It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while I’m seeing (and/or hearing) something I hadn’t even thought would exist, to have my mind blown. Consider this:
Electronicos Fantasticos are a Japanese collective who convert electronic items into musical instruments. I mean seriously, how awesome is this:
Or how about a different use of the bar-code scanner:
On their website, it says “During the day, you are a regular cashier. During the night, you are a barcodopeness barcodist. This is the next level of cashier!”
“Obviously,” if you have a bar-code scanner and make music with it, why not use black-and-white pattern on the dress of a dancer for an performance? Makes perfect sense — you just have to come up with the idea.
This is next-level creativity.
I’ve been trying to be a bit smarter about learning Japanese, so I started watching old movies. Even if I don’t know all that much Japanese, I want to hear it, ideally a lot of it.
I don’t know all that much about Japanese cinema, and I’m sticking with what’s available on YouTube. I watched a Yasujirō Ozu (that was a name I remembered). And then I started another Ozu but didn’t finish it because it was too similar to the one I had just watched (same actors, same story line).
So I started poking around to see what else I could find. I first found Black Snow, which I watched and enjoyed (if that’s the right word, given that the film is pretty rough). The film was directed by Tetsuji Takechi, and its story is fascinating. I found various bits blatantly racist, a fact that many critics — such as Ian Buruma — had written about. I also couldn’t help but think that at least some of what’s expressed in the movie can be seen in Japanese photography made around the time. For example, Shomei Tomatsu’s Chewing Gum and Chocolate features a lot of pictures that operate along the lines of the nationalistic themes in Black Snow.
Anyway, I then somehow found Woman of the Lake. A Japanese New Wave film, it’s as far from an Ozu as you can get. Interestingly, photography plays a large role in it. Its main character, a married young woman named Miyako, has an affair with a somewhat sleazy guy named Kitano. At some stage, Kitano takes nude pictures of her. The film starts out with Miyako looking at the negatives.
Who’s going to print the pictures? (In the subtitles, they use the word “develop” for “print”, which had me slightly confused for a little while — keep that in mind a little further down.) Miyako knows about the power of photographs:
Miyako puts the negatives into her handbag and leaves, to go home. On her way home (in the dark), she’s confronted by someone who grabs her bag. This sets the movie into motion. As it turns out, a man named Ginpei had been watching the couple, so he knows about the negatives. He proceeds to blackmail Miyako. Given she’s married, Miyako decides to meet him, and the rest — which I won’t tell you — unfolds from there.
Visually, the movie is a sheer delight. The wide frame is used brilliantly, and the mood in most of the scenes is incredible. Photography, its artifice, and its many problems (such as the male gaze etc.) return time and again, whether in the form of a sleazy photoshop owner whom Ginpei tasks with making prints (the guy has a side business which consists of a stage and nude model who is being photographed by a gaggle of men who paid for that) or in the form of a movie that happens to be shot near the end of the movie on the same beach where Miyako and Ginpei meet.
Each and every character in the movie is flawed, which makes for a disconcerting experience for the viewer. What’s more, they each know it and say as much. Nobody comes even remotely across as a hero.
Turns out that the movie’s main actress, Mariko Okada, was also in the Ozu movie I watched (Late Autumn). In terms of her performances, there were worlds between them. Okada does her Ozu bit well. But in Woman of the Lake she gets to inhibit a more fully-formed character, one stricken with conflict and emotions. It’s an interesting side note that Okada is director Yoshishige Yoshida’s wife.
Maybe this is what has me a bit lukewarm about Ozu’s films. They’re done incredibly well, but there is a lot of obvious artifice that calls attention to itself. Furthermore, people are too much reduced to very specific characters, characters that have a small number of very clear properties but nothing beyond. So the father always is the upper-level dogmatic old-school sararīman who hangs out with a small group of his peers and worries about his daughters marrying the right guy — and that’s it. There’s no other facet to the father. All the other characters also operate similarly. I wouldn’t know enough about traditional Japanese theater — maybe there’s a connection to Noh theater and its incredibly stylized narration of the plot.
Ozu’s movies are expertly done, but when you’ve seen one movie of a young daughter insisting on marrying some man her father initially doesn’t approve of you’ve basically seen them all. OK, maybe there’s more. I might have just picked two wrong movies to watch in a row. I’ll watch a few more to see what else there is. But I first want to watch Seijun Suzuki’s Taisho trilogy.
Hmmm, thinking back to that next-level creativity I spoke of earlier: have I seen anything as creative in the world of photography lately? I don’t think I have. If you have, send me an email and let me know!
I’ve been moving from deadline to deadline these past few week, and this is going to continue until mid-September. At some stage (soon), I will be launching a crowdfunding/pre-selling of my first photobook. Working on the book has been an exciting experience — my first time being “on the other side”. I think if I hadn’t heard about or witnessed some of the experiences other photographers have had, working on the book would have stressed me out even more. But it’s coming along well, and I think it’s going to be a beauty. You’ll see.
So as always stay safe and well, wear a mask, and thank you for reading!
— Jörg
I’m a freelance writer, photographer, and educator currently living and working in the US.
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