The original title of this incredible Wang Xiaoshuai film is "Qinghong", whose two characters - "qing" and "hong" - mean, respectively, green and red. For something seemingly so simple, it works on myriad levels. The first is that "Qinghong" is, of course, the name of the main character, the eldest daughter of a family who left Shanghai in the Sixties during the Cultural Revolution as part of Mao's "Third Line of Defence" (to, as Philip French explains, "disperse essential industries in the face of a threatened Soviet invasion") and who now long to return to Shanghai. On a second level, "qinghong" is also a fundamental reference to contrast: green against red, primary colour against primary colour, the colour of peace and nature against the colour of violence and blood (a major theme in the film) - the Chinese version of Stendhalian red and black. This is shown in the very first shot: a window opening out into a soothing backdrop of green hills, before a tiny splash of red (presumably the red of the Chinese national flag) drifts slightly into the frame of the window, disturbing that window of green and foreshadowing the disruption and violence to come. On a third level, "qinghong" also recalls a Mandarin phrase: "不分青红皂白" (bufen qinghong zaobai), which literally means "not telling apart green, red or white", ie the inability to distinguish, be it good or bad, right or wrong etc, a theme which, again, plays large in the film. The words, "qinghong", in the title, thus, highlight numerous ideas in the film; much nuance is truly lost in its English translation of "Shanghai Dreams" (I suppose "Green/Red" would not have made much sense either).
Yet, for a film which plays so much on its visual figurals of contrasting colour, it also uses sound in completely astonishing ways. I have seldom watched a film where so much is communicated by sound alone: the oppressiveness of the regime and the repressive squalor of the rural village are communicated at once by the very first sound we hear - the blaring over a loudspeaker of mechanical counting for a morning exercise routine - as well as the second - the automated, emotionless thump of a factory machine, an important sound whose reprise subsequently underscores one of the film's most emotional scenes. The dictatorial father, particularly in his scenes with Qinghong, is almost always heard, never seen - in one memorable scene where he berates his daughter at length for carrying on a romance with a local boy, he is shown pacing up and down outside her room, his head almost always deliberately out of frame. Like the blaring loudspeaker, power - state or family - is exerted through sound, and somehow all the more pernicious for the lack of any physical form. Crucial plot points are heard rather than seen, such as a scene of violence near the end of the film, as well as its resolution, tellingly brought across to us in the staccato cracks of unseen gunfire. Lastly, the progress of a car journey at the end of the film, the camera focussing only on the anxious faces of the family, is marked through the increasing noises surrounding the car as well as the driver's impatient honking. Without seeing anything else, without needing to see anything else, we know the car is slowing down, or we know the car has stopped. The film counts so much on its visuals, as signified by its title, as well as for its little touches: Xiaozhen's florid scarf, oddly out of place in the drab village, but which we realise she wears all the time as it is probably the only pretty thing she owns; the forearm sleeves we see Qinghong wear, telling us more vocally than anything else the poverty of the family (presumably because they cannot afford long-sleeved winter clothing, which is thereby made up of short-sleeved summer clothing with added strips of cloth as removable arm sleeves); the father holding up his son's accordian teacher's music score, and we realise it is because they cannot afford a music bookstand. Yet, all these little visual details only make it all the more amazing how much Wang also communicates without letting us see anything.
In "Qinghong", everything is pit against something else, and at the end of the film, everything flips from one to the other. One of the very first events in the film underscores this: Qinghong is given a pair of high heel shoes by her boyfriend; after school, with much coaxing from her friend, Xiaozhen, she puts them on and takes a few steps, modelling the shoes for her friend, her face radiant with happiness and young love. Too soon, however, she is seen by her father and, too proud to take the shoes off, she walks on home with her father sternly following behind; she is whistled at but, too conscious of the glower of paternal disapproval behind her, she is mortified and humiliated. What was an innocent parade of a lover's gift has now become a walk of shame and embarrassment. And so does everything else pivot and flip and turn sour: love becomes violence, what was hoped to be an honourable departure becomes a stealthy sneaking off at dawn. Even a film strip, as Xiaozhen and Lujun drive through an open cinema, is shown to be projected inversely; the Mandarin characters of the subtitles appear flipped right to left. And while we are left to wonder the fate of the family as they trundle off in their van towards Shanghai, it is difficult to feel optimistic for them in the face of everything else, for too easily dreams can also turn into nightmares.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
"If you live in the past or in the future, you are not grounded. Dogs live in the present, in the now."
