Cinematic genius of Asia finds Jakarta
East Meets East
Starting today (Dec.28) through Saturday (Dec.31), The Jakarta Post will present a number of articles reviewing the films, performing arts, art exhibitions, music and fashion trends and other cultural affairs from the year l994.
By Jane Scott
JAKARTA (JP): To the distant observer, that is to the Western film-goer, Asian films are now performing something of a "second coming". The films spike the pickled and jaded tastes of the regular movie viewer with the sharp flavor of the unexpected and new, that is emanating from countries like Taiwan, China, and South Korea. While you expect fruit, your palate tastes meat -- like what happens when a westerner eats durian? Such surprises can cause pleasure or displeasure.
Startling moving pictures -- strange images, sounds, narratives -- are now tumbling out from new cultural sources while Western filmmakers must constantly reinvent themselves and their environment. Sometimes this is a real achievement. The imagination that created the world of Mad Max out of the desert of Australia and the vision that created a new sub-genre in the low-key, off-beat suburban melodrama, like Sweetie from Australia and Trust from America, are re-investing icons of familiarity with dark new meanings.
In the 1950s, the cinemas of Asia distinguished themselves through the work of fine directors like Satyajit Ray of India (Pather Panchali, The Chess Players, The Middleman), and Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and Dersu Uzala) of Japan. In 1951 Kurosawa's Rashomon was unexpected winner of the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice International Film Festival. He won a Silver Lion on another occasion for his Seven Samurai. it also won an Academy Award. Satyajit Ray won the Jury Prize in Cannes in 1956 with his Pather Panchali -- another landmark event for Asian cinema.
Akira Kurosawa's films did more than please the tough critics. In one of the most famous adaptations of cinema history the Seven Samurai was remade by director John Sturges as The Magnificent Seven, an American western of 1960. In both films, seven hard- headed warriors (gunmen in the western) seem compelled to defend, at their own peril, the people of a small village from marauding bandits. Heroes despite themselves. Thirty years later the ricochet effect can still be seen today with Western interest in the brilliant hyper-violence of films from the Hong Kong directors and a general interest in the high-flying energy of kung-fu movies.
In recent years a new Chinese cinema has risen with films from Chen Kaige (Yellow Earth, Farewell My Concubine) and from Zhang (Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern). Zhang Yimou's latest film, To Live, was officially selected for Cannes '94, and yes, Gong Li is in it too. A new wave of Korean cinema has quietly emerged, with a bit less fanfare. It is headed by films from veteran director Im Kwon-Taek. International audiences are also interested in cinema from Taiwan and the work of director Ang Lee (The Wedding Banquet, and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman) in particular.
Old, new
This year audiences in Jakarta were offered something old, and something new. Two festivals, a retrospective from the Japan Foundation of the cinema of Kenji Mizoguchi (1898 - 1956) of Japan and a perspective on the contemporary cinema of Taiwan, from the Taipei Economic and Trade Office, were the highlight. Of course the Kine Klub maintained its prominent place. Audiences were also offered something borrowed, the endless succession of cheapies from India and China that lurk in downmarket city auditoriums.
Mizoguchi's film is popularly regarded as cinema about women, a body of work exploring the role of women in a society driven by forces to both modernize and to conservative. In the rush towards a new economic order in postwar Japan, the traditional masculine virtues of action and agency, doing things and getting things done, seemed to have far more relevance than the traditional feminine virtues of sensitivity and passivity. What, then was the role of women?
There are interesting views relating to Mizoguchi's personal life as to why he chose women as his particular subject -- his own sister was forced at a very young age into becoming a geisha. It was also the case that censorship under the Americans in postwar Japan was such that films about social emancipation and the role of women were acceptable while other themes were definitely not.
In the 1930s, long before Betty Freidan or Germaine Greer were heard of, Kenji Mizoguchi was focussing on the lives of women. Does this make him a feminist or a proto-feminist? Probably not, if you equate feminism with women's rights movements or look for gestures towards liberation, as in the rather problematic way that Thelma and Louise has its heroines wield guns. The thought of a woman wielding a samurai sword to defend her honor in a Mizoguchi film is unthinkable. The thought of her stepping outside the law is unthinkable. Then again, is she not in The Ugetsu Story, in some way the "Law" itself?
