"I will write maggots until I die." - Shohei Imamura
Masahira Imabari, as Japan's most caring director, was born in 1926 and received a good education from an early age.
After World War II, Masahira Imamura was admitted to Waseda University to study Western history, which also had a major impact on his filmmaking.
Shohei Imamura
Imamura studied under Yasujiro Ozu and Yuzo Kawashima.
But for the teacher's work, Imamura Shohei retains his opinion.
Masahira Imamura believes that pandering to the film for the sake of the market is a disrespect for art.
Imamura's youth coincided with the post-war period in Japan.
Japan was devastated during this period, and the issue of survival became the main thinking of a generation of people in society. This special background of the times also makes Imamura's films permeate with a profound exploration and expression of the survival instinct.
When he finally became a director, his first film, Stolen Lust, won the attention of Japanese film critics at the time and won the debut award that year.
This small success led Imamura to start shooting more films with greater enthusiasm.
But also because it does not cater to the market, but the noble personality of "art for art's sake", Imamura's life is always full of life tribulations and poverty. After every film shoot, he was always plagued by the film's debt problems, and again and again for the sake of art, thus giving up the opportunity to achieve fame.
In Masahira Imamura, we see the greatness of the personality of the artist.
Even, Imamura Masahira can be said to be making movies with his life.
Between the pursuit of art and the rich life, he resolutely chose art, enduring loneliness and loss that no one could understand. In this state of mind, Imamura Masahira deeply appreciates the sublime and human meaning of life. Masahira Imabari has the vitality of creation, and this vitality is also immersed in the reflection and sacrifice of life, life, for each of his films.
Therefore, the most obvious quality in his films is the exploration of the essence of life.
In the 1984 Cannes Film Festival's award-winning film "The Examination of the Mountain Festival", Imamura Masahira deliberately chose an illusory ancient Japanese village to show the audience the cruel customs of the backward land, that is, "visiting the mountain".
The main content of this custom is to send the elderly over seventy years old to the top of the mountain and let them fend for themselves, so as to alleviate the problem of food shortage throughout the village.
《楢山節考》
The Ah Lingbo in the film, after passing seventy years old, is calm and calm about the future path of her life.
The long past of life has made Arinbo have a deeper understanding of life and human nature.
Looking at her own kind, for the scene of cannibalism, Ah Ling po knows the ugly side of human nature and understands the difference between life and death.
Therefore, he prepared early for his visit to the mountain:
In order not to let his children see the mother's robustness and thus be heartbroken, he deliberately pretended to be old and weak, and secretly used a stone to knock his teeth off. The only two children who could not be put down, he also achieved the final account. He continued the strings for his eldest son and taught his new eldest daughter-in-law how to cook and take care of the housework. For the second son who has iq problems, he finally finds an old lady and supports each other in life. Finally, he calmly held a farewell ceremony for himself and left this hometown of life and nourishment.
In the midst of the heavy snow, Ah Lingbo's solemn and solemn expression remained in the heart of every viewer.
In the ethereal spirit of life and death, the brilliance of maternal love and extraordinary dedication in Ah Lingbo's body shocked people.
In another film, "Eel", Masahira Imamura, he still has the deepest humanity for life.
Takuro Yamashita, who cheated on his wife, calmly surrendered himself after committing his sins. Eight years later, Takuro Yamashita, who was released on parole, was released from prison to make a living by opening a barbershop, but he still could not escape the shadow of his previous wife's infidelity and murder.
"Eel"
Faced with the re-emergence of rumors and memories of the past, Takuro Yamashita did not have the courage to start his new life, and he could only talk to the eel.
The eel, who could not speak, pinned his hopes on Takuro Yamashita's lonely and sad life.
In the end, Takuro Yamashita finally released the eel back into nature, and in order to save Keiko, his parole was canceled and he returned to prison to serve his sentence.
At the moment when the eel was released, Takuro finally let go of himself in the depths of his heart and obtained true redemption.
Between takuro Yamashita and Keiko, who eventually returned to serve their sentences, we saw the hope of Takuro Yamashita's new life.
It can be seen that in the near future, Takuro Yamashita and Keiko will be together again and usher in a real new life.
On the other hand, in Imamura's films, the most profound is the concern for the survival of individuals.
The unique era gave Imamura Changping a more unique state of mind.
In the interaction between man and nature, there will always be the question of how human beings face the choice of survival. These questions make people think about the prominence of humanity behind ancient customs and cruel etiquette.
The lack of security and the thinking about the sense of survival that Japanese people have had since ancient times have also become the reasons why Imamura Masahira cares about this theme.
The Desires of the Gods
For example, in Imamura Shohei's documentary-style film "The Desire of the Gods", he goes deep into the indigenous peoples of the Southern Islands and uses documentary techniques to retrace the original struggle for survival.
In the film, the tumultuous relationship between the Taigenji family is described at the beginning - The father and daughter of Taigenji are incested, and eventually, the pregnant daughter jumps off a cliff. This scene is not just a moral confession, but more of a waste of the island's resources.
On the other side, Taigen Yoshi also developed feelings for his own sister. The grandchildren have a similar relationship.
This complex relationship between ethics and emotion becomes extremely contradictory in Imamura's lens.
This chaotic family relationship was eventually punished by nature.
After being repented, the world becomes calm, and finally under the collision of modern civilization and primitive society, in the life of his grandson Kametaro, the aesthetic meaning of combining barbarism and emptiness is expressed.
In the "Examination of the Mountain Festival", the behavior of discarding the elderly is profoundly deconstructed through the fictitious mountain village rules. Try to observe the humanity of those who live in harsh hellish environments from a unique, primitive and barbaric perspective.
The protagonist of Imamura Changping often loses his dignity as a low-level citizen, and even loses the state of survival, leaving only a simple life force.
In day-to-day ignorance, life is consumed.
In the end, the lonely and empty life of modern people in the city presents a typical contrasting care.
Finally, Imamura Changping went deep into the aesthetic mood of the ugly.
In the field of ugliness that people hate, we should pursue the masked side of ordinary people in their daily lives, and find true feelings in the naked barbarism and evil.
Under the lens of Masahira Imamura, by revealing the form of ugliness, he writes the ugly instincts that are not easy to know in the depths of the human heart.
Explores the effect of this instinct in human life and behavior, and the ugliness of these evils, like the good, constitutes a complex collection of human nature.
Compared with the presentation of ugly art by Western directors, under the lens of Imamura Changping, it is more of an introverted feeling to express ugliness.
On the one hand, we face up to the ugliness of the human heart, and on the other hand, we seek cause in the ugliness.
Masahira Imamura clings to the evil side of man and digs deeper, looking for the trembling aesthetic feelings that have long been nurtured at the bottom of society.
For example, in the film "The Desire of the Gods", the people on the primitive islands, on the one hand, actively resist the aggression of foreign modern civilization, protect their own civilization, and defend their homeland. But on the other hand, the phenomenon of brothers and sisters developing feelings has been brutally suppressed and ruthlessly killed.
Revenge on Me
In another film by Masahira Imamura, Revenge on Me, a childhood that witnessed violence, did not hate violence or abandon the use of violence, but immersed himself more deeply in the process of exercising violence.
After adulthood, innocent people are treated in a more brutal way than the violence seen.
In another film by Masahira Imamura, "Eel", another manifestation of the dark side of human nature is the old monk who oversees Yamashita.
Although on the one hand, he chanted the sutra and chanted the Buddha every day, but secretly married a young and beautiful wife.
Just like Yamashita's cheating wife and mother, although on the one hand, they worship the Buddha every day with a pious performance, but on the other hand, they try to get close to their daughter's boyfriend despite moral morality.
The darkness and falsehood of human nature allow us to see the face of the most unbearable person in reality under the lens of Masahira Imamura, and also make us realize that ugliness can also be the perspective of appreciating movies.
Masahira Imamura is called a "ghost-like director", and in his shots, the tendency to ugliness, the care for the dark side of the low-level characters, the thinking about the survival of the individual and the undisguised presentation of human nature, we see excellent films that are unique in the history of cinema.
In the evaluation of Masahira Imamura, there is an evaluation that he has always paid attention to the true nature of life.
Imamura's attention is because he sees the ugliness and coldness of those human beings, which is different from anyone's directing style, so that Imamura Changping will judge ugliness to the extreme, full of independent and strange aesthetic dimensions.
Compared with some of our current films with realistic themes, Imamura's films are more realistic and even more powerful. Let us see the ugliness of real human nature lurking beneath the surface.