For Chinese audiences, the name Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is not too familiar.
In fact, this is a director who has been active in the Japanese film industry since 1985.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Kiyoshi Kurosawa directed "romance films" for the independent production company "Director Company" and became famous in one war.
After that, As a hired screenwriter and director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa emerged from the "romance films" and entered the field of television, crime films, and horror films that he was familiar with.
From the crime thriller "X Holy Rule" to the horror film "Séance", "Circuit", "Attic", Kurosawa Kiyoshi has made a big splash in horror movies and is known as a master of horror movies by fans.
Despite being known for its "romance films" and horror films, Kiyoshi Kurosawa is not limited to this genre.
It turns out that every time he sets foot in another genre, it will make people shine.
In 2008, he directed the pure drama film "Tokyo Sonata", which was selected as one of the top ten Japanese films of the year, and also won the Jury Award in the "One Kind of Attention" section at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as two awards at the 3rd Asian Film Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Film.
In 120 minutes, the film takes a family of four in Tokyo as a miniature, showing its internal turmoil in detail, outlining the struggle trajectory of each member, thus alluding to the survival situation of countless people in Tokyo and even Japan under the turbulent situation of the transformation of the world economic structure, the financial crisis, and the war in the Middle East.
And this time we are going to talk about "The Spy's Wife", which is Kurosawa's first time shooting a period movie.
However, what people did not expect was that the Japanese director, in less than 2 hours, tore open the past that Japanese people did not dare to mention in the past 90 years, and also filmed the historical scars that few people have touched so far.
01 The "most rebellious" war film in Japanese film history
Set in Kobe in 1940, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II, the story of The Spy's Wife is set in 1940, with the protagonists being Yusaku Fukuhara, a merchant engaged in the cloth trade, and his wife Satoko.
In that era, one of the most important things for the Japanese gendarmes to do at home was to catch spies, especially foreigners who came to Japan to do business, and they were more likely to be targeted.
At the beginning of the film, one of Yusaku's clients and friends, The Englishman John, is targeted, and he is arrested in the gendarmerie brigade on trumped-up charges, and the person responsible for the arrest is Yusaku and Satoko's childhood playmate Taiji, who is the captain of the gendarmerie.
John's affair soon came to an end, he left Japan, and Yusaku's life seemed to return to normal.
Soon, Yusaku and Fumio were going to go abroad for trade exchange, this time to the puppet state of Manchukuo, which had just experienced the Battle of Nomonhan, that is, the northeast region of China.
The first 20 minutes of the film are slow-paced and there are not many depictions of the war, but that all changes after Yusaku and his nephew return from Manchuria.
First, Yusaku's return to China was delayed by two weeks than expected, and he brought back a mysterious woman with Satoko on his back, and then Fumio resigned from the company for reasons that sounded impeccable: he was going to write a novel.
In order to create with peace of mind, Fumio moved to the Tachibana Hotel.
Soon, things changed again.
A few days after Fumio moved to the Tachibana Hotel, there was a murder at the Tachibana Hotel, and a female employee of the hotel, Yuko Kusaka, drowned by the sea.
After the case, Taiji quietly approached Satoko and told her that Yuko had been brought back from Manchuria by Yusaku and that the hotel's work was also found by Yusaku for her.
Out of the woman's jealousy, this information makes Satoko suspicious of her husband, and after asking Yusaku in person without success, she goes to the hotel to find Fumio.
Here, she discovers that someone is spying on Fumio and understands that things are not so simple.
Back at work, Yusaku finally tells her the truth.
He and Fumio went to Manchuria and were granted permission to visit the Kwantung Army's research laboratory, where they saw discarded and burned corpses from which Hiroko had rescued them.
In fact, Hiroko's identity is very special, she is the lover of a military doctor in the Kwantung Army.
The bodies that were discarded and burned were produced by the army's biochemical experiments on human bodies. The doctor is killed for trying to expose this evil, but he gives Hiroko all the experimental notes.
The reason why Fumio hid in the hotel as soon as he returned to China was to translate the experimental notes into English, and then send it to the United States by Yusaku to expose it to the world and impeach the Japanese army in international politics, so that the United States could enter the war and end this inhuman war as soon as possible.
But this time the open and honest conversation did not reassure Satoko, on the contrary, she had more curiosity.
Taking advantage of Yusaku's outing, she secretly opened Yusaku's safe and found experimental notes and a videotape. From the videotape, Satoko "saw" the evil deeds in Yusaku's mouth for the first time, and she was shaken.
