Imamura's Profound Desires of the Gods from Eureka

Just back at home a few days from a 10-day break in Kenya en route to my next stop on a work/research trip to Japan, and while I should be busy unpacking my shorts, swimming trucks and suntan lotion in exchange for clothing more suitable for the icy climbs of Hokkaido where I’ll be heading on Wednesday for Yubari film festival, I just couldn’t contain myself at the news, which reached me via the Wildgrounds website, that UK label Eureka are to release Shohei Imamura’s Profound Desires of the Gods on Blu-Ray in May as part of their Masters of Cinema series.

Profound Desire of the Gods

Yes, it’s slightly annoying that this is only on Blu-Ray, but on a more positive side, this is the first time that I’ve felt the Blu-Ray I’ve had hooked up to the HD TV for the past 9 months has actually been necessary. Imamura’s film is a beautiful-looking work, shot in vibrant colours in verdant, tropical climes, all in expansive widescreen NikkatsuScope. This is a film I’d been waiting to see ever since I first read about it about ten years ago while researching the Imamura chapter of The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film. It’s true, while I was living in Japan, I could quite easily have rented the VHS and watched it without subtitles, but from what I’d read, this film was so close to my own interests and tastes that I wanted my first encounter with it to be a little more special, which is the main reason for getting involved in the Imamura showcase at Bristol’s Arnolfini last October (see my thoughts on the retro), to actually bring a subtitled print across to the UK. Well, the film was everything I’d hoped for and more, from the bizarre opening sequence of a pig being throw into the sea as a sacrifice to be feasted upon by sharks to the coda set on the ludicrous tourist train, and caused much discussion with the other viewers at the Arnolfini after the screening finished. This is an utterly one-off work, and I am trembling in anticipation at seeing it up on a screen again. I can’t emphasize how much I love the films of Shohei Imamura. This is among the best, ranking in my books alongside Pigs and Battleships and The Ballad of Narayama. Imamura is pretty well-represented on region 1 DVD, but I just hope this Eureka release garners enough attention and excitement for further UK releases of his films. These really benefit from being seen as a large a screen in as high resolution as possible.

Profound Desires of the Gods

I do remember suggesting this title to Masters of Cinema quite a few years ago, so whether they took my advice, or were inspired by the Imamura season last year, or already had it under consideration anyway, I don’t know. I’m just ecstatic it’s imminent. Now its time to work on the next campaign to spread the word outside Japan about forgotten or unknown classics from forgotten or unknown filmmakers, and the next candidate is Susumu Hani, a director who I am quite flabbergasted that Western distributors or film curators have not picked up on yet. Following the Tomu Uchida season, Alex Jacoby and I pitched a retrospective of this figure to the British Film Institute, but didn’t get any response at all – the powers-that-be there obviously think it safer to stick with what they know, so we get Ozu and Kurosawa retrospectives again this year. Anyway, keep your eyes fixed on Midnight Eye, as you’ll find out plenty more on Hani there in the coming month or so.

In the meantime, as mentioned, I’m off to Tokyo tomorrow, and to Yubari Film Festival on Wednesday, from which I hope to post updates about the good films on offer there. I also hope to post a bit more on some other Eureka releases which I’ve not had time to write about yet, so I hope to be rather more active on this site than I have been over the past month or so.

Posted at 12:30 on 20 February 2010 Filed under news.

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• Profound Desires of the Gods
• Shohei Imamura

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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.

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• ballad of narayama
• pigs and battleships
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• Shohei Imamura
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Event: Carnal Knowledge: The Films of Shohei Imamura
Venue: Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
When: 23rd-31st October 2009

The Arnolfini’s Pigs, Eels & Insects: Reassessing The Legacy of Shohei Imamura season comes to London.
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Posted at 0:03 on 23 October 2009 Filed under events.

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• ICA
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