E. L. KATASONOVA

Doctor of Historical Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Keywords: Sehei Imamura, Japanese cinema, "The Legend of Narayama", "Eel", "new wave"

Chingiz Aitmatov has a well-known play "Climbing Mount Fuji", which was once successfully performed in one of the Moscow theaters. Mount Fuji in Japan is sacred, and climbing it has long been considered almost a national duty in this country, which every Japanese must fulfill at least once in his life. And climbing Fuji is not only about admiring its snow-capped peaks and beautiful landscapes, but also overcoming dangers and difficulties, tempering your character and will. And that is why the conquest of this peak has always been perceived as a thorny path to the top - to success in life or in your career.

Climbing Narayama is quite different. This is the path to voluntary death, which a person is forced to decide on, sacrificing himself for the lives of others and freeing the way for those who follow him. It is not without reason that in ancient Japan there was a custom when sons carried their aged mothers to Mount Narayama and left them in the valley of death.

Since then, these places have been popularly called "the mountain of abandoned mothers". Sehei Imamura, an outstanding Japanese director and one of the five world winners of two Palme d'Or awards at the Cannes Film Festival (1983, 1997), once told us about this in his cult film "The Legend of Narayama" ("Narayamabushiko").

Imamura came to our country several times, and I twice had the opportunity to be his translator during Moscow film festivals. Or rather, not so much as an interpreter as his interlocutor, because Imamura was a closed person, avoided noisy festival "parties" and spectacular public appearances, preferring to meet with his foreign colleagues in a small cozy room of the now defunct hotel "Russia". And when I didn't find any, I would be his only listener, and he would spend hours sipping a glass of whiskey and telling me about his life, his work, and especially about his last work at that time, The Legend of Narayama, which he never stopped thinking about and reflecting on.

THE FIRST CANNES BRANCH

After his triumph at Cannes in 1983, he brought the film to Moscow for an out-of-competition screening at the Moscow Film Festival, and still overwhelmed by the impressions of the recently completed filming, he was eager to share with the Soviet audience all the things that had worried him for many years. This film-a parable about the birth of human emotions in the midst of animal existence in the struggle for survival in an almost primitive society-has become a kind of confession of the director.

Imamura liked to reflect on complex philosophical matters and in everyday life. He spoke about it simply and emotionally. In a matter of minutes, you mentally became, if not a participant in the events described by him, then an absolute like-minded person.-

with a helmet, getting deeper and deeper into some kind of semi-mystical atmosphere of his painting. So it happened to me. But despite the preliminary strong psychological immersion in this complex cinematic material, what I saw on the screen literally shocked me, and not only me, but the entire audience. For everyone, this viewing was akin to a culture shock, the feelings of which are strong to this day. And if not every movie lover today immediately remembers the name of Sehei Im Amur, the name of his picture "The Legend of Narayama" will immediately cause everyone a lot of the most vivid emotions and memories of its first viewing.

Imamura's film is a kind of remake of the classic Keisuke Kinoshita film of 1958. But if Kinoshita shot his entire film in the pavilion, with special emphasis on stage conventions and theatrical effects, then Imamura's film was born in the bowels of nature itself, despite the fact that the plot is one, and it is drawn from the stories of Shichiro Fukazawa " The Tale of Mount Narayama "("Narayamabushiko") and "The Man from Tohoku" ("Tohokuno Zummachi").

The action takes place in the 19th century in a small Japanese village gripped by famine. Primitive customs prevail here: people copulate, reproduce and live according to the harsh laws of nature, destroying those who are weaker than them. They kill newborn boys, exchange little girls for salt, give them into sexual slavery, etc. And the elderly, who turn 70, are disposed of as extra mouths in the most barbaric way, taking them to the valley of death on the top of Mount Narayama. Moreover, this terrible ritual for centuries was charged with the responsibility of the eldest son in each family.

The main character named Orin is the oldest resident of this village, who recently reached 69 years old. She is still strong in spirit and full of vitality, but, according to the traditions of her ancestors, it is time for her to leave this world. Realizing this, the eldest son of Orin experiences great mental anguish, sincerely feeling sorry for his native person, who was forced to give himself up as a sacrifice. And at the same time, he is well aware that once he will have to experience this terrible fate.

