As much as I am sharing a wide interest in the Japanese history, culture, particularly arts, I may confess that I do always resonate - I initially wanted to write plainly ´enjoy´, but should arts be enjoyable? (rhetorical question) - with my esthetic standards. Which does not diminish at all my genuine curiosity towards this world.
Empire of Passion by Nagisa Oshima, that I watched via Mubi, is set in the Japanese countryside at the end of the 19th century. The pristine landscape is the setting for a passion-driven crime: Gisaburo, the rickshaw driver is killed by her wife´s 26-year younger lover, with her direct involvement.
The protagonists are very simple village people, living in dire poverty, driven by simple emotions: hunger, thirst, coupling. The two lovers share an animalic-like passion, that started with a short courtship, while sharing sweets brought by the young lover, recently returned from the Army and wondering aimless through the village. She has two children, one girl sent away who returns once in a while and one little boy who apparently is not in the picture most of the time, including after the husband´s murder, although she is easily wandering out of the home, often after Gisaburo comes back as a ghost.
The business of ghosts is tragi-comical in a way, but has cultural explanations. The police officer is prompted to start the investigation following various appearance of Gisaburo as a ghost and in the dreams of fellow villagers. Otherwise, everyone would have believe the official story sold for three years by Seki, the wife, according to which her husband is away to find work in Tokyo.
The community of the village creates the context of the story: they are admonishing, judging, gossiping and watching, in the end, when the two are tortured. They are the ones who in the end will decide how the story ends. A reminder of how the social pressure of the community used to - and still does - matter in Japan. But, as in the case of the two illicit lovers, they are perfectly numb, unless there is guilt or pain involved.
The so-called ´love story´ is mostly carnal, while the natural human emotions seem to be absent in most of the daily interactions. There is no kindness or gratitude and even love. There are screams - which may be some signs of emotion anyway - but it looks that most of the time the protagonists, all of them, are aimlessly swimming through a void, like avant-garde inarticulate robots (well it is a century before the robots appear in Japan, but inanimate bodies, or better said, moving corpses, describe them better).
I´ve found the dynamics between the two lovers really unteresting to watch during the developing of the story. There is a desynchronisation of their feelings: she may not be necessarily attracted to him in the very beginning, and their first sexual encounter looks rather as a rape, but her feelings - or rather attachment - to him grows thereafter. He is careful to not be caught up, at least at the beginning, pushing her out of his away and asking her to keep their affair secret, which almost breaks her heart. In the end, they are what passion made out of them, without being in charge of their passion(s). Their passion is blind. At the end of the movie, shortly before being caught, Seki is losing her sight, a symbolic ending of her own blindness, to the world and her life.
I think that the English version of the title, Empire of Passion, is exaggerated, while the initial French title: Fantom Amour, is much appropriate to describe the story. This is not how I imagine, anyway, an empire of passion and passion in general.
Based on a novel by Itoko Nakamura, the movie was produced in 1978, when it was presented to Cannes Film Festival and awarded the ´best director´. The film director, Nagisa Oshima, touched upon delicate topics in the post-WWII Japan and therefore I am interested in watching more of his works.
Rating: 3 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment