The death of Kiyoshi Suzuki thought of Japanese New Wave films

·Cultural Symbol· There is always some uneasy vitality, gradually brewing in the quiet. Maybe at some point, everything will be very different

Text/Binlu Zhang

On February 13, Japanese director Kiyoshun Suzuki died in Tokyo at the age of 93.

For movie fans, the name Kiyoshun Suzuki evokes even more distant memories, historical film memories about an entire generation, and even more than just movies. This is the most dramatic moment of Japanese cinema, when famous directors such as Keisuke Kinoshita and Kenji Mizoguchi are getting old, and directors such as Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu are just like the days of Japan, the Japanese film industry is hiding a force of youth that is trying to open up a new situation in Japanese cinema led by a group of young and vigorous directors.

In the 1960s, with the development of Nagisa Oshima's "The Cruel Story of Youth" and a series of social movements, this revolution in the film industry broke out in full swing, with words such as strength, youth, and rebellion becoming the core themes, and a large number of outstanding film characters emerged. As the cultural upsurge of Japan since the 1970s gradually stabilized, the movement and its associated characters each moved into their proper places in the annals of history, calling this change the "Japanese New Wave" in the history of cinema. Even if Suzuki Kiyoshi is not the last living character related to this story, I am afraid that there are not many people involved.

This is a headache for historians, who in the 1960s were plunged into a rebellious frenzy of young people who were generally opposed to the bloodiness of World War II, yet equally dissatisfied with the institutional structure established after the war, trying to rely on the establishment of a new culture to rekindle the inner passion of a life. The films directed by Kiyoshun Suzuki during this period had distinct characteristics of the times, including the rendering of violence and the body, and its unique use of lens and light and shadow was then known as the "Kiyoshun aesthetic".

And the style of the film itself even extends beyond the film, and the work contradiction between him and the Nikko company is gradually amplified into a social movement in which everyone participates, and now it seems that these movements are almost as wonderful as the films themselves at that time, so that whenever people mention that era, it seems that there is a kind of young blood surging in the body.

However, in contrast, it is precisely the era of passion that has gradually entered since then, when technology has begun to dominate the world in an all-round way, the world seems to become richer, but behind this richness lies the immovable cold rationality in the high-tech spirit. If a person from the "New Wave" era saw today's young people unleashing their passions in online games, he might lament the decay of the flesh in the face of the entire technological system.

Although Kiyoshi Suzuki has since directed many masterpieces, including "The Wanderer's Song", which was a hit at the Berlin Film Festival in 1981, his name is inevitably associated with the entire New Wave movement of the 1960s. This connection is not only the deliberate construction of film historians, but also comes from people's remembrance of the era of passion, and more deeply, it is the uneasiness and restlessness of the repressed vitality in the depths of people's own spirits.

However, Kiyoshun Suzuki has passed away, which is like a farewell to the era of heroes who have died out. The same tragic story cannot appear twice in history, and even if it is repeated, it will certainly take on a completely different spiritual appearance. In terms of movies alone, Japanese films since Heisei have become increasingly delicate and delicate, but they are still not the same as the exuberance of the 1960s.

The news of Kiyoshun Suzuki's death, like his most famous movie title "Elegy of Violence", seems to ruthlessly forcibly cut off the connection between this era and the heroic era, but at the same time, it also makes people see a new dawn, and a new cultural form is quietly emerging, just like the story of that year, there is always some uneasy vitality, gradually brewing in the quiet. Maybe at some point, everything will be very different.

Zhang Binlu, Ph.D. in Literature, is currently engaged in cultural and literary criticism.