Trying to ease the suffering of her son and help him decide on this difficult step, Orin knocks out her teeth with a stone, turning into a helpless old woman. Now, it would seem, it is easier for the son to save the family from the burden and fulfill his terrible duty to the rest of the inhabitants of the village. But how difficult is their last journey together to the place of "silent execution". The scenes at the foot of the mountain, when the son carries his mother on his shoulders, condemning her to a painful death, are the most poignant in the whole story, etched into the memory forever.

Japanese cinema is a contemplative cinema, where the main attention is paid to the visual series. All the depths of meaning are hidden in images. Intricate or deliberately simple shots evoke a lot of feelings and associations, but the most important thing is the aftertaste.

And in this sense, "The Legend of Narayama" is an ideal example of contemplative cinema-a picturesque narrative perceived exclusively by the subconscious. The proximity of two worlds - human and animal - is the main leitmotif of the film, which is so rich in extremely beautiful shots of wildlife and unusual for the European viewer naturalistic fragments from the lives of people and animals, so repeating each other in their most natural manifestations.

A lot of things in the film are amazing. Baby boys thrown into the field, the murder of a poor family who encroached on the pathetic ears of the crop, in which the whole village participates. Justified cruelty? Traditions, laws, principles? Looking at all this is unbearably painful and difficult, but this film-revelation I want to watch and review again and again, trying to get to the essence of human existence, which the director is so allegorically and emotionally trying to explain.

The authors of the film set the viewer a difficult task in its ambiguity-to decide what is evil and what is good, who to sympathize with and who to despise, and can the natural laws of the struggle for existence replace human morality and compassion?

Surprisingly for those times, "The Legend of Narayama" was then purchased in the Soviet Union and shown at a wide box office, causing mixed reviews from viewers and film critics. Some people liked the picture for its inner nature, deep philosophy and sharp drama. Others noted the excellent camerawork, behind the contemplation and dispassion of which hides the powerful wild energy of nature: from lone blades of grass, croaking frogs, crawling bugs to majestic mountains that become equal heroes of the picture.

And, of course, another revelation and shock from the film: the magnificent performance of singer and actress Sumiko Sakamoto, who, by the way, was not immediately chosen by the director for the main role. With what talent this still youthful 47-year-old beauty transforms into a deep old woman facing a terrible line!

But the film also had many critics who accused the director of an abundance of erotic scenes, extreme naturalism, cruelty, etc. And Imamura in one of his interviews, as if answering opponents, reveals his attitude to these problems. "I consider eroticism to be a manifestation of the forces of life. On the one hand, death, on the other - life, " he says. "There's nothing dirty about sex. It's only natural. The more deeply a person understands nature, the living world, the more open-minded he perceives eroticism and sex. You just need to look with clean eyes. There is a lot of cruelty in the film. But it also exists in nature. Nature is beautiful, but cruelty is one of the components of its beauty. I don't know to what extent I managed to express in the film the multiplicity of natural processes and the multidimensionality of human existence ... " ¹

And another very important statement from him: "The main philosophical problem of the film is how to complete a human life," Imamura explained in an interview. - How to accept the inevitable? People end their earthly existence and go on the road of death, to the gods"². That's why Imamura intended to start this film with a completely different one - with a prologue about how old people end up in nursing homes these days,and even made this episode. But he decided against it anyway.

Imamura also reflects a lot on human dignity and strength of mind in the film: "The old woman from Narayama, after living for seven decades, herself announces that she is ready to go to the mountains to die. But before that, he sows wheat. She knows that she will not participate in the harvest, but she does it so that the thread of life is not interrupted, so that what is sown is collected by descendants. The old woman thinks about what will happen after she leaves. And I am grateful for all that I have received from fate " ³. Isn't this the main meaning of the film - in its all-conquering humanism?

