Probabilistic dragons Et si Tu n'existai pas ...
Mariko Okada is a very beautiful woman. Her feminine charm will not hide any black and white film, nor the everyday life of half a century ago. From the male position, Yoshida was not a mistake, and if she had not yet thrown dishes, could live without tantrums and could cook - then, and not miss in full.
When he made it in his films, who was he more: director or husband? Especially in nude scenes? Was he jealous of the beautiful young actors? Did you give her the lead roles because she's a really talented actress, or because she's his wife? She inspired him in the movies, or he had to shoot her - so as not to saw her down at home.
And she: Is he jealous of cute starlets? Evil tongues say - on this, Fellini burned more than once. And simply: did they not get sick of each other, seeing each other not only at home but also at work – which was the set? As the marriage sufferers burnt with tobacco and all sorts of stuff say:" the distance between a fairy and a witch is six months.
Aki Xantippa, or Muse-Okada steps into the film, where she is the wife of an engineer from the atomic energy agency, Rikia Seda. The question is, why an engineer and nuclear power? There are three possible answers to the film:
1) In the 70s, the industrial weakness of solar batteries and wind turbines was already visible. Physicist engineers, not homosecs, who then ceased to be a diagnosis.
2) Yoshida not only gives his wife to the engineer Shoda, but in it she embodies herself, emphasizing the educational purpose of her film art - to shed light with laser beams on the state of modern Japanese society.
(3) Since Yoshida’s idea-fix is the destruction of the modern Japanese social-state system, someone will have to rebuild it – here again engineers are in business.
Well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah about the relationship with Eros + Murder, the trilogy of radicalism, and the New Wave of Ofun I will leave out, and dwell on the aspects that I am most interested in in the film.
Spatial and temporal heterogeneity in action. In Yoshida’s film, there are three times: past, present, future, and one action, all three of which are closely intertwined. Throughout the film, the same characters easily move through time while in the same external space. These transitions are not reflected by any changes in the situation.
Referring to the past of her heroes, Yoshida reflects on her generation’s lost struggle for a “better world for all.” However, there are obvious references to the activities of Zengakuren, which fought for social reconstruction. Yoshida himself considered communism the most progressive model of social order. Probably close to the Soviet model. I saw the reason for the defeat in the fact that the “heroes” of the revolution bought into the regalia of the consumer society, occupying a well-fed social niche. As Che said:" Tired - rest, but after that you are no longer a fighter of the revolution.
The present - Yoshida perceives extremely negatively. Revolutionaries have become complacent yuppies. Japan bowed to the United States, building democracy according to their patterns. Yoshida emphasizes that such democracy is fictitious. Under its cover, there is a rigid system of suppression of the individual, and an ugly model of socio-economic development. And in general: the modern way is a dead end.
Yoshida insists that children will condemn their fathers for betraying the possibility of building a new better world. In the same way, the thought can be traced: by their betrayal, the fathers killed many children.
Image. The film is shot in black and white. A distinctive feature is actually the emptiness of the frame, there are practically no foreign household items in it. Together with the game with light, and unusual angles of shooting - all this: creates the impression of depth and volume of space in the frame.
Notes and annotations:
(!) Based on the time of the film, it can be assumed that Yoshida was motivated by May 68 (Godar immediately put an end to him). His heroes: nailed gopniks in sneakers who later got/sold (for) high/money bureaucratic posts in stupid environmental movements and ministries of their countries, their desire to change the world ended. But good costume and power position did not change their Gopnitsky essence.
Van Wolferen, unravelling the riddle of power in post-war Japan, pointed out that until 1945 there was a special police force in Japan whose task was to eradicate “dangerous thoughts.” Officers of this police after the war – took key positions in the power structures of Japan. Maintaining the ideology created by the Meiji oligarchy at the heart of Japanese nationalism.
(!!!) If you draw literary parallels with the film of Yoshida, then excluding the frank ravings of Freudianism, which can be signed wherever there is a subconscious mind and a phallus, then Yoshida’s cinema: the presence of light eroticism with philosophical and political reflections is similar to the work of Bathai and Evola, but if you look at this film, then there will be consonance with Gramsci’s views.
(!!!) Interesting predictions of Yoshida made in the film, which he got into the future:
The growth of homosexuality as a sign of the degradation of society;
- stalemate, in spite of Fukuyama, the modern Yoshida socio-economic system;
Prediction of defeat - Soviet policy of peaceful coexistence of two systems.
One of the main achievements of Yoshida cinema, with the position and views on the modernity of which one can and do not agree - is the urge to think.
Perhaps Yoshida’s film has already played its poisonous role for the cape system – in Chiapas, when the Indians who surrounded the city came out of the fog. This is how the world learned about the Zapatistas and Subcomandant Marcos.