I once read a news article some years ago where a conman defrauded a bunch of little old ladies through a fake investment scheme. I do not exactly remember the details, but it involved giving the conman their credit card information, with which he would make "investments". One little old lady was quoted to reveal how she saw items like "Betfair" on her bill, but assumed it had to do with a travel company, and never thought to question it at all. I was terribly sympathetic, of course - there are few things more iniquitous than the taking advantage of the age and naivete of old people - but, equally, I was also a little incredulous. Surely "Betfair" should have rung some alarm bells, like, from the word "bet"?? As con schemes go, this is hardly the most elaborate.
In any case. Abbas Kiarostami's Close-up details a similar and apparently true story: a man, Hossein Sabzian, deceives the Ahankhah family by passing himself off as the famous film director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, requests and receives money from them, eats their food, spends a night at their house and inundates them with false promises that he would shoot his next film in their house. Again, I felt myself reacting with the same incredulity: if a man whom you randomly sit next to on a public bus turns to you and says he is a famous and somewhat reclusive film director, would you, without more, really, truly believe him? And that revelation accompanied quite soon after with a request for money? Yet, that is exactly what happened in this true story of Close-up. The family had expressed their concern to appear in Kiarostami's film because they were afraid they would come across as sounding gullible, but that, I'm afraid, is exactly what they come across as, to me, at least. Or perhaps I should be less cynical and more trusting of people.
The theme of deception is writ large in the film - not only does the plot revolve around a story of fraud, but the techniques of Kiarostami which he uses to make the film are also games of trickery. For example, he films Sabzian's trial apparently in real-time, yet inserts his own questions and footage of the judge listening intently so it appears as if Kiarostami himself is participating in the trial as cross-examiner and inquisitor, a role which did not actually happen. At the end of the film, the sound mike attached to the real Mohsen Makhmalbaf as he goes to greet Sabzian apparently gives out, so we only hear fragments of their conversation, but this, again, is only a trick; the mike really works perfectly well (Kiarostami's artistic judgment of fading the sound in and out was, apparently, due to his opinion that the conversation between Makhmalbaf and Sabzian "was not particularly interesting"). The familiar questions of cinematic reality, the duplicities of Rashomon-esque perspectives, the truth relations of the image blah blah, needless to say, arise. But I'm interested today not by the deception, but by the belief. The scheme of the con, after all, is simple: trick a person into trusting the conman with his/her credit card details. But the scheme of the belief, it seems to me, is not that simple. Why, how, could one not question an "investment" called "Betfair"?