SECOND PALM BRANCH

Imamura, like many other prominent Japanese directors - Akira Kurosawa, Nagisa Oshima and others-is often accused of orienting his work to the West, of being too exotic and creating too" export " version of Japan. But this is not the case. The interest of the Western public in their work does not detract from the dignity of these Japanese directors as artists. "On the contrary, they were able to find this universal key without abandoning national specifics and the deep influences of their culture." ⁴

Speaking on this topic, the well-known Russian film critic Andrey Plakhov, in particular, notes: "Imamura both fits in and does not fit into the context of Japanese cinema. On the one hand, it has its roots in Japanese reality... He really knew the life of post-war Japan very well, and it was a very difficult and stressful life of a country that was trying to rise up after a terrible catastrophe, because the nation had a lot of energy to fight and survive. And this consciousness, on the one hand, is catastrophic, on the other hand, it is quite optimistic, permeates the work of the early Imamura.

Later, it became clear that Imamura was still moving away from the mainstream of Japanese cinema, not to mention that this film was commercialized, and Imamura found his own path, different from commercial cinema and the aesthetics of the Japanese "new wave". He went deeper, towards a philosophical understanding of the problems of human existence, the problems of civilization, the problems of eros, the problems of death, and we feel all this in his paintings in a very concentrated form and in a form that is understandable to Europeans... Imamura found an approach that allowed him to enter the European context as well, as was evident with the appearance of the Legend of Narayama. " ⁵

Despite his worldwide fame, Imamura, like many other recognized classics of Japanese cinema, often experienced financial difficulties after his triumph in the West in his homeland and therefore had to try himself in a new genre of documentary films, work on television, write scripts, and sometimes there were creative downtime. That is why there is more than a decade between two of Imamura's most famous works, awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. However, in the interval between them, he still managed to shoot another well - known picture "Black Rain" ("Kuroi ame", 1988) - on a different, but always exciting director theme-the theme of war.

This film is about the tragedy of Hiroshima and the fate of its victims, an adaptation of the novel by Japanese writer Masuji Ibuse, which tells how the atomic bomb crippled the fate of the main characters, bringing them great physical suffering and mental anguish. Imamura shows a village near Hiroshima five years after the explosion.

Everything here at first glance looks peaceful and peaceful: women cultivate rice fields, harvest crops, gossip, men fish. But those who were victims of the atomic bombing no longer feel like equal members of this society. They are treated with distrust, shunned, and do not want to marry girls affected by radiation. And then there is the second main motive of the film-the motive of compassion. Perhaps, thanks to this combination of anti-war pathos and deep humanism, the film becomes something much more significant than just a film call to peace. By the way, the film was presented in Cannes in 1989, where it received a special award from the Higher Technical Commission of the Cannes Film Festival in the best black-and-white film category, and was also awarded 9 prestigious awards of the Japanese Film Academy.

Imamura's work has always been highly appreciated in Cannes. In 1997, to the surprise of many, his film " Eel " ("Unagi"), created after a long silence - almost eight years after the appearance of his film about Hiroshima, again receives the highest award of this prestigious film festival, sharing it with the Iranian film by Abbas Kiarostami"Taste of Cherries". The title of the tape may be somewhat alarming at first, but when you watch it, you are well aware that it is not at all about these mysterious fish, but about the social adaptation of a person who has served a prison sentence.

The action of the film begins in the summer of 1988. An unremarkable clerk, Yamashita, whose role is played by the director's much-loved actor Koji Yakuse, a regular member of his film team, lives an ordinary measured life until he learns from an anonymous letter that his wife is cheating on him during his frequent fishing trips. And once finding her in bed with her lover, an angry husband in a state of passion commits a fatal murder. And then, without even taking off his blood-soaked jacket, he calmly gets on his bike and drives straight to the police station to come clean about what happened. The result of what he did was 8 years in prison, which became a difficult life test for Yamashita and greatly changed him. Here he mastered the specialty of a hairdresser, and most importantly-got a new loyal "friend" - an ordinary eel, in silent communication with which he found peace of mind. After being released from prison, Yamashita also brings an eel to her house. Now he is waiting for a new life, which begins with a chance meeting with the girl Keiko just at that tragic moment when she was trying to take her own life. Yamashita rescues her, and since Keiko somehow reminded him of his murdered wife, makes her his parikma assistant.-

kherskaya, and then a life partner. Now next to the hero is a beloved woman who is expecting a child from him. The eel is no longer needed by him, and the fish is quietly released into the wild. It would seem to be a "happy ending", but then again Yamashita accidentally gets involved in a fair but ridiculous fight with scum and again finds himself in prison.

