By Willy Flockton
Daily Bruin Contributor
After 50 years, the World War II-era anti-Japanese sentiment
still exists in the United States with a plethora of “Pearl
Harbor” iconology in the world of film.
The UCLA Film and TV Archive attempts to redress this sentiment.
They will screen Kon Ichikawa’s breakthrough and humanistic
anti-war film “Harp Of Burma” as part of a four-week,
18-film exhibition of Ichikawa’s work at Melnitz beginning
last Saturday.
Eighty-six-year-old Ichikawa has often been ranked with eminent
Kurosawa as Japan’s foremost director of the modern age,
included by such notable film commentators as Pauline Kael. His
work covers four decades ““ his most recognizable films
sitting astride Japan’s turbulent birth and rapid
transformation into modernity after WWII. Yet, he is controversial.
He is largely unseen in the west, with his works confined to the
film-festival circuit.
“I always wondered why it was so difficult to see anything
but his authorized classics,” said Toronto-based James
Quandt. “I admired almost every film I saw by him and
always questioned the critical disrepute his work suffered from.
When it came time to do another touring retrospective, he was a
natural choice.”
Quandt is the organizer and curator of the exhibition from
Cinematheque Ontario, an offshoot of the Toronto Film Festival.
Sponsored by the Japan Foundation the retrospective tours a dozen
North American cities before going to the U.K.
“This is one of the greatest directors in the history of
cinema,” said Brent Kliewer of Santa Fe Image, who also
helped in putting the exhibition together. He first became
interested in Ichikawa’s work in the 1960s.
“This great director’s career has been grossly
undervalued, and his influence negated, because most people have
not had the chance to see a majority of his films,” Kliewer
continued. “Many of the films have never been available in
English subtitled prints.”
“It was exhilarating to be able to finally see much of his
work for the first time, and to confirm that he is much more
important than any traditional film histories indicate,”
Quandt said.
The Japan foundation remastered several prints of
Ichikawa’s work for the exhibition, which is accompanied by a
specially produced monograph that can be purchased at the
screenings. Designed to redress the lack of film literature on
Ichikawa’s work in English, it emphasizes the contribution of
his wife, Natto Wada, scriptwriter of his most influential
works.
“I tried to balance many perspectives on Ichikawa ““
from Japanese and western critics, from veteran commentators and
emerging authorities,” said Quandt via e-mail from Toronto.
“I wanted to include as much as possible of Ichikawa’s
own voice, which is so much the “˜voice’ of his films
““ acerbic, wry, ironic. His interviews and essays are real
treasures.”
Ichikawa’s works differ greatly in genre and tone, many of
which are shown in the exhibition. He has recreated lavish
period costume dramas, Japanese-animated black comedies such as
“Pu-san”(1953), and humanistic satires of Japan’s
ethos and ambiguous struggles with modernity ““ “A
Billionaire” (1954) and “The Full Up Train”(1957)
to name a few.
“Loneliness. If you look at the wide variety subject
matter in Ichikawa’s oeuvre, this stands out, whether it be
an isolated figure against a vast landscape or the isolation of a
family member within the family unit. Only when everyone realizes
““ and admits ““ to the fact they are alone in this world
can they begin to love other humans and themselves,” said
Kliewer.
The romantic “The Makioka Sisters” bridges past and
present. Set against, but detached from, the end of the golden
weather in the 1930s, the domestic drama subverts traditional
Japanese culture of snobbery, arranged marriages and
deference. Ichikawa had utmost success with his Riefenstahl
influenced documentary “Tokyo Olympiad” ““ an
anguished three-hour reflection of athletes straining at their very
worldly tasks at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic games.
The exhibition culminates in the screening of Cannes
award-winning “Kagi” or “Odd Obsession,” a
dryly ironic look at the human psyche and vanity.
“I think Ichikawa’s dark tone, often without any
ameliorative (quality), has alienated some people,” Quandt
said. “He often deals with an obsessed outsider, determined
to reach a goal, no matter what he loses in the process. Formally,
he is very daring. He critiques postwar Japan with such vicious
insight.”
However, his two moving anti-war explorations of man’s
depravity in harsh conditions makes Ichikawa well known. The
most devastating is “Fires on the Plains,” a study of
cannibalism among a platoon of Japanese soldiers clutching at the
last shreds of decency and morality in the Pilipino jungle.
“These films are from a truly cinematic sensibility unlike
anything seen in today’s films,” Kliewer said.
“The problems they raise have not gone away. His belief in
the awareness of “˜aloneness’ takes it into a fully
realized vision of humanity that I think young people can relate
to.”
Ichikawa broke into international recognition with “Harp
of Burma” the post-Hiroshima story of an emotionally
destroyed Japanese soldier lost in Myanmar after witnessing the
destruction of a Japanese unit by British forces after refusing to
surrender. Ichikawa uses static medium long shots to juxtapose the
harsh dusty environment with the rotting corpses of soldiers, while
sentimentally playing with religious iconography and multi-national
hymns.
The ultimate message is that all cultures ““ Japanese,
Myanmarian and Western ““ are touched by tragic and
disenchanting war. It doesn’t dwell on why the war began but
is essentially therapeutic for all.
“The film was interesting as there are deeper
meanings” says Tomoko Miwa, a Japanese exchange student
watching the film for the first time. “The film states,
“˜Never ask why.’ Sometimes I ask
“˜why,’ but I never know a reason. The important thing
is not to ask why but to do something. We have to move
on.”
FILM: The films screen as double features on
Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays for the next three weekends,
beginning at 7 p.m. Programs can be picked up in the Melnitz
foyer.