelmed/enthralled the first time, and was unable to consider it from any sort of distance. I think that Werner Herzog summed up my own feelings of the film perfectly when he presented it a couple of years ago at the Film Forum. Prior to the screening (after telling a pretty hilarious story about curating at the Vienna Film Festival and hosting a disastrous screening of 'le Maitre Fous' after which he claims to be embarrassed to ever show is face in the city again) he said of 'Sans Soleil', something like: "I don't remember anything in particular about this film, but I remember feeling at the time I saw it that it was very profound and moving. So I don't really think that I can say anything about it. Let's just watch it." After the film ended, he said something like: "I don't think that it would be proper to attempt to speak about a film like that directly after watching it; there is simply too much going on to say anything intelligent at this time." I couldn't agree more. Its something that simply must be experienced for its strangeness, its beauty, and the spiraling sense of space and time that it evokes. I learned last night [SPOILER ALERT!] that Marker not only directed and edited it, but he also 'plays' the letter-writer, the composer, and the visual-effects specialist who creates 'the zone'. All of this reminds me strangely of trying to read a Thomas Pynchon book: it is clear that Marker's mastery of the visual realm and of the montage is as thorough as Pynchon's mastery of the written word and the metaphor, and you are constantly amazed by the shifting terrains that he pulls you through; however, there is, like in a Pynchon reading, the nagging sense that maybe the director is pulling a fast one on you - that you are mistaking high-falutin' gibberish for deep truths. I don't really think this is the case, but this feeling just speaks to the complexity of the film and its challenging themes and ideas.

Here's the opening 'scene':

Orwell Goes to the Pictures

The Orwell Diaries is a project that reprints George Orwell's diaries as if he were writing a blog. The day and month are correct, but the year is off by seventy. He doesn't write every day, but he travels a bit, and is quite observant (as to be expected) of both the banal and the important.

He is aboard the Yaskunimaru right now, crossing the Bay of Biscay, and on his way back to London. Before he departed, he went to the movies in Casablanca:

In Casablanca went to the pictures, & saw films making it virtually certain that the French Gov.t expects war. The first a film on the life of a soldier, following up all the different branches & with some very good shots of the inner arrangement of the Maginot line. This film had evidently been hurriedly constructed & went into much greater detail than is normal in films of this kind. The other was the Pathé news gazette, in which the announcer gave what was practically a political speech denouncing Germany. Then more shots of British & French troops etc. The significant point was the attitude of the audience – utterly unenthusiastic, hardly a clap, & a few hostile comments.
This time all French people are convinced it is war. A number began talking to us spontaneously about it, all deploring the prospect (eg. in one or two cases, “It does no good to us, it’s only the rich who profit out of it”, etc., etc.), though sometimes describing Hitler as a “salaud.”
A.R.P. (ie F.A.P.A.C.) notices, calling for volunteer helpers, posted in Marrakech for the first time about 20th March. According to Madame M., whose son is at St Cyr, even the cadets there do not want war, though ready for it, of course.

Its fascinating to read about how the war was anticipated and regarded before the fact. And not a little bit morbid to read all of this knowing that war is indeed imminent and that Orwell and his wife are headed to London and the Blitz, which will begin in about a year-and-a-half.