And here, I suppose, is where the human mind and nature shades into its most vulnerable (via which I should confess I have before fallen out of pocket myself, principally through a villainous mechanism called The Stock Market). Not only because of the obvious - because we can be weak, ignorant, naive, impulsive and greedy - but also because we can extrapolate from the past and we can dream of the future. We (and this is not a statement of judgment in any way) are not like dogs, which, according to the amazing and marvellous Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan, live only in the present. And there is a lot of past for us to regret and rue, and a lot of future for us to hope for and fantasise about. The depiction of the Ahankhah family is underscored by their dreams of and hopes for a better future. Times are hard in Iran - the two sons are engineers, recently graduated from university, but are unable to find jobs because the factories are not hiring. The younger son, Mehrdad, out of his own personal inclinations and love for the arts (it was stated very early on in the film that he is interested in art, cinema and literature) as well as perhaps his desires to rise above the abjection of his joblessness and dismal employment prospects, in particular takes to Sabzian - what better way to transcend one's despondent circumstances than to rub off onto one some of the shine and glamour of a famous, successful film director, no matter that he appears to have simply dropped out of the sky onto your doorstep? The deceiver is also a vehicle of his own deception: Sabzian is desperately poor and his life is unhappy - he is divorced, he works "on and off" at a printer's, he has only one of his children while the other is with his ex-wife, he lives in a "godforsaken" place. He, too, fantasises about being a creator of art which can transcend his suffering - what better way than to impersonate a famous, successful film director, no matter that the scheme is threadbare, that he seems to know about, even court, its inevitable end (at one point, he talks about how the Akhankhar family leaves a magazine lying around the house, bearing the real Makhmalbaf's photograph, yet he continues to return to the Akhankhar house, even though he is already aware of the family's suspicions)?
According to the wonderful and marvellous Cesar Millan (of whom I have recently become a fan, which is why I am mentioning him so often), dogs have no sense of time. They do not remember what happened in the past, which is why it is, apparently, meaningless for human owners to pet a dog or give it a biscuit to try and "make up" for, say, shouting at the dog fifteen minutes ago, because dogs simply do not remember. Not because, I think, they do not have memories - I'm sure dogs have great memories - but because they apparently simply do not live in the past or in the future. They live only in the now. Unfortunately, that is not the case with us.
- Cesar Millan ("The Dog Whisperer")
I once read a news article some years ago where a conman defrauded a bunch of little old ladies through a fake investment scheme. I do not exactly remember the details, but it involved giving the conman their credit card information, with which he would make "investments". One little old lady was quoted to reveal how she saw items like "Betfair" on her bill, but assumed it had to do with a travel company, and never thought to question it at all. I was terribly sympathetic, of course - there are few things more iniquitous than the taking advantage of the age and naivete of old people - but, equally, I was also a little incredulous. Surely "Betfair" should have rung some alarm bells, like, from the word "bet"?? As con schemes go, this is hardly the most elaborate.
In any case. Abbas Kiarostami's Close-up details a similar and apparently true story: a man, Hossein Sabzian, deceives the Ahankhah family by passing himself off as the famous film director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, requests and receives money from them, eats their food, spends a night at their house and inundates them with false promises that he would shoot his next film in their house. Again, I felt myself reacting with the same incredulity: if a man whom you randomly sit next to on a public bus turns to you and says he is a famous and somewhat reclusive film director, would you, without more, really, truly believe him? And that revelation accompanied quite soon after with a request for money? Yet, that is exactly what happened in this true story of Close-up. The family had expressed their concern to appear in Kiarostami's film because they were afraid they would come across as sounding gullible, but that, I'm afraid, is exactly what they come across as, to me, at least. Or perhaps I should be less cynical and more trusting of people.
The theme of deception is writ large in the film - not only does the plot revolve around a story of fraud, but the techniques of Kiarostami which he uses to make the film are also games of trickery. For example, he films Sabzian's trial apparently in real-time, yet inserts his own questions and footage of the judge listening intently so it appears as if Kiarostami himself is participating in the trial as cross-examiner and inquisitor, a role which did not actually happen. At the end of the film, the sound mike attached to the real Mohsen Makhmalbaf as he goes to greet Sabzian apparently gives out, so we only hear fragments of their conversation, but this, again, is only a trick; the mike really works perfectly well (Kiarostami's artistic judgment of fading the sound in and out was, apparently, due to his opinion that the conversation between Makhmalbaf and Sabzian "was not particularly interesting"). The familiar questions of cinematic reality, the duplicities of Rashomon-esque perspectives, the truth relations of the image blah blah, needless to say, arise. But I'm interested today not by the deception, but by the belief. The scheme of the con, after all, is simple: trick a person into trusting the conman with his/her credit card details. But the scheme of the belief, it seems to me, is not that simple. Why, how, could one not question an "investment" called "Betfair"?
