When French New Wave cinema began to take off in the 1960s, this cultural wave quickly swept across Europe, but in Asia, in Japan, this wave also set off a gust of wind. At that time, Japanese directors were also affected, and began to reflect on the reality of film and television works, reflect on the actual social system, reflect on the existing shooting technology, and so on. Nagisa Oshima is a rare director, and for the spread of the influence of New Wave films in Japan, the works of Director Nagisa Oshima can definitely be taken out and seen.
What I recommend to you today is his early work "Hanging Death", which is a Japanese work under the influence of the New Wave, but the core is different from many movies. What exactly is different, let's briefly analyze and discuss.
"Hanging Death" is about a South Korean who raped and killed two young women in Japan, but the criminal from South Korea has no remorse. According to the criminal law of the time, the criminal was sentenced to hanging, but fortunately there was an accident on the way to the hanging. He wasn't dead. Faced with a criminal who is not dead and has lost consciousness, a group of public officials from police officers to prosecutors general begin to suffer. How do they prove that the criminal is a criminal, and how can they use the existing criminal law to re-sentence him to death? Based on this clue, the film has a discussion again and again, of course, such a discussion is absurd. At the time of frequent comedic effects, the core of this film is also about to come out. Is criminal law a justified killing? This is a question.
Of course, this is not a complete summary of this film, if we watch this work, it is not difficult to find that as a criminal R, his almost perverted utopianism is the source of the film's almost "absurd". Was R hanged? We can understand this in many ways, and it is correct to think that he died at the time of the first execution, because at the time of the second execution, the gallows were empty, and of course, such a hypothesis is reasonable.
But it's also reasonable to think that R didn't die at the time of his first execution, because all the stories in this film revolve around R's accidental resurrection after the first execution. If there is no such setting, how can this group of public officials understand this question? This is also something that everyone can think deeply about. The reason why this view is also reasonable is that R is a utopian, and everything after that, or R's own fantasies before death, is nothing more. Because at the end of the day, we see R open a door, facing the sunlight outside, and we are at a loss. At this point, it is basically certain that everything after R's first execution is utopian.
However, when these two views are established, we will look at the story discussed in this film, and we will find that in fact, the life or death of R does not matter, the most important thing is the core point discussed in this film, whether the death penalty is reasonable or not.
R believes that after dying once, he is no longer the R he used to be, and public officials are eager to prove that R is R. Why prove, because they want to identify a person, why identify a person, because after it is determined, the death penalty of that person can be imposed. And so the contradiction arises. R is to be proven to be R, and how exactly should this be demonstrated. The absurdity of this film also arises from this.
Public officials have repeatedly finalized R, you are a Korean, you are not Japanese, you have committed a crime, the crime is punishable, the punishment is the death penalty, the death penalty must be confirmed to the criminal, so you are R, R is R. So repeatedly and in an exaggerated form, constantly reproducing R's life scenes, and not hesitate to use a more absurd form to reproduce R's crime scenes, etc., these are all in order to deduce the entire criminal path of R and prove that R is R. These ways are almost pathological, but have they succeeded? As if not, R still doesn't fully admit that he is R.
In the end, the prosecutor's proof made R convinced, but this excessive deduction did not work as it should, but it was repeated, what is the reason for this? Of course, this stems from the real rigidity of the Japanese social system at that time and the superstition of this rigid system. No one can say whether to change or not, but when conducting specific case analysis, even if it is for the sake of making a small mistake and making a bigger mistake, the public official does not feel inappropriate, because all this has a source, for this source, in order to see a little uneasiness in his conscience is erased, even if it is a heinous disaster, it does not matter whether he commits it or not.
Of course, in today's words, we can describe the entire national attributes of the Japanese people, seeing small profits forget the great righteousness, fear of prestige and not wilder, etc., embodied in this film, embodied in the deduction of R's criminal process, it is not difficult to see how deeply rooted this national attribute is. The reason for not giving up on not achieving the goal is only to not let yourself bear the responsibility, as long as you can shirk the responsibility, any price is worth it.
R's death is not only his life and death, but also the tearing of the entire Japanese society. When a society is overly dependent on a certain established system but cannot re-examine the shortcomings in the system from the perspective of the overall situation, then the lifelessness of this society will spread indefinitely, and only the Japanese can devour Japan, and Nagisa Oshima under the influence of the New Wave will use this possibility to speak out with his works.
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Hello and goodbye