I'm a bit behind with entries due to my graduation (MSc in Film Studies) and all of the obligatory parties that accompany it. Last friday was the start of the Wild Japan Film festival at the filmhouse, which was organised by Matt Palmer, founder of Cult! Film Distribution. This is the second installment of the festival, the last one being in 2005, and this year the entire programme will also be shown at the NFT. The line up is a real treat for cinephiles, with a total of twelve films screening on pristine 35mm prints over the next ten days. They range from abstract art house experiments (Branded to kill, Funeral parade of Roses), beautifully crafted genre pieces (Sword of Doom, Pale Flower), and shameless exploitation trash (Female Convict Scorpion, School of the Holy Beast). 
Pale Flower - Masahiro Shinoda The opening film was Pale Flower (1964) an astonishingly beautiful Yakuza film by Masahiro Shinoda (Assassination, Double Suicide). The film follows the fortunes of gangster Muraki following his release from prison and his reintegration into gang Funada. But things have changed and gang Funada have now entered an uneasy alliance with gang Yuazuki in order to counter the threat of youthful newcomer Imai, who is challenging the aging leadership of the other gangs. Given that Muraki was put inside for assassinating one of Yuazaki's men in the first place, this alliance has rendered the sacrifice that resulted in his eight-year prison stretch utterly pointless, creating in him a sense of worthlessness that comes to permeate his entire jaded worldview. The opening montage of denizens of the new Tokyo crowding onto trains sets up the film as a critique of the dehumanising aspect of the economic miracle of the sixties, and Muraki’s voice over commentary draws the conclusion that human life is worthless and therefore murder is perfectly justified (a recurring theme in the work of the new wave directors).
Described by someone on IMDB as a Japanese adaptation of On The Road, Pale Flower follows Muraki as he drifts through the illegal gambling halls of Tokyo, desperately trying to find a way to feel alive. It is here that he stumbles upon a beautiful rich woman Saeko, the pale flower of the title, who is suffering from a similar existential malaise, and together they embark upon a mission to restore their senses through racing sports-cars on empty night highways, high-stakes gambling, passionless sex and, for Saeko, hard drugs. It is this latter diversion that comes between them, taking Saeko to a place Muraki will not follow and making her beholden to a ruthless junkie who occupies the edge of the frame as an enigmatic presence throughout the film, callously observing the gambling slumped against the wall in a stoned stupor. For Muraki he is merely a disgusting, cowardly dope addict, but his illusive nature represents something more sinister; the allure of self-destruction that Saeko succumbs to out of ennui.
The breathtakingly polished black and white cinematography (provided by Masao Kosugi) provides further evidence that Japanese filmmakers of this period had absolutely mastered the art of film aesthetics in a way never seen before or since. Its tight scope compositions evoke a wonderful atmosphere of gloom, which is perfectly suited to expressing the stifling world of the Yakuza. The evocation of mood is helped immensely by composer Toru Takemitsu, whose modernist compositions also graced the work of Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman of the Dunes). But apart from being an utterly perfect example of its genre, the existential gangster film, and an aesthetic triumph, Shinoda’s film, as always, provides a brilliant commentary on the changing values in Japanese society by using the enclosed world of the gangster as an extreme microcosm of wider social transitions.
The film concerns itself with the shift of values that was concurrent with the emergence of the new sixties generation, here presented as alienated and nihilistic. This is particularly apparent in the attitudes of the aging gang leaders who are desperate to hold on to their hard won power in the face of ambitious newcomers and the fatalistic attitude of Muraki, a child of the post war years, who despite having only just been released from prison puts himself forward for the job of assassinating Imai without a thought for himself. This scene, set to an elegiac choral piece (by Britten?), is utterly devastating in its violent emotional intensity. It is seen through the eyes of Saeko, who Muraki invites along as a witness, promising that the act of murder is the greatest kick, but the look on his face afterwards tells another story. The film ends with Muraki behind bars yet again, and it is here that he learns of the death of Saeko at the hands of her dealer. As the prison gates close irrevocably behind him the film ends with his voice over, commenting that without Saeko life has no meaning. A realisation of love that reverses the statement he makes at the very opening of the film about the worthlessness of human life, but a realisation that has come too late…
Shinoda’s film, like Takeshi Kitano’s superb Yakuza films, is also sophisticated enough to contain a critique of the genre without ever rejecting it outright. Thus, whilst they are planning the assassination of Imai, the doom laden and tense atmosphere is broken by a phone call. When one of the gang elders picks up the phone there is a brief pause before he states irritably that ‘this ‘aint no beauty parlour!’ The emergent fashion oriented consumer society here breaks into the traditional world of the Yakuza in a moment of wonderful irrationality and flagrant abuse of the film’s tone. In spite of these undermining moments Shinoda’s film has a stifling coherence and linear progression that is wholly appropriate to the subject, but completely different to the stylistic excess of his other masterpiece Assassination, made just after Pale Flower also in 1964, which was a daring and unlikely fusion of Yojimbo and Citizen Kane. In that film Shinoda transports his theme of existential angst to the genre of the Samurai film, utilising the setting of the Edo period to evoke the lack of certainty in the post war period, when American values were infiltrating society and the emperor was forced to denounce his divine status. These issues are explored through the character of a sword for hire, who plays the opposed camps of the Tokugawa Shogunate’s ‘Free Samurai Army’ and the emperor worshippers against one another, to the point that his own identity became utterly unfathomable to both the audience and himself, as well as the assassin employed by the shogun. Shinoda finally arrives at his nihilistic realisation that “a man should live anyway he wants. What else is there?” a statement that seems to act as an ironic counterpoint to Muraki’s position, tethered as he is by loyalty to his gang over life itself, which to him is nothing more than a pale flower.