And here, I suppose, is where the human mind and nature shades into its most vulnerable (via which I should confess I have before fallen out of pocket myself, principally through a villainous mechanism called The Stock Market). Not only because of the obvious - because we can be weak, ignorant, naive, impulsive and greedy - but also because we can extrapolate from the past and we can dream of the future. We (and this is not a statement of judgment in any way) are not like dogs, which, according to the amazing and marvellous Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan, live only in the present. And there is a lot of past for us to regret and rue, and a lot of future for us to hope for and fantasise about. The depiction of the Ahankhah family is underscored by their dreams of and hopes for a better future. Times are hard in Iran - the two sons are engineers, recently graduated from university, but are unable to find jobs because the factories are not hiring. The younger son, Mehrdad, out of his own personal inclinations and love for the arts (it was stated very early on in the film that he is interested in art, cinema and literature) as well as perhaps his desires to rise above the abjection of his joblessness and dismal employment prospects, in particular takes to Sabzian - what better way to transcend one's despondent circumstances than to rub off onto one some of the shine and glamour of a famous, successful film director, no matter that he appears to have simply dropped out of the sky onto your doorstep? The deceiver is also a vehicle of his own deception: Sabzian is desperately poor and his life is unhappy - he is divorced, he works "on and off" at a printer's, he has only one of his children while the other is with his ex-wife, he lives in a "godforsaken" place. He, too, fantasises about being a creator of art which can transcend his suffering - what better way than to impersonate a famous, successful film director, no matter that the scheme is threadbare, that he seems to know about, even court, its inevitable end (at one point, he talks about how the Akhankhar family leaves a magazine lying around the house, bearing the real Makhmalbaf's photograph, yet he continues to return to the Akhankhar house, even though he is already aware of the family's suspicions)?
According to the wonderful and marvellous Cesar Millan (of whom I have recently become a fan, which is why I am mentioning him so often), dogs have no sense of time. They do not remember what happened in the past, which is why it is, apparently, meaningless for human owners to pet a dog or give it a biscuit to try and "make up" for, say, shouting at the dog fifteen minutes ago, because dogs simply do not remember. Not because, I think, they do not have memories - I'm sure dogs have great memories - but because they apparently simply do not live in the past or in the future. They live only in the now. Unfortunately, that is not the case with us.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
This post is about a song, a film and a book.
The song is Michael Jackson's "Ben", which my media player threw up the other day while on shuffle. Like so much of the music in my player, I've had it for a while but had never consciously sought it out, so it struck me quite out of the blue. I was feeling rather doleful that day, and in a rush the song swept over me like a tidal wave of abstract sorrow: young Jackson - with that glorious, golden voice, the promise he had, his fourteen years of age, his first No. 1 hit, the most talented singer of his generation - before he basically went cuckoo and his face started peeling off. His successes to come were certainly phenomenal, but so was the bizarre future which awaited him. Where did one start and the other begin?
The film is Shari Springer Berman's and Robert Pulcini's American Splendor. This is a film about Harvey Pekar, a guy so ordinary he somehow became extraordinary, eventually inspiring a successful comic strip about his life in all the glory of its banality - his job as a hospital filing clerk, his failed relationships, his distinctly unromantic courtship of his wife, his dreary bus rides, his pudgy body, his greasy diners. But somehow Pekar turned out to be the real-life Rumpelstiltskin, and under his fingers he spun chaff into gold. What's the boundary between tedium and inspiration?
The book is Ian McEwan's "Enduring Love." The story (WARNING: spoiler ahead!) is about a character called Jed Parry, who is afflicted with de Clérambault's syndrome, a psychological illness which causes him to fall literally madly in love with the protagonist, Joe Rose, even though they are virtually strangers. This insane love takes the form of psychosis: stalking, gibberish babble, leaving endless messages, letters, declarations of love and, most spookily of all, convictions, no matter how implausible, that the other party returns his feelings and that every gesture is a declaration of love; even rejection, in being the denial of their mutual passion, is a form of affirmation.