"Eel" is a psychological drama of understanding and empathy. The slow and seemingly monotonous plot is fully compensated, as always with the Imamur, by the richness of the visual series. "The characters of the screen space seem to be trying to get into our world, beyond the lens of a movie camera. Blood splashes into the lens, river water beats, cherry blossoms shoot their branches. Taciturn people are trying to build their own rather complicated and strange lives^." Perhaps this is why the film attracted the attention of both ordinary viewers and specialists, having received such a high rating in Cannes.

HIS PHILOSOPHY OF BEING

Inspired by his success, Imamura shoots the film "Doctor Akagi" (Kanzo Sensei, 1998), where he returns to his favorite themes-a small Japanese village, the end of the war, the poor.

The film is largely autobiographical, since the director's father was a doctor, and this explains not only the actual authenticity of the picture, but also the director's personal attitude to his characters. And the last, seventeenth feature film of the ⁷ director was a little strange, at first glance, but rather difficult to comprehend for the European audience, the picture " Warm Water under the Red Bridge "(Akai Hasi no shitanonurumizu, 2001). It was shown with great success in many countries, including in our country at the next festival of Japanese cinema, while not always causing an adequate reaction from the audience.

But is it possible for Europeans to understand the full depth of poetic metaphors, symbols, associations, from which this tape is literally woven?! It seems that, definitely, no, because the director himself, who throughout his creative career sought to find solutions to complex problems of being, at the end of his years practically refused to do this at all, preferring questions to answers. Therefore, a simple retelling of the events of the film can cause an untrained viewer only feelings of bewilderment and slight irony.

The essence of the film is different. Water as a source of life-giving power and vital energy, which the heroine of the film exudes from her body during lovemaking, clearly generating analogies with the image of a woman-the progenitor of all living things and the secrets of the origin of life. Streams of this life-giving warm water flow under the red bridge, creating ideal conditions for spawning fish that feed the entire city. Water is both a movement in the fate of the hero, and the course of the plot, and, perhaps, a coded message to the descendants of the director himself, who may have finally solved the main mystery of human existence.

But his very last dying words to the world were heard in his short film novella, which was included in a multinational film project called "September 11" (2002). According to the idea of the author of the idea - French producer Alain Brigue, each of the venerable masters of cinema from different countries had to present their own story about this terrible event with a length of 11 minutes and 9 seconds. Imamura allowed himself to move away from the task at hand, expanding its context, and told in his short film about another tragedy - about the past war, linking these two events together in his mind, which should never happen again. And this was his last spiritual testament.

Imamura died on May 30, 2006 at the age of 79 in Tokyo. He is survived by two sons who continue the family dynasty. The youngest of them, Hirosuke, CEO of Imamura Production, a member of the Japan Cinematographers ' Association, promotes his father's creative legacy, often presenting his films in other countries at film festivals and special retrospective screenings dedicated to the great director. He also produces the works of his older brother Daisuke, who became a film director and screenwriter.

In 1998, the popular publishing house "Sintesya" published a book by today's Japanese film idol Kitano Takeshi, one of the chapters of which is specifically devoted to a conversation with Imamura. The most popular director Takeshi Miike, who is well-known to the Russian audience for the film "Kinoproba"that was released at the box office, came out of Imamura's creative workshop. So the name of Imamur continues to live in the memory of people and on movie screens.

I regret that I did not continue our good human contacts with this wonderful man, who persistently and sincerely invited me to meet him in Japan and visit his studio.

^{Anashkin S.} 1 Sehei Imamura: I know how to wait. Arthouse.ru. 21.09.2010 - www.arthouse.ru/news/asp?id=13160

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Radio Liberty. In memory of Sshei Imamura / / Radio program "On top of barriers". 01.06.2006 - www.svoboda.org/contcnt/transcript/159711.html

⁵ Ibid.

^{Coachman K.} 6 What does Shohei Imamura's laconic "Eel" tell us? - klub-nostalgia.ucoz.eom/pora/126-548-1

⁷ In total, Imamura has made about 20 feature and documentary films.

Permanent link to this publication: