Tuesday, September 26, 2017

1951 Winner, Rashomon



Rashomon

Director:        Akira Kurosawa

Distributed by:  Toho Studios

Released:  August 1950

Country:  Japan

What is Truth?
Is Truth unchanging law?
We both have truths.
Are mine the same as yours?
--Pontius Pilate, Jesus Christ Superstar

Moral relativism is a belief that there is no one truth, that each point of view has a truth is as true as another.  But when you think of it, no one can make a case for relativism with any certainty because to the arguer, it could be just as true that he is dead wrong.  Certainly, it is true, then, that there is one Truth.  It’s in our perceptions and biases, though, that we see and experience this one Truth, and therein lies the problem.  The Academy awarded Rashomon the Best Foreign Film Honorary Award in 1950 for telling a story that examines this concept.

The bandit hamming it up at the tribunal
This was the film that put famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa on the map, and the iconic movie has become part of the culture, lending its name to the “Rashomon effect” concept of perceiving the truth through different lenses.  The story is extremely simple:  A samurai and his wife are traveling through the woods of 12th century Japan, she on horseback and he walking beside her.  A bandit, played by Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune, comes out of hiding and attacks them for their loot.  The bandit leaves the scene, having taken the samurai’s money and life, and having violated the wife.  He is eventually captured and has to tell what happened to a tribunal who will decide his fate.

Takashi Shimura as the Woodcutter
Here is where the multiple versions of the Truth are put forth.  The bandit and the woman, who is also found, give witness to what they experienced, and their stories are very different.  Oddly, a third version of what happened is given by the dead man through a medium, with all three versions contradicting each other as to who is truly at fault.  A seemingly objective opinion is later told to us by a woodcutter, played by another stock Kurosawa player, Takashi Shimura.  The woodcutter saw everything but never reported his completely different version to the tribunal.  His motive for not providing testimony just might show that his version isn’t quite as objective he would lead us to believe.

Beside the philosophical angle, there is a good reason this film is so well-regarded.  Firstly, Kurosawa is masterful in the way he presents the story.  The story is introduced at a building/gate called Rashomon during a severe downpour (Kurosawa likes rain!), with Shimura’s woodcutter discussing what happened with a Buddhist priest, played by still another Kurosawa regular, Minoru Chiaki.  Kurosawa uses the elements of the rain and sun to illustrate moral peril of the whole concept of there being multiple truths.  The way he paces the film is perfect, with the story told in parts, jumping back and forth from the hazy, muggy grove where the crimes took place to the torrential loudness of rain at the gate.

Machiko Kyō as the wife, testifying
Additionally, the acting performances are as good as it gets.  Mifune’s frequent overacting might be off-putting at first, until you realize that the reason for it is that his persona is being related by another’s perspective.  Shimura, who best shines in 1952’s Ikiru (a personal favorite of mine from Kurosawa), and Chiaki provide a solid base for the film.  But Machiko Kyō, as the wife (and who also appeared in the 1953 winner Gate of Hell), gives perhaps the most impressive performance, or more accurately, performances, with subtle but discernible differences in her character showing up in the different versions of what happened.

Rashomon is the film that got me watching Kurosawa films long ago, and over the years, I would have a hard time sticking to one favorite:  Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, and Ran have all topped my list over time (and Dersu Uzula won Best Foreign Film in 1972). Each has its own greatness and I could make a valid, subjective argument as to why each should be considered Kurosawa’s best.  But objectively speaking, Rashomon was the movie that affected me first and made me want to see the others.  There is no disputing that Truth.

"We both have truths.  Are mine the same as yours?"
The Title: 羅生  The name comes from a short story by Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, and is the name of an actual gate in Tokyo, but the story is adapted from another Akutagawa short story, In a Grove, published in 1922.

The culture:  The setting of the film isn’t as important as the story, which has been told in other forms over the years, including the 1964’s The Outrage, starring Paul Newman as the bandit.  But the “Japanese” element of the film is important to this film, with the juxtaposition of the wealth and status of the samurai and his wife to the ruthless bandit.  There is a falseness to the honor of the higher class characters and a central moral strength in the Buddhist priest.

Agenda danger:  Pope John Paul II wrote, “Although each individual has a right to be respected in his own journey in search of the truth, there exists a prior moral obligation, and a grave one at that, to seek the truth and to adhere to it once it is known.”  I think Kurosawa would agree.  The priest in the film laments, “Because men are weak, they lie to deceive themselves.”  It is the central horror of the film that Truth is so malleable.

Best Picture that year:  An American in Paris.