Soon, Satoko sorted out her thoughts, took the English translation, and found her childhood playmate, the current gendarmerie captain Taiji.
The purpose of her trip was to expose Wenxiong, who was arrested, tortured, and confessed his identity as a "spy", but took everything into account.
Satoko's "betrayal" shocked Yusaku greatly, but Satoko's real purpose was to "lose the car and protect the marshal".
Fumio and Yusaku have the same belief, in order to achieve their ideals, he will cover up all the crimes, so that Yusaku can have a chance to expose.
However, after Fumio's affair, his partner is only Satoko.
After careful planning, the two decided to go their separate ways, and the two went to the United States with evidence, but Satoko had just boarded the ship and was found by the gendarmerie.
Fortunately, in the luggage she was carrying, the videotape that had originally stored the crimes of the Kwantung Army was dropped, Satoko was put in a mental hospital, and Yusaku never heard from her again.
After 5 years, Satoko's mental hospital was bombed and the war ended.
Looking at the whole film, it is easy to draw a conclusion:
"The Spy's Wife" is an anti-war movie, but the history it tells is indeed very "rebellious" for Japan.
Although the film does not directly say what Yousaku saw from beginning to end, we can see from the blurry video footage that Yousaku's belief in the "universal values" pursued was more determined after seeing what the germ troops were doing in China.
After the 1976 "Frozen River" trilogy and the 1988 Hong Kong film "Black Sun 731" trilogy, almost no Japanese film "dared" to make a film depicting this history.
It can be said that Kurosawa Kiyoshi's film, in addition to Satoko's lamentable experience, what is really commendable is that the film dared to touch the historical scars of the Human Experiment Unit of the Manchukuo Kwantung Army that the Japanese official still does not want to face to this day.
02 The image of a "human wife" rare in Japanese film history
The movie "The Spy's Wife" emphasizes the protagonist of the movie from the title of the movie, which is a story about the "spy wife" and emphasizes a gender center of gravity.
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa also said in an interview: Satoko is indeed a rare female character in the history of Japanese cinema.
Satoko is the absolute protagonist of the film, although her body involves politics, love, faith and other common elements in the chaotic world.
From her point of view, there is neither a positive description of the war atrocities of the Japanese army, nor an absolutely innocent idea of celebrating, but a naïve and brave complex woman who is still "obsessed with love" in the chaotic world.
All of Satoko's actions in the film have only one driving force - love.
Satoko's wholehearted devotion to her husband Yusaku at the beginning is due to love, because the appearance of the mysterious woman leads to her distrust and questioning of her husband, which is also caused by jealousy caused by love.
Until she thought that the lofty ambition to sacrifice others (nephew Fumio) to save Yusaku was because of love, and her "bold" behavior from a closed lady to breaking through the psychological defense line to daring to cross the United States alone, in the final analysis, it was because of love.
For Satoko, whether it is treason or patriotism, it does not matter to her, she chooses nothing more than ai Yousaku.
In contrast, the presence of Yusaku in the film is more like a "saint" who "gives up small love for big love".
In order to be able to escape smoothly, he dropped the videotape in Satoko's suitcase and reported Satoko's smuggling trip. In his view, as long as the ultimate goal can be achieved, it does not matter what kind of sacrifice.
Ever since he saw the horrific scenes in Manchuria, the "universal values" in his heart began to dominate, and he felt that he was the "chosen one" and was destined to bear the burden of exposing crimes.
So although Satoko has overcome her timidity, "bravely" and become his "comrade-in-arms" on one front, she can only be reduced to a pawn of Yusaku in the end, a woman without a name, a spy's wife, and not even a spy.
The writers of "The Spy's Wife" are Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Nohara, who are students at the Graduate School of Imaging at Tokyo University of the Arts, where Kurosawa teaches, and on the one hand they know Kurosawa's emphasis on female character development.
In Kurosawa Kiyoshi's past films, he often used scenes and character antagonisms to create a "sense of doom", but in "The Spy's Wife", this feeling is reflected in the crisis of trust between Yusaku and Satoko, because the appearance of strange women and Yusaku's deliberate concealment make Satoko have a sense of crisis in this relationship.
It is this sense of crisis that guides all of Satoko's next actions.
On the other hand, the film also incorporates the creative style of Ryusuke Hamaguchi's original play when shaping the characters.
Before and after the truth is revealed, Satoko has a "little girl" behavior pattern, and the innocence she shows to Taiji when climbing the mountain, and the excitement when she thinks that she plays a role as a sentry of the good work, are all traces of "daily life".