Joe Rose, on the other hand, is genuinely - as in, non-psychotically - in love with his long-term partner, Clarissa, with whom he lives and shares a life, and Clarissa loves him in return. Yet, this "genuine" love (as opposed to Jed's psychotic love), in the story goes through all the familiar motions when the relationship is tested: angry, eruptive rows; suspicion; distrust; invasions of privacy; alienation; distancing; moving out; break-up. In comparison, the psychotic love of Jed Parry, right to the end, never wavers, never falters, never stops believing. The faithless is love; the devoted is insanity. They say there is a thin line between genius and madness; so, too, perhaps, between normality and abnormality.
In infinite ways, we walk such knife-edges every day of our lives. And on each and every one of those edges, we will invariably fall one way or the other, the result of which vaults us into yet another determination in the infinite tree of choices which is to map our destiny, upon which we teeter once more, to be repeated until the day we die. I guess we would like to think we have a choice as to which side we fall, but more often than not I don't think we do, really.
All but for the grace of God.
The song is Michael Jackson's "Ben", which my media player threw up the other day while on shuffle. Like so much of the music in my player, I've had it for a while but had never consciously sought it out, so it struck me quite out of the blue. I was feeling rather doleful that day, and in a rush the song swept over me like a tidal wave of abstract sorrow: young Jackson - with that glorious, golden voice, the promise he had, his fourteen years of age, his first No. 1 hit, the most talented singer of his generation - before he basically went cuckoo and his face started peeling off. His successes to come were certainly phenomenal, but so was the bizarre future which awaited him. Where did one start and the other begin?
The film is Shari Springer Berman's and Robert Pulcini's American Splendor. This is a film about Harvey Pekar, a guy so ordinary he somehow became extraordinary, eventually inspiring a successful comic strip about his life in all the glory of its banality - his job as a hospital filing clerk, his failed relationships, his distinctly unromantic courtship of his wife, his dreary bus rides, his pudgy body, his greasy diners. But somehow Pekar turned out to be the real-life Rumpelstiltskin, and under his fingers he spun chaff into gold. What's the boundary between tedium and inspiration?
The book is Ian McEwan's "Enduring Love." The story (WARNING: spoiler ahead!) is about a character called Jed Parry, who is afflicted with de Clérambault's syndrome, a psychological illness which causes him to fall literally madly in love with the protagonist, Joe Rose, even though they are virtually strangers. This insane love takes the form of psychosis: stalking, gibberish babble, leaving endless messages, letters, declarations of love and, most spookily of all, convictions, no matter how implausible, that the other party returns his feelings and that every gesture is a declaration of love; even rejection, in being the denial of their mutual passion, is a form of affirmation.
Joe Rose, on the other hand, is genuinely - as in, non-psychotically - in love with his long-term partner, Clarissa, with whom he lives and shares a life, and Clarissa loves him in return. Yet, this "genuine" love (as opposed to Jed's psychotic love), in the story goes through all the familiar motions when the relationship is tested: angry, eruptive rows; suspicion; distrust; invasions of privacy; alienation; distancing; moving out; break-up. In comparison, the psychotic love of Jed Parry, right to the end, never wavers, never falters, never stops believing. The faithless is love; the devoted is insanity. They say there is a thin line between genius and madness; so, too, perhaps, between normality and abnormality.
In infinite ways, we walk such knife-edges every day of our lives. And on each and every one of those edges, we will invariably fall one way or the other, the result of which vaults us into yet another determination in the infinite tree of choices which is to map our destiny, upon which we teeter once more, to be repeated until the day we die. I guess we would like to think we have a choice as to which side we fall, but more often than not I don't think we do, really.
