Isabella Tianzi Cai
H72.1118 Contemporary Japanese Cinema (Choi)
November 7, 2009
Japan’s Harmony Revisited
I have abandoned two drafts for this assignment already; both were about a page long, and titled “Seeing through Koreeda: on Surreal Moments from the Past” and “Notes on Forgetting and Forgiving in Koreeda’s Films” respectively. I had to because I felt like forcing compliments for Koreeda out of myself with little sincerity. I want to criticize his films because in truth it was tormenting for me to sit through. Of the four films that I have watched, each one echoes how harmonious Japanese society is. Critics and scholars praise Koreeda for exploring and examining death and memory, which I do not disagree. Koreeda’s films are quiet, meditative, and even beguiling. However, nobody thinks that he perpetuates the age-old passivity of Japanese people in service of Japan’s prized but problematic harmony. He is very much like Ozu in this sense because both are possessed by a deep affection of their country and their culture. This love has prevented both from penetrating their everyday life with a sufficiently sharp vision. Often in Koreeda’s films, being meditative is equal to being nonjudgmental, and coming to terms with one’s past means transcending instead of resolving one’s problems. I hope by accounting for where and how my uneasiness arises, I will contribute to the discussion of Koreeda as well.
I can focus on all four of Koreeda’s films in this essay, but since the assignment requires only two, I would like to pick Maborosi (1995) and After Life (1998). My reason to do so is largely because of the order that the films were released. Nobody Knows and Still Walking came out later, in 2004 and 2008. If we presume that Koreeda’s film career has a pattern of development, I would like to point out that his later works tend less to mystify the world but rather to deal directly with its shortcomings. To me, such a trend is a sign of maturation of Koreeda, but this alone will not stop me from reproving certain key aspects of his earlier works.
Maborosi achieves an unusual level of aesthetics by having seemingly eclectic shots together. Many of these shots do not contribute directly to the narrative, but they are perfect for establishing the milieu in which the story takes place. The film opens with a medium shot of Yumiko when she was still a teenager. A few characters are introduced together with Yumiko at this stage including Yumiko’s future husband Ikuo, her grandmother, and her parents. However, none of them is given special attention because no close-up shots are used, just like in the rest of the film. The highlights of the opening sequence, instead, are the tunnel, the bridge, the noise of train as it passes by, and in general, an ordinary working class neighborhood.
I should mention that this kind of focus on the environment rather than on the people is prominent throughout the film. When Yumiko moves in with her second husband, an extreme long shot shows us the shore where their house is located. When Yumiko’s little boy plays in the fields with his sister, they are both just two small dots against the vastness of their surroundings. Seldom are they placed in the foreground, which is almost always a scenic part of nature. One of the most memorable long shots from the film is towards the end of the story when Yumiko follows a group of mourners at the beach. Geometrically, having a procession of people walking alongside the ocean is neat. The music also helps situate us in the mood of the mourners.
However, having long shots throughout the film, especially when Yumiko finally lets her emotion come forth, is so powerful that it stifles too. From the conversation between Yumiko and her second husband, we learn that death is enigmatic, suicides are inexplicable, and a fatal attraction to death could happen to anyone. Yumiko’s emotional eruption is assuaged by her second husband’s mystic story of his father. She never utters another word after his response. Everything is simply back to normal. From the mise-en-scène, a similar kind of containment is imposed. The pathos of the environment overrides the emotions of the characters to the point of trivializing the latter. Everything gives the impression that Koreeda tries to preach an attitude of resignation to life.
Another uneasiness I have with Koreeda’s mystical approach to suicides is to think that people will walk away from the film thinking that all suicides need not be looked again twice. On one hand, a person going through the loss of a loved one needs consolation in order to go on with his or her life. If mystification is what is expedient, it is what is desired too, for necessity is the mother of invention. However, mystification is not the solution to future suicides, and I am concerned about how much curiosity is needed to trigger a suicide. By being monochromic in its attempt to explain away death and suicide, Maborosi becomes somewhat limited because it seems best at addressing only a moderate group of people who are snarled by unpleasant memories of the past.
In terms of offering different perspectives on our memories of the past, After Life is a greater achievement than Maborosi because it encompasses views of people from all walks of life. Its documentary style renders many one-person storytelling scenes compelling. The acting in those is neither restrained nor dramatic; the characters look natural probably because they act for themselves. While the location that the film takes place is extremely ordinary with not much to look at, the people animate the scenes with their different idiosyncrasies. The meditation takes on a different turn by not focusing so much on landscape and environment as on genuine interpersonal communications.
Various characters recall their best moments in life. While listening to them, I wondered what mine was too. Koreeda must have anticipated such a reaction from his audience, so he plays with our expectation. The kind of happiness that one chooses for a final reenactment needs to be sharable. Therefore, the idea that a shared joy is a double joy is reinforced. During the course of trying to recall one’s life, both happy and sad memories surface. Even though there are no real villains in this particular group, minor unethical deeds like infidelity and forgery of real age often come up. Plot-wise, those who have had satisfying lives and are able to pick a memory to be taken with them will be guaranteed the passage to Heaven. Otherwise, they remain in the limbo to serve the newly dead until they become aware of a truly significant memory to themselves.
Surveying the memories that different characters have picked, it is fairly easy to reconstruct an imaginary Japan according to their memories. There are promiscuous salary men, uneducated prostitutes, docile housewives, disenfranchised youth, and so on and so forth. The act of picking a good memory is isomorphic to the act of hiding away unpleasant things, and the idea that Japanese people have a tendency to stomach the unpalatable repeats itself again and again. The moment when the 21-year-old young man goes completely unbridled by the working system of the limbo is somewhat different because it is liberating; however, the young man is a hologram with no true attributes. He alone has no real power to overturn anything in the limbo. The overall harmony, the coming and going of half-dead souls, and the function of the limbo will simply remain undisrupted.
Once again to play devil’s advocate, I will not extol Maborosi and After Life for what they achieve. The idea of harmony is banal to me because it is just another platitude. I am glad that Koreeda has reduced the usage of long shots and long takes over the years because heavy reliance on them to give a holistic view of the world can be limited too. As for lingering shots of inanimate objects, though I know that they comply with the principles of voids and silences in Zen aesthetics, I want to say that they are also ambivalent. Critics likes to refer to Buddhism when they come across a director like Koreeda or Ozu, but Buddha is actually quite an existential thinker in that he teaches us, unless something is true to you, it is not absolutely important for you to know if it is the Truth. I dare ask Koreeda what he intends the function of an empty room or an empty field to be besides introducing pauses and cultivating sentiments, both of which tone down human presence and importance so that harmony could ensue.
