By Jonathan Rosenbaum
Translator: Issac
Proofreader: Zhu Puyi
Source: Chicago Reader, January 10, 2001
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was very popular in the United States, and American audiences finally realized that there are many good Asian works, which are not the same, and the same is true of our own works.
Nagisa Oshima's Mihodo is set in another period, 1865. The work was written by Nagisa Ōshima, considered by many critics to be Japan's greatest filmmaker, and was also directed by him.
"Law" (1999)
He is 69 years old and he shot World of Senses in the mid-seventies and Merry Christmas on the Battlefield in 1982. Since then, he has made only one film other than "Royal Law", and that is "Max My Love" in 1986, which was filmed in France.
The film is not one of his best, and few people in the United States know about it. But it's harder to see his best work in the U.S., and I've seen about half of his 22 works (mostly in recent years), I've only seen one of his 22 TV documentaries, and I haven't seen three of his TV series and three short films.
Max My Love (1986)
The New Yorker Asked Me to Use the English name of the work, Taboo, but a Japanese friend of mine said that "taboo" is not an exact translation, and Gohatto — the previous name — meant "breaking the rules." (What's fascinating about Japanese is that it lacks a singular and plural distinction compared to Western languages, which makes the names of many movies ambiguous.) ）
But Taboo still seems to be a more correct name, and Nagisa Oshima, based on his experience, is a rule-breaker, both in Japan and abroad.
In December 1999 I spent a few weeks in Japan as a guest of the Japan Foundation, and its Foreign Visitor Program allowed guests to decide where they were going and who they wanted to meet. Nagisa Oshima was the only person I couldn't see because his itinerary was too full.
Nagisa Oshima
A radical critic of tradition, he is probably the most famous host and guest of Japanese television talk shows. I saw him on television during this visit, and his remarks made me think he was almost on par with Oprah Winfrey.
I later asked the left-wing film critic Tadao Sato if Nagisa Oshima had covered up his political views because he was on television, and Tadao Sato said, "On the contrary, going on tv allowed him to convey his political views to more audiences."
Nagisa Oshima in a variety show
When I was in Japan, "Mifado" was shown to the media, although it had not yet been released, and the Japanese critics I met on my travels appreciated it.
In the mid-nineties, Nagisa Oshima suffered a slight stroke while he was giving a speech in England, which paralyzed his right side of his body, so filming was postponed (he shot the film in a wheelchair). The entire film was done in Kyoto, with some filmed in temples and some filmed on the set of Shochiku.
In 1939, Kenji Mizoguchi's "The Tale of the Remnants of The Juju" was also filmed here, and I visited here, and I talked to Yoshinobu Nishioka, the art director of Mizuhodo, who was a humble and charismatic old man who did everything from Kenji Mizoguchi's "The Tale of the Rainy Moon" to Ichikawa Kun's "Snow Change", and although he humbly thought that he was "a little too fierce" on the latter, he seemed to be very satisfied with the work he did for Mizukudo.
The Tale of the Remnant (1939)
Nagisa Oshima began his career at Shochiku in the mid-1950s, becoming an independent filmmaker in 1961. The publisher of the Imperial Law Was the son of a key member of the company when he was working for the company. The philosophy of Nagisa Oshima's films has never changed because of anyone.
However, "Imperial Law" is not a movie with the characteristics of Nagisa Oshima. (A Kyoto film scholar who followed me throughout told me that Nagisa Oshima was more focused on the movement of sets and cameras than on the actors when directing the work, and many actors like Takeshi Kitano are the most popular in Japan, and they have been given a certain degree of autonomy after consultation.) ）
The biggest difference between this film and his other films is that it is a costume film, and although "The World of The Senses" and "Merry Christmas on the Battlefield" (considered his two most recent major works) are also period films, they are set in the 20th century.
Merry Christmas on the Battlefield (1983)
Like its predecessors, Imperial Law Links Sexuality and Death, exploring same-sex love in the context of the military. A more important difference is that his works generally do not have a poetic style, but "Imperial Law" is indeed a model of integrating poetry into film.
Mifadu is a historical novel written by the famous writer Sima Liaotaro, who died five years ago and was adapted into a film by Nagisa Oshima. It tells the story of an eighteen-year-old, beautiful, male-female, and self-congratulatory teenager named Kanazaburo (played by newcomer Ryuhei Matsuda), who joins the newly selected army and is tasked with protecting the Tokugawa shogunate.
Garner and another former low-ranking samurai, Tabuso Tashiro (Tadanobu Asano), were selected on the same day by Shogun Soji Okita (played by Shinji Takeda, who is known as a director) and Lieutenant Togata (played by Takeshi Kitano, who is better known in the United States as the author and director actor, who also starred in Happy Christmas on the Battlefield).
