Ballad of Narayama

Back at home after a week dashing round the country for various reasons, not least of which was the Imamura retrospective at the Arnolfini which I had a hand in. After the punishing routine of Raindance, I was rather grateful to be afforded the opportunity just to sit in a cinema over a long weekend and binge on the six wonderful films in the programme in relative peace and quiet. Imamura was the one director who really stood out when I first started exploring Japanese cinema. There was something about his sense of humour and his general world view that struck a chord with me, the notion (some might call it cynical) that humans are essentially animals whose primary motivations are the satiation of basic needs such as food and sex, and their every other action is merely an attempt to rationalise these drives.

But it’s been almost ten years ago since I looked at the director in any depth, and I’d not revisited many of these films since. It was funny, because I thought the basic concept of the season, to reassess Imamura’s legacy, was slightly odd, being as his status as one of the key figures in Japanese cinema, and of the 1960s in particular, hardly needed emphasizing. But it became clear talking to several of the members of the audience that while Imamura’s name might be well known in Japanese film fan circles, the general public in the UK really haven’t had a chance to see many of his films, and by and large they loved them. It occurred to me how little of his work is available on DVD in comparison with other directors such as, say, Seijun Suzuki. It just goes to show how much a director’s currency can change over time. The last retrospectives on Imamura in the UK, I believe, were just after his Palme d’Or win for The Eel, and that was well over ten years ago. Clearly people do need to be reminded of this director after all.

Pigs and Battleships

Watching the films back to back it struck me, while there are certain uniform themes and ideas explored in his films, individually they are all very different in style and tone. I’d never actually seen Pigs and Battleships before, for example, which was one of the standouts of the programme, a more obvious commercial piece which bore some similarities with Sun Tribe films such as Crazed Fruit and Cruel Story of Youth, yet also signalled the direction that Imamura would pursue, with its bawdy humour, really vibrant style, and that wonderfully surreal ending as the pigs stampede through the streets of Yokosuka. Ballad of Narayama I’d not seen for years, but it has a special place in my heart as one of my first encounters with Japanese cinema in a screening at the Scala in the late 1980s (with Wakamatsu’s Violated Angels). Watching it again really spelled out for me what an amazing achievement it is, perhaps the quintessential Imamura film. The film isn’t well-known at all in Britain with modern audiences, but there is a US DVD. But one of the main treats of this program was finally getting to see Profound Desire of the Gods on a big screen, and what a bizarre film it is. If Ballad of Narayama is Imamura’s masterpiece, then this title is his folly, inviting comparisons with Herzog at his most ambitious, or Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. It has its more digressive moments, it must be said, but the sheer scale and energy behind it really signals this out as an essential piece of cinematic history which will never be repeated. It is simply bewildering that this film is not out there on DVD anywhere, and I can’t work out why, because it’s handled by Nikkatsu, so obtaining the rights shouldn’t be too problematic. Someone rectify this situation, please!

Profound Desire of the Gods

Anyway, the main Arnolfini session is over, though there’s still a double bill of Vengeance is Mine and The Eel on Sunday 8^th November. Those in the UK who couldn’t make it to Bristol will be heartened to here that the films are now up in London and screening at the ICA this very weekend, before moving to the Glasgow Film Theatre next week. Go watch them all. Who knows when you’ll get a chance to see them on the big screen in the UK again.

Posted at 12:05 on 23 October 2009 Filed under news.

• Tagged
• Arnolfini
• Ballad of Narayama
• Pigs and Battleships
• Profound Desires of the Gods
• Shohei Imamura
• The Eel

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