And it is the combination of these two parts that finally has a female character like Satoko, who has a strong personality and a clear love and hate in the historical torrent of the big era.
However, the final part of the movie about Satoko's ending is written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa himself to revise the script.
Satoko escapes from a bombed mental hospital and is once again "crazy" because she sees the evil and harm of real war.
Compared with the first time I saw the videotape of being dropped and discovered the identity of a pawn, this time there is an irony of Japanese militarism.
03 The exquisitely crafted "careful machine" in the movie
Although "The Spy's Wife" lasts less than 2 hours, the film contains more information than it shows us in 2 hours.
First of all, there is the exquisite character setting
The character of the male protagonist yusaku in the movie is very special, he is not only a trading company owner, but also an identity - a movie lover.
Therefore, in the film, the element of "movie" has become a key factor in driving the plot.
Because of Yusaku's fondness for movies, he would make his own movies outside of work on weekdays, and the invited movies starred his nephew and wife.
Another purpose of the purchase trip to Manchuria is to add material to the films they have shot.
In a way, does this also mean that Satoko is just an "actor" in his story from beginning to end?
Secondly, there is the setting of "drama within a play"
In addition to the key evidence in the film is the video material taken by Yusaku, he and Satoko also saw the movie in the movie, which was directed by Sadao Yamanaka in 1936, which was adapted from real historical figures and kabuki works by Hanoi Sotoshi.
Before the film began, the theater showed a propaganda film about the "heroism" of the Japanese soldiers, and it is very ironic to look at this paragraph after the yusaku couple has learned the true story of what happened in Manchukuo.
When director Kiyoshi Kurosawa won the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival, the chairman of the jury, Cate Blanche, said of "The Spy's Wife":
"I remember Director Steven Soderberg said, 'The director needs to know where to put the camera and how to direct the whole story and the performance.'" Although it is difficult to make a decision, which director of this shortlisted work did this perfectly, and in the end we came to this obvious conclusion. ”
The meaning of Cate Branch's words is actually the best explanation of the "stage play" sense shown in the film.
At the same time, because of this setting, it becomes very important to "see" in the movie.
When Yusaku didn't explain too much and Satoko couldn't let go, Satoko saw the "video data" in the safe and had a deeper understanding of the matter.
Then there is the choice of the location of "Kobe"
The film is set in Kobe, one of the first five major ports in Japan to open up to foreign trade, and interestingly, Kobe is also one of Japan's "birthplaces of cinema", the first city to introduce the event film projector invented by Edison.
It can be said that these "careful machines" in the movie have made this the best film in the later stage of Kurosawa Kiyoshi's creation. There are still human explorations in the film, the atmosphere is always far from the horror and suspense, and what the film wants to explore is also the complex and unspeakable secret behind the events.
Finally, let's talk about the movie itself.
On September 12, 2020, the 77th Venice International Film Festival came to an end, and Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa won the Silver Lion Award for Best Director for "The Spy's Wife".
On February 4, 2021, the 94th Film Shunbun Awards were announced in Tokyo, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Spy's Wife" won the "Best Picture" and the first place in the "Top Ten Japanese Films of the Year", and also won the Best Screenplay Award in the individual awards.
Although Yu Aoi failed to win the best actress with her performance in the movie, she and Takahashi are another partner in their lives, and they have further advanced in tacit understanding, and their appearance and acting skills are worthy of exaggeration.
There is no doubt that in the past year, "The Spy's Wife" is the most worthy of our Japanese movies.
In fact, "The Spy's Wife" originally did not go to the award, it was a Japanese drama SP shot by NHK, that is, a "TV movie".
At the beginning of the film shooting, it was mainly prepared for its own 8K satellite channels, and the film was produced in the whole process of 8K.
Who would have thought that the quality of the finished product far exceeds that of TV movies, and even beyond the artistic and technical level of general cinema films, so the film is remade into a film version after re-dimming and picture proportions to participate in the European Film Festival, and what is even more unexpected is that this journey won gold and silver.
Since the original shooting was all about 8K, the original version of the high-quality film was broadcast on NHK's BS8K channel on June 6, 2020.
The film version that went to the film festival to participate in the competition was a degraded version of the picture quality, and then we saw the degraded version of the picture quality.
The winning path of "The Spy's Wife" looks a little "magical", but as long as you have seen the movie, you will know:
It won the prize, it really deserved.
Bluestone Film Editorial Office | Old Meng
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