Soon everyone showed an unusual, almost obsessive interest in Ghana. Tashiro tried to seduce him many times, but each time he was refused. He said he had never been kissed by a woman, and he later turned down an official's request to let him sleep with a prostitute. Tashiro was also imprisoned for five days for secretly watching Garner behead a member of the military rules. (Tashiro says, "That's how they test new people.") ）
Rumors surrounded Garner and Tashiro in the military, and this ambiguity between them could be due to repressed same-sex love, or it could be pure curiosity, or both, and no one knew exactly what it was. Garner always wears white (in Japan white stands for sadness) that looks like a fusion of angel and death, and no one knows whether this is intentional or unintentional.
We also don't know if Tashiro is really obsessed with him — perhaps his fascination with Garner is due to their rivalry and represents his thirst for power. Sometimes military officials whisper about these things, sometimes a personal monologue appears, and sometimes it appears in the form of a narration.
Like the singer in "The Legend of Chunxiang", sometimes his voice appears as a narrator, and sometimes he performs in front of a realistic audience, this unique form of narration – usually appearing in groups, singing content related to the rules and regulations of the army – is both traditional and creative, and hearing this in a quiet cinema makes the audience feel the ultimate modernism.
As Chuck Stephans points out in her Film Review article, most of the military officers in the film are based on real people, unlike Garner and Tashiro.
Having two of the two film directors play two of the most important roles adds to the ambiguity of the film, as well as Nagisa Oshima himself being heterosexual. (He always associates sex with violence, often through rape, and in his other films — Maureen Turim dissects Nagisa Oshima in one of her most recent valuable books — and this is not limited to gay characters.) ）
"Contrary to popular opinion," Steffis said, "the Royal Decree is not just about Ghana, or the forbidden, deadly sexual desires, nor is it just about man's love for men. Like Merry Christmas on the Battlefield, it depicts Takeshi Kitano's face."
I agree that the film depicts different faces, but it can be seen from the set that it also embodies the state of consciousness, from the very beginning with the real temple as the background, gradually introducing the artificial fog in the form of expressionism, and the yellow lighting with a very dramatic style, which gradually makes it difficult or even indistinguishable for the audience when depicting the subjective and objective, reality and imagination, outside and inside.
Of course, Takeshi Kitano's face—in the last scene, he cuts off the upper part of the cherry blossom tree—plays a crucial role in these blur, which is also the mystery of the film, and the audience wonders whether his performance, in conjunction with the changing set, is naturalistic or expressionistic.
I would like to think more deeply about the fact that the Japanese nouns I mentioned above do not have a singular and plural distinction in themselves, and the ambiguity of the film may also be related to this, which may reflect the lack of distinction between the individual and society in the lives and ideas of Japanese people, at least compared to Westerners.
Importantly, in Japanese culture, eroticism is not only a form of rebellion but also a form of conformity for individuals. Masamura Hozo is an outstanding film critic and highly accomplished erotic director, he studied at the Italian film school, then directed 54 Japanese films, and throughout his career he has struggled with the Japanese herd mentality and individuality, but the individuality and madness in his films are always inseparable.
Shōmura Hosoku
Nagisa Oshima praised him before he started making films, but the two stopped talking after only three years. The uncertainty of sexual orientation and sexual desire in the Imperial Law Degree is similar to this—whether it is individualism and group thought, liberation and freedom, restriction and discipline, masculinity and femininity, life and death, normal and morbid.
Nagisa Oshima was not a fan of the film, and he refused to compromise in the Japanese film industry for political reasons, so he became an independent filmmaker. His resistance to the Japanese film industry was vividly reflected in his 1995 documentary One Hundred Years of Japanese Cinema.
"Hyakunen Nihon Eishi" (1999)
He shot one episode each for Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Akira Kurosawa, four episodes for himself, and few others, leading to rumors that the British Film Institute had arranged for him to "present" the history of Japanese cinema in this way.
Despite its harsh policies, the most shocking thing about Mitsuru is that the film pays homage to Akira Kurosawa—its long shots; its lyrical and almost uninterrupted camera movement (usually when the two talk to each other, the camera is slow, shooting along a semicircular track, just as we are constantly switching in its ambiguous relationship), its rich sense of drama, the kabuki-like appearance of a prostitute (she slowly approaches the camera in a fiery red dress), the expression of emotion, and the blurring of the line between reality and imagination, It is even a direct quote from the dialogue in Kenji Mizoguchi's The Tale of the Rainy Moon.
The Tale of the Rainy Moon (1953)
As the most beautiful chamber music by Ryuichi Sakamoto gradually shifted from narrative style to labyrinthine fantasia, Mifado distilled the poetic meaning of distress, and finally raised the question of whether beauty is closely related to evil and whether longing is closely related to death.
But it didn't force these thoughts, nor did it force some conjectures, as if they had already come to a conclusion, and the film succeeded in bringing thoughts to the audience and making people remember the film in their minds.