Described by someone on IMDB as a Japanese adaptation of On The Road, Pale Flower follows Muraki as he drifts through the illegal gambling halls of Tokyo, desperately trying to find a way to feel alive. It is here that he stumbles upon a beautiful rich woman Saeko, the pale flower of the title, who is suffering from a similar existential malaise, and together they embark upon a mission to restore their senses through racing sports-cars on empty night highways, high-stakes gambling, passionless sex and, for Saeko, hard drugs. It is this latter diversion that comes between them, taking Saeko to a place Muraki will not follow and making her beholden to a ruthless junkie who occupies the edge of the frame as an enigmatic presence throughout the film, callously observing the gambling slumped against the wall in a stoned stupor. For Muraki he is merely a disgusting, cowardly dope addict, but his illusive nature represents something more sinister; the allure of self-destruction that Saeko succumbs to out of ennui.
The breathtakingly polished black and white cinematography (provided by Masao Kosugi) provides further evidence that Japanese filmmakers of this period had absolutely mastered the art of film aesthetics in a way never seen before or since. Its tight scope compositions evoke a wonderful atmosphere of gloom, which is perfectly suited to expressing the stifling world of the Yakuza. The evocation of mood is helped immensely by composer Toru Takemitsu, whose modernist compositions also graced the work of Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman of the Dunes). But apart from being an utterly perfect example of its genre, the existential gangster film, and an aesthetic triumph, Shinoda’s film, as always, provides a brilliant commentary on the changing values in Japanese society by using the enclosed world of the gangster as an extreme microcosm of wider social transitions.
The film concerns itself with the shift of values that was concurrent with the emergence of the new sixties generation, here presented as alienated and nihilistic. This is particularly apparent in the attitudes of the aging gang leaders who are desperate to hold on to their hard won power in the face of ambitious newcomers and the fatalistic attitude of Muraki, a child of the post war years, who despite having only just been released from prison puts himself forward for the job of assassinating Imai without a thought for himself. This scene, set to an elegiac choral piece (by Britten?), is utterly devastating in its violent emotional intensity. It is seen through the eyes of Saeko, who Muraki invites along as a witness, promising that the act of murder is the greatest kick, but the look on his face afterwards tells another story. The film ends with Muraki behind bars yet again, and it is here that he learns of the death of Saeko at the hands of her dealer. As the prison gates close irrevocably behind him the film ends with his voice over, commenting that without Saeko life has no meaning. A realisation of love that reverses the statement he makes at the very opening of the film about the worthlessness of human life, but a realisation that has come too late…
Shinoda’s film, like Takeshi Kitano’s superb Yakuza films, is also sophisticated enough to contain a critique of the genre without ever rejecting it outright. Thus, whilst they are planning the assassination of Imai, the doom laden and tense atmosphere is broken by a phone call. When one of the gang elders picks up the phone there is a brief pause before he states irritably that ‘this ‘aint no beauty parlour!’ The emergent fashion oriented consumer society here breaks into the traditional world of the Yakuza in a moment of wonderful irrationality and flagrant abuse of the film’s tone. In spite of these undermining moments Shinoda’s film has a stifling coherence and linear progression that is wholly appropriate to the subject, but completely different to the stylistic excess of his other masterpiece Assassination, made just after Pale Flower also in 1964, which was a daring and unlikely fusion of Yojimbo and Citizen Kane. In that film Shinoda transports his theme of existential angst to the genre of the Samurai film, utilising the setting of the Edo period to evoke the lack of certainty in the post war period, when American values were infiltrating society and the emperor was forced to denounce his divine status. These issues are explored through the character of a sword for hire, who plays the opposed camps of the Tokugawa Shogunate’s ‘Free Samurai Army’ and the emperor worshippers against one another, to the point that his own identity became utterly unfathomable to both the audience and himself, as well as the assassin employed by the shogun. Shinoda finally arrives at his nihilistic realisation that “a man should live anyway he wants. What else is there?” a statement that seems to act as an ironic counterpoint to Muraki’s position, tethered as he is by loyalty to his gang over life itself, which to him is nothing more than a pale flower.
No comments:
Post a Comment