I'd say this is the second best film I've ever seen by Shohei Immamura, which is high praise as my fave film by Immamura is one of the best films I've ever seen, "The Ballad of Nariyama".
Like "Nariyama" this is a portrait of a community in a particular time and place: a small Japanese town not so far from Hiroshima in 1950. While trying to move on with their lives after the holocaust, the people of the town continually wonder if the unnatural effects, if the black rain of the after-math, have poisoned them all. In this context, they attempt to arrange marriages under suspicion of each other's health.
And, as in his great "Ballad" Immamura dramatically and suddenly shifts tone in ways that are both beguiling and magnificent, going from the crudely and cruelly hilarious to the warmly humane to the savage, sometimes in the same scene. Immamura's anti-humanism, his reduction of humanity to just another species of animal striving to collectively survive, is also his humanism. He understands himself as part of his collective subject- in the grand scale humanity, on a more modest scale the Japanese people.
The flashbacks to Hiroshima are properly unspeakable yet unforgettable. In just a few horrible frames we understand the draconian measures adopted by people under the worst kind of siege- the regimentation of the seemingly healthy from the visibly sick from the (literally) melting. Part of the wonder of the film is the way it shows people moving on with near-normal lives only a few years after having experienced such a collective trauma, one that we obviously don't dwell on in the U.S, but that, as the film confrontationally makes clear, has not been adequately addressed by Japanese popular culture. Two of the most sympathetic characters in the film find solace in each other by being able to share their traumatic memories, something the other characters acknowledge, in hushed tones, is not possible for most Japanese to do.
The search for a suitable husband for a daughter is, as mentioned above, the main narrative thrust of the post-war scenes. This is a traditional subject of much Japanese folklore. But the ways this "1950s search for a good Japanese man for the pretty Japanese daughter" is shot- in black and white, with a stationary, waist-high camera (all very uncharacteristic for Immamura in the 1980s) convinced me that he meant the film as a parody of sorts of the post-war work of Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu often acknowledged the war- that young men died in it,etc- but he never acknowledged the American occupation. At one point in one of Ozu's films the main character says "I'm glad the Americans won." This is not Ozu's fault. The Americans imposed strict censorship on all forms of Japanese media in the decades following the war. I think Immamura is trying to show that Ozu's celebrated depictions of post-war Japanese society are, if in some ways brilliantly observational, also, by necessity, somewhat artificial.
It is, of course, one of the few simplistic truths of history that it was for the better that the Axis powers lost the second world war. But this work reinforces how the final victory of the Allies was achieved by a crime against humanity, the nuking, and continued occupation and nuclearization of Japan, worthy of the offenses of the Nazis or the Showaists. It made me think that the Firesign Theater was correct when they held that we actually lost World War II. ("We were FIGHTING fascism, remember?")
Like "Nariyama" this is a portrait of a community in a particular time and place: a small Japanese town not so far from Hiroshima in 1950. While trying to move on with their lives after the holocaust, the people of the town continually wonder if the unnatural effects, if the black rain of the after-math, have poisoned them all. In this context, they attempt to arrange marriages under suspicion of each other's health.
And, as in his great "Ballad" Immamura dramatically and suddenly shifts tone in ways that are both beguiling and magnificent, going from the crudely and cruelly hilarious to the warmly humane to the savage, sometimes in the same scene. Immamura's anti-humanism, his reduction of humanity to just another species of animal striving to collectively survive, is also his humanism. He understands himself as part of his collective subject- in the grand scale humanity, on a more modest scale the Japanese people.
The flashbacks to Hiroshima are properly unspeakable yet unforgettable. In just a few horrible frames we understand the draconian measures adopted by people under the worst kind of siege- the regimentation of the seemingly healthy from the visibly sick from the (literally) melting. Part of the wonder of the film is the way it shows people moving on with near-normal lives only a few years after having experienced such a collective trauma, one that we obviously don't dwell on in the U.S, but that, as the film confrontationally makes clear, has not been adequately addressed by Japanese popular culture. Two of the most sympathetic characters in the film find solace in each other by being able to share their traumatic memories, something the other characters acknowledge, in hushed tones, is not possible for most Japanese to do.
The search for a suitable husband for a daughter is, as mentioned above, the main narrative thrust of the post-war scenes. This is a traditional subject of much Japanese folklore. But the ways this "1950s search for a good Japanese man for the pretty Japanese daughter" is shot- in black and white, with a stationary, waist-high camera (all very uncharacteristic for Immamura in the 1980s) convinced me that he meant the film as a parody of sorts of the post-war work of Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu often acknowledged the war- that young men died in it,etc- but he never acknowledged the American occupation. At one point in one of Ozu's films the main character says "I'm glad the Americans won." This is not Ozu's fault. The Americans imposed strict censorship on all forms of Japanese media in the decades following the war. I think Immamura is trying to show that Ozu's celebrated depictions of post-war Japanese society are, if in some ways brilliantly observational, also, by necessity, somewhat artificial.
It is, of course, one of the few simplistic truths of history that it was for the better that the Axis powers lost the second world war. But this work reinforces how the final victory of the Allies was achieved by a crime against humanity, the nuking, and continued occupation and nuclearization of Japan, worthy of the offenses of the Nazis or the Showaists. It made me think that the Firesign Theater was correct when they held that we actually lost World War II. ("We were FIGHTING fascism, remember?")