Rating:  German director Werner Herzog called Rashomon “the closest to ‘perfect’ a film can get.”  I don’t disagree.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

1952 Winner, Forbidden Games



Forbidden Games


Director:        René Clément

Distributed by:  Times Films Corporation

Released:  December 1952 (in USA)

Country:  France

William Tecumseh Sherman, Union General in the American Civil War, is credited with the succinct but meaningful bon mot, “War is Hell.”  Perhaps less famous but only slightly less concise is the cryptic title of a song by the chanteuse Pat Benatar:  “Hell is For Children.”  Using the capability to construct a syllogism, as taught to me during my eight years of Jesuit education, I thus deduce the following:  War is for Children. 

Okay, that doesn’t really a lot of sense, but Forbidden Games, 1953’s Best Foreign Film, is a movie that shows that while the grown-ups may be the ones shooting and bombing each other, the kids certainly get mixed up in the unpleasant business that war is.

Paulette with her dead dog
We start with an air attack by the Nazis on the fleeing Parisians during the 1940 Battle of France.  A macabre parade of cars exits the city into unknown country, with desperate and frightened families taking what they can squeeze in, trying to escape the destruction of the France they once knew.  One dad picks a bad time to forget to fill the gas tank, and he, along his wife and young daughter, Paulette, appear to be stuck.  To add to the panic, Paulette’s dog runs away and the five-year-old cute-as-can-be blonde girl rushes after him.  Which of course means papa and mama have to rush after Paulette, which results in everyone but Paulette being casualties of the attack, including the dog.  Paulette is traumatized, seemingly thinking they are all sleeping and cannot be woken.  As the caravan moves on, Paulette is taken on, extremely reluctantly, by another family, only able to carry the dead pooch with her.  The mother on the car thinks that's one dead dog too many in their car and heaves him out into the fields.  Paulette jumps off the car to retrieve her pet and then makes her way on her own into the country.

Planning the pet cemetery
She soon happens upon a ten-year-old boy named Michel.  Michel lives on a farm along with his family, and though she is a bit on the young-side for him, they instantly bond, almost romantically.  Michel looks out for her and his family takes her in.  Becoming aware of the pet she is still toting around, Michel tells Paulette her pretty little pet has to be buried.  Paulette is upset—won’t he be all alone?  Good point, Michel responds.  The next step will be to find other dead animals to keep him company, and if they can’t find them dead, they can make them dead.

If all this sounds a bit comical, it isn’t really.  Paulette is clearly expressing her confused grief for her parents in her caring for the dog.  In essence, death is treated so casually by everyone, it is quite unsettling.  This is the product of war.  Paulette and Michel will bond over their shared experience of death, becoming more and more reliant on each other.  Their pet cemetery won’t be looked at with any fondness by Michel’s family or by the authorities, but to them, it is what has bound them together.

Paulette has Michel wrapped around her finger
Forbidden Games is really a touching film, sweet and sad with just a little bit of humor.  Paulette, played by Brigitte Fossey (who would appear as a character in the extended version of 1990’s Best Foreign Film Cinema Paradiso), is about a cute a kid as you are going to find, and it’s easy to see why Michel becomes so attached to her so quickly.  As disconcerting as it is to see how war affects the way the lower-class French folks see death, there is something beautiful in the innocence of the children as they have the hell of war thrust upon them.

The Title:  Jeux interdits.  An oddly titled film, if you ask me.  I believe it refers to the children’s attempt to understand and deal with death by creating their pet cemetery.  The adults don’t see the way they go about things as appropriate, but it is their innocence that is being stripped away by the adults who supposedly know better.

The culture:  The Battle of France, which resulted in the Nazi victory over and occupation of their
Brigitte Fossey in Cinema Paradiso, still crying
neighboring country, is one that hasn’t been the subject of much in film, at least in American cinema.  It must have been unimaginably horrific for the average peasantry in France, having lived through the hell of World War I only a quarter of a century earlier.  The opening scene of the families fleeing their home city to escape the Germans is very moving.

Agenda danger:  This isn’t quite the anti-war movie you might expect.  But certainly, the film’s main theme is how a culture of death caused by war can lead to the end of the innocence for the young folks just starting their lives.

Best Picture that year:  The Greatest Show on Earth.   Some consider this film to be the worst film to ever win Best Picture.

Rating:  A very moving story, fueled by great performances by the kids.  It’s a war film that shows the horrors of war without the blood and guts of it.  The horror is less in the tragedy of death during war than it is in the matter-of-fact acceptance of death necessitated by the culture that war brings.  

Note:  There was no Best Foreign Film awarded in 1953.