Old man obsessed with drawing The BBC is not just a brand, it is a guarantee of quality. Documentary films made by the BBC are not just informative videos, not just beautiful pictures, or talking heads, something broadcast from the screen. This is a dramatic, slender and dynamic film, using a variety of cinematic techniques to create a tense and exciting action.
Together with the British Museum, which has a large collection of works by Hokusai, and other world museums, the BBC created a biopic about Japan’s most famous artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). His engraving The Great Wave is as recognizable worldwide as Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. But his biography is not well known. This is the first documentary about Hokusai in England. His life and works are told by the famous art historian Roger Keyes, the head of the Japanese section of the British Museum Tom Clark, scientists, artists, both famous and students of art schools. On behalf of Hokusai, the voiceover is read by Andy Serkis.
Here is an 11-year-old teenager Katsushika entered the apprenticeship of wood carvers who make boards for engravings. But the 80-year-old artist writes in his drawing plans for the next decade. Unfortunately, these plans were not to be implemented. Between these episodes passed a lifetime, but the film is not a listing of biographical facts. On the contrary, after watching, you realize how little has been said about what, where, how and with whom happened. In the life of the artist there were periods of poverty, and times of incredible popularity and fame. His paintings from the cycle “36 views of Mount Fuji” (which he created at the age of 70) were reproduced more intensively than, for example, the works of Andy Warhol. It got to the point that prints of very mediocre quality were sold for the price of a bowl of noodles. They even wrapped goods intended for export to Europe. So, according to the myth, Europe learned about this artist and went crazy all over Japanese.
In the film there was a place and vividly illustrated stories from the life of Hokusai, and the shooting of those places in Tokyo (former Edo), which are associated with his life, and the analysis of his work on the example of a large number of works shown in the film. To be seen by the audience, the film crew visited all kinds of museums, galleries and even second-hand shops. But this is not enough, the film shows a high-tech study of the authentic impression of one of the most famous engravings of Hokusai “Red Fuji”. You will most likely see it first when you search the Internet name Katsushiki Hokusai. The picture seems simple, even primitive, but this is only because we know it from prints, which in the 19th century greedy publishers printed on a simplified technology. But the innovative high-tech shooting of one of the authentic prints, (which even in color is very different from the replicated), revealed such details that surprised even connoisseurs of the artist’s work.
And Katsushika Hokusai drew manga, and this is not a joke.
And he also has his own emoji in the form of the “Big Wave”.
There is something else that is unobtrusive, but hardly unintentionally, says the film about the genius old man. It's actually old age itself. Everyone knows that the Japanese have a long life. Scientists are trying to uncover its secret by scrupulously studying diet, lifestyle and housekeeping. But it's much simpler and more complicated. It's all about old age. Western people consider old age a series of losses and losses, giving people only infirmity and powerlessness. Old people are weak, so they are not good for anything and no one needs them. The Japanese attitude towards old age is the opposite. According to popular beliefs, every old thing acquires a soul as it ages. The same thing happens to people. After the age of 60, a person acquires enough spiritual and physical experience to, no, not become a master and rest on his laurels, but ... begin to learn for real. And Katsushika Hokusai did not cease to study painting in his 70s and 80s, and did not stop painting. His later works are simple in composition and content, but their execution is so filigree, so complex technologically and so diverse in technique that students of art schools get an extraordinary experience just trying to copy them.