All but for the grace of God.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
"I know now nothing happens by chance. Every moment is measured. Every step is counted."
"I've had no will but his, ever."
- Lisa, Letter From An Unknown Woman
There are several dialectics in Max Ophuls's Letter From An Unknown Woman:
- the dead against the dying (the photographs of Lisa and her son, now bearers of their existences, now memento mori - to this end, see Garrett Stewart's excellent analysis in "Photo-gravure", Wide Angle, Vol. 9, No. 1);
- the past against the present (the letter, writing of Lisa's story and ultimately pointing to her death, now writing Stefan's story and ultimately leading to his death);
- motion against stasis (the still photographs against the moving image; the still carriage against the moving backdrops in the funfair);
- death against life (the waxworks against the seduction, in time engendering the birth of young Stefan; the letter, carrying Lisa's death, breathing life for the first time in her relationship with Stefan) etc.
However, the one I am most interested in is the dialectic of external destiny against human will, best encapsulated in the two opening quotes, both said by Lisa at different points of the film: all is predestined by fate ("nothing happens by chance"), all is predestined by him ("I've had no will but his"). Who, exactly, is responsible for Lisa's seemingly senseless foolishness? For it is indeed foolishness - "romantic nonsense", as her husband snaps - how could one be so devotedly in love aged 12? How could one so easily (she never seemed to have thought twice - a few agonized moments of looking at Stefan in the opera theatre and she was gone) turn away from a responsible, kind, loving husband who has been good to her? How could one throw away what is effectively now her only family - a tender husband, a lovely son - for a man who could not even remember her for 2 weeks? No, this is more than foolishness. This is illogic - ill logic.
On my DVD, film historian Tag Gallagher narrates a video essay on Letter From An Unknown Woman, and he suggests that Lisa's motivation stems from sado-masochism: she wants to hurt herself by loving this most abjectly irresponsible womaniser in the most ludicrous, illogical, unrequited way possible. From sado-masochism we move to masochism: she then sends him the letter, delaying his escape from his presumably fatal duel with Johann, thus effectively consigning him to his death.
I'm not sure of this explanation, to be honest. There is nothing at all in Lisa's character (save for her inexplicable acts per se) to imply psychosis. And to suggest that she timed her death (and thereupon the posting of her mail) to coincide with the duel seems to stretch it a little.
I prefer to think of Lisa's madness (in the colloquial sense) as precisely that: madness. It is ill, and it is illogical, but there it is. Because sometimes there are things in this world which are precisely ill and illogical. I am reminded of some very wise words from Cary Tennis, Dear Abby-guru of Salon.com. On advising a woman on her wanting to go onto fine arts graduate school:
Sometimes things are valuable to us in ways we cannot articulate. One of the benefits of being married to a sympathetic and compatible person is that they will support us in our quest even when we cannot articulate what it is we are searching for or why it is valuable. ... On the surface, he seems to be making a reasonable request: 'Explain to me, make me understand.' And yet he is actually proposing an impossible task, one in which you undoubtedly will fail. For how can you reliably demonstrate the future practical benefits of a fine arts education?Of course, going to art school is not the same as falling in love, but they both have the principle of throwing your life towards some seemingly reckless, inexplicable, inexpressible end, to which we can never rationalise or intellectualise to others. How can Lisa reliably demonstrate the future practical benefits of devoting herself to a dumb rake such as Stefan Brand? She can't. That is the whole point of falling in love.
Monday, April 02, 2007
"I love you, Luka. I don't need to do it in a white dress."
- Dialogue from "ER", season doesn't-matter-ever-since-Dr-Green-died
Every film Yasujiro Ozu makes seems to have the same feel: for sure, there are the consistently similar camera techniques (the cutaway "pillow shots", the "tatami" eye-levels, the static camera etc), but, far more than technique, there is also always a gentle sadness to his work that gets me everytime: gentle because his films generally revolve around a fairly ordinary situation, never slow but always unhurried, and, although deeply emotional, never impassioned or angry or stormy, and, most importantly, never displayed openly or with any kind of wilful disregard. And sadness because those emotions are never displayed openly or with any kind of wilful disregard, so tears get drowned in sake, run down faces bowed in the darkness, or hurriedly wiped away at the eye as soon as someone walks into the room.
