Day: June 20, 2007

Shohei Imamura’s film is technically a true-crime story, documenting the capture (and flashbacking through the crimes) of a sociopathic lowlife in the mid-sixties. Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is something of a smiling cipher, who seems one thing in early scenes, a stonefaced whackjob, then emerges from scene to scene in ever complicating fashion–coming across as something of a naif, then a dumb thug, then a slick con man, and so on–and by the end of the film I hadn’t some simple narrative of his motivations but a rich, unsettling, and ambiguous portrait which never quite explains or resolves his actions.

Worse–or, aesthetically, better–the film’s portrait of the contemporary Japanese social milieu is equally unsettling. Enokizu’s violence and rage is echoed everywhere Continue reading Vengeance is Mine

to mark the recent death of ousmane sembene, i moved xala to the top of our netflix queue, and we watched it last night. it is based on his own novel (which, by the way, was one of two texts fredric jameson referred to in his notorious argument about all third world fiction comprising nationalist allegories). apparently, sembene moved from writing to film so as to be able to reach a larger audience than that of elite literary culture in senegal. keeping this in mind may be useful in making sense of the film’s aesthetic which is a blend of modes: beginning with a satirical parable and then moving in and out of a realist framing of events if not of psychology (by which i mean that character development, motivations, consistency etc. are not major concerns). all of this may makes it sound avant garde as opposed to populist, but i suspect that what is also being utilized is the structure and logic of folk forms. not being familiar with senegalese narrative traditions i am unable to confirm–though there do seem to be elements which bear such a reading out: a group of peasants and beggars who function as a kind of chorus and then make a substantial narrative intervention at the end, occasional comic interludes etc..

or perhaps that’s a multicultural copout on my part. but it did make me think of the international reputation of the great bengali director, ritwik ghatak, whose films, unlike ray’s did not fall into either a recognizable universal humanism in their thematics nor structurally resemble the international (really, european) art film–and who consequently is not as well known as ray. his films too often featured a realist frame sutured with the logic and structural elements of other forms, particularly folk theater.
Continue reading xala