Winner of the Silver Lion in Venice in 1953, The Ugetsu Story is a major film in any Mizoguchi retrospective. It is set in sixteenth century Japan, at a time of feudal warfare, when two men, Genjuro and Tobei, brothers-in-law, leave the fold, their wives, a child and domesticity to set out on a journey to the town market to sell ceramics. The trip translates into a picaresque journey in pursuit of their dreams of fortune and worldly success. But the world that opens up beyond their homes is peopled by figures of desire and portents of danger, some who are well-wishers and some who are mischief-makers. The figures who offer advice -- the dying man in the boat, the stranger outside the market -- are the voices of the imagination in material form that prompt the men to either follow their instinct or to observe their consciences. It is a harsh world, beyond the love and care of a woman, where the landscape is overrun by samurai warriors and bandits who rape and pillage the poor innocents in their path.
With Genjuro and Tobei absent, dreadful things happen to their families. The perfect wife and mother, Miyaki, who never quarreled with her husband but supported him in his work as a potter, is dealt the cruelest blow of all, and her sister-in-law becomes a prostitute. While awful things are happening, Genjuro and Tobei must deal with the events that beset themselves, as their fantasies materialize and they encounter objects of desire on their journey towards wisdom. Ultimately, the price of knowledge and understanding is very high, with the loss of Miyaki, but she is alive in spirit at the end of the film. One hopes that the little girl now alone with her father at the close of Ugetsu Monogatari will benefit from the loss of her mother.
In an expression of hope at the end of The Ugetsu Story the camera lifts and floats away, birdlike, above and then beyond the little settlement, in a movement mirroring the flourish of its entrance at the film's beginning. Poise and a gentle movement of the camera mark The Ugetsu Story. It suits the film's humanism.
Another excellent film of the festival was The Life of Oharu, 1952. It is another critique of feudalism centered on the life of a city prostitute in seventeenth century Japan. It was awarded the International Director's Prize at the Venice International Film Festival.
Hyperactive
In contrast to these sharply observed but gentle films from veteran filmmaker Kenjo Mizoguchi, there were the hyperactive contemporary films at the Taiwanese Film Festival in October. Oddly, the festival's opening film was Little Shaolin Boxer (which was called Little Shaolin Monks in the film's credits), a treatment of myth with children as protagonists -- and with childish humor to match. It was scheduled for the opening evening, a matinee screening could have suggested it would work for a young audience. Moreover, Little Shaolin Boxer (Monks?) did not point to the production or thematic sophistication of other films lined up for the festival.
It was a pity that the films didn't include at least one international prize-winner, though I can see that this might be the point. The films screened represented the achievement of normal Taiwanese film. But Taiwan now has an international reputation, led by director Ang Lee for his work The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman.
I thought that The Noblest Way to Die was good and that it had interesting things to say about past relations between countries in Asia. It is a visit to the Japanese occupation of China during World War II through the eyes of a Japanese intermediary. He is the grandson of an elderly man who had been a young officer in the Japanese Imperial Army.
The old man may have been among the ranks of the aggressors, but he was an unwilling participant in the gratuitous cruelties that accompanied the Japanese occupation. The former Lieutenant Inagawa is a Buddhist who hated his countrymen's brutality. The heaps of screen time devoted to the details of torture and its outcomes was off putting. The Noblest Way to Die, however, has an integrity which other equally violent films lack, not to mention splatter movies.
Garin Nugroho's Surat Untuk Bidadari (Letter for an Angel) took a bow for Indonesian cinema this year, as did Ucik Supra's Badut-Badut Kota (Clown of the City). Both have yet to be shown to the wider English-speaking audience in Jakarta. Interest should be considerable because films have been very successful at overseas international film festivals. Sadly, this imprimaturs too often seems the necessary and only seal of product quality to which audiences will respond. Anyway, Surat won prizes in Germany, Japan and Italy this year. Badut won a prize in Australia. We might even get to see them here.