All these apply to Late Spring, which, I have to say, reflects a terribly familiar refrain in my life at this point, where everybody around me is either marrying and/or reproducing and enquiring with persistent annoyance about the state of my own/others' marital status. I must admit the scene with Norika (Setsuko Hara) and her friend/classmate Aya (Yumeji Tsukioka) where the latter reels off all the marriage slash baby statuses of their mutual friends (happy, legitimate or otherwise) particularly resonates with me. Upon turning thirty this year, I have discovered that at this age marriage and babies suddenly become achievements of such importance that people seem incapable of talking about anything else, and I can't say it is a terribly happy discovery, nor particularly exciting.
In any case, Noriko - as the plot of Late Spring goes - is propelled into the inevitable chain, and by and by she is nudged into a marriage which she does not particularly want - she is happy as she is, she is not particularly wild about the guy, she has no real desire to get married, she is aware she isn't really pleasing anybody other than "society" (made up in this case of an aunt, a remarried uncle and sentiments trotted out by Aya and her father which could not sound more like mouthpiece-rhetoric if they tried). But her path had been laid out as early as the first dramatic shot, where we see Noriko enter a room full of women, and she kneels and bows formally to them as they return the gesture - we see a society ruled so strongly by ceremonial conduct and formal custom that we can only conclude (as perhaps does she) that she never really had a choice.
Which leads me to one of my favourite questions: do we really have choices? About marriage - who to marry, when to marry, why we marry? We see so many concrete actions in Late Spring just to bring about Noriko's marriage - the aunt's efforts to match-make, her persistent visits to get Noriko to say yes, Aya's exhortations that all women must marry, not least of all the father's own terrible deception to persuade Noriko to leave him - it really makes one wonder. So why do we do it? In what I felt was the most incredible scene in the film, and very easily one of the most moving scenes I have ever watched, Noriko's father (Chishu Ryu) explains to her why marriage will make her happy. It is a fairly long monologue for someone who spends the whole film barely stringing together anything more than 3 consecutive sentences and, in his own way, he is eloquent, he is logical. But we also realise he has no clue either, despite his age and his own marriage to Noriko's mother: we do it because we have to, and you just have to close your eyes and jump with alot of faith and hope like hell that you will be happy twenty years from now.
They say Journey to Italy is the best film ever made about marriage, but I think Late Spring is the best film ever made about getting married. Both are tough, but I think the latter requires a little more wisdom, a little more insight, a little more prescience. Because the latter is where it all starts. And when we have to struggle to explain even that, it does not give one much confidence for the journey ahead.
- Dialogue from "ER", season doesn't-matter-ever-since-Dr-Green-died
Every film Yasujiro Ozu makes seems to have the same feel: for sure, there are the consistently similar camera techniques (the cutaway "pillow shots", the "tatami" eye-levels, the static camera etc), but, far more than technique, there is also always a gentle sadness to his work that gets me everytime: gentle because his films generally revolve around a fairly ordinary situation, never slow but always unhurried, and, although deeply emotional, never impassioned or angry or stormy, and, most importantly, never displayed openly or with any kind of wilful disregard. And sadness because those emotions are never displayed openly or with any kind of wilful disregard, so tears get drowned in sake, run down faces bowed in the darkness, or hurriedly wiped away at the eye as soon as someone walks into the room.
All these apply to Late Spring, which, I have to say, reflects a terribly familiar refrain in my life at this point, where everybody around me is either marrying and/or reproducing and enquiring with persistent annoyance about the state of my own/others' marital status. I must admit the scene with Norika (Setsuko Hara) and her friend/classmate Aya (Yumeji Tsukioka) where the latter reels off all the marriage slash baby statuses of their mutual friends (happy, legitimate or otherwise) particularly resonates with me. Upon turning thirty this year, I have discovered that at this age marriage and babies suddenly become achievements of such importance that people seem incapable of talking about anything else, and I can't say it is a terribly happy discovery, nor particularly exciting.
In any case, Noriko - as the plot of Late Spring goes - is propelled into the inevitable chain, and by and by she is nudged into a marriage which she does not particularly want - she is happy as she is, she is not particularly wild about the guy, she has no real desire to get married, she is aware she isn't really pleasing anybody other than "society" (made up in this case of an aunt, a remarried uncle and sentiments trotted out by Aya and her father which could not sound more like mouthpiece-rhetoric if they tried). But her path had been laid out as early as the first dramatic shot, where we see Noriko enter a room full of women, and she kneels and bows formally to them as they return the gesture - we see a society ruled so strongly by ceremonial conduct and formal custom that we can only conclude (as perhaps does she) that she never really had a choice.
Which leads me to one of my favourite questions: do we really have choices? About marriage - who to marry, when to marry, why we marry? We see so many concrete actions in Late Spring just to bring about Noriko's marriage - the aunt's efforts to match-make, her persistent visits to get Noriko to say yes, Aya's exhortations that all women must marry, not least of all the father's own terrible deception to persuade Noriko to leave him - it really makes one wonder. So why do we do it? In what I felt was the most incredible scene in the film, and very easily one of the most moving scenes I have ever watched, Noriko's father (Chishu Ryu) explains to her why marriage will make her happy. It is a fairly long monologue for someone who spends the whole film barely stringing together anything more than 3 consecutive sentences and, in his own way, he is eloquent, he is logical. But we also realise he has no clue either, despite his age and his own marriage to Noriko's mother: we do it because we have to, and you just have to close your eyes and jump with alot of faith and hope like hell that you will be happy twenty years from now.
They say Journey to Italy is the best film ever made about marriage, but I think Late Spring is the best film ever made about getting married. Both are tough, but I think the latter requires a little more wisdom, a little more insight, a little more prescience. Because the latter is where it all starts. And when we have to struggle to explain even that, it does not give one much confidence for the journey ahead.
Monday, February 19, 2007
I know I have written about the film before, where I registered my fond surprise at how excellent I found it, despite all the expectations which had weighed so heavily on it. On and off since then, however, Ozu's Tokyo Story had come back to me at astonishingly frequent intervals and with increasingly resonant intensities. It's like the old lover who won't go away - the one who constantly preys at the edges of your mind all day long.
Alot of people call this "the best film about parent-children relationships", or more or less in those words. I think, however, that that is such a thin and superficial wrap (just because it deals with parents and children - hello?!). This film is about discovery, it is about everything we will ever discover in life: how we thought our parents were heroes, but they are not; how we thought our children were angels, but they are not; how we thought our spouses were perfect, but they are not; how we thought life would all work out, but it does not; how we thought we had everything, but we do not. How we thought there would always be music and celebration, but all we hear is a soft, weary sigh at the end of a long, long night.
Alot of people call this "the best film about parent-children relationships", or more or less in those words. I think, however, that that is such a thin and superficial wrap (just because it deals with parents and children - hello?!). This film is about discovery, it is about everything we will ever discover in life: how we thought our parents were heroes, but they are not; how we thought our children were angels, but they are not; how we thought our spouses were perfect, but they are not; how we thought life would all work out, but it does not; how we thought we had everything, but we do not. How we thought there would always be music and celebration, but all we hear is a soft, weary sigh at the end of a long, long night.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Following up on my last post, Shaun has just informed me that the video works from his Uber memoria series proto, 2 and 3 are now released on DVD. Congratulations, Shaun! Check it out over at his blog. And did I mention that I'm on the DVD cover?! ;-)