Japan

Minamata (2020)

André Crous

Jacques Rivette would not be pleased with the tragedy porn that is the dramatisation of the Minamata chemical disaster of the 1970s.

MinamataUSA
2.5*

Director:
Andrew Levitas
Screenwriter:
David Kessler
Director of Photography:
Benoît Delhomme

Running time: 115 minutes

I recently mentioned Gillo Pontecorvo’s notorious Kapò while reviewing a film that appeared to strive for a deliberately artistic depiction of war. This reference, always tied to Jacques Rivette’s review in Cahiers du cinéma, has become commonplace in film criticism. But it is because of the ferocity of the allegation and the clarity of the writer’s moral vision that it continues to pop up in reviews.

Look, however, in Kapo, at the shot where [Emmanuelle] Riva kills herself by throwing herself on an electric barbed-wire fence; the man who decides, at that moment, to have a dolly in to tilt up at the body, while taking care to precisely note the hand raised in the angle of its final framing – this man deserves nothing but the most profound contempt.  (Jacques Rivette, “On Abjection”, translated by David Phelps with the assistance of Jeremi Szaniawski; originally published as “De l’abjection” in Cahiers du cinéma 120, June 1961, pp. 54–55)

When atrocities are presented in a way that prioritises our appreciation of the beauty and the composition of the image over the inherent misery that is depicted, then the author of the image deserves our contempt. And it is difficult to argue against having contempt for the way Minamata goes about glamorising the suffering of others. This is tragedy porn writ large.

Based on the real events surrounding the Chisso Corporation’s dumping of mercury in the Japanese town of Minamata, which deformed the town’s population (mostly its children, but also some adults), the plot focuses on acclaimed LIFE photojournalist W. Eugene “Gene” Smith, played by Johnny Depp. Gene, who appears to deal with the post-traumatic stress accumulated over a lifetime on tough assignments by drinking himself into daily stupors, is visited by a young Japanese woman named Aileen. The pictures that she gives him immediately convince him he has to go and witness the horrors for himself.

His editor at LIFE, who can see the writing on the wall for the once prestigious magazine, whose pages are now filling up with ads to make up for the decline in subscriptions, harbours many a doubt that his prize-winning photographer will be able to cope and make the deadline, but as usual, an inebriated Gene somehow wraps him around his little finger and gets the green light. It is tough to stomach that the editor of a publication as illustrious as LIFE could be so easy to manipulate, but before you can say Jack Robinson, he has agreed to Gene’s terms, and the latter is off to the land of the rising sun.

It isn’t long before we see the calamitous effect of mercury on the local population. Gene and Aileen stay with a very friendly couple whose daughter Akiko is one of those suffering as a result of Chisso’s unsafe dumping of its chemicals. The world-renowned Japanese hospitality is on full display as Gene gets his own darkroom kitted out almost exactly the way it looks back home. Where his host found the money (and the time!) to do this remains a mystery, however.

What is not a mystery at all is the physical effect of the chemicals on the people, and especially on the children. Again and again and again, the camera seeks out the stiff and deformed hands and feet, constantly reminding us of the toll this disaster has taken on people’s bodies by directing its gaze at them. In so doing, the film is not showing us these characters as people but as objects to inspect and to pity.

Gene doesn’t speak the language, but Aileen translates for him. However, it is often very challenging to understand the English spoken by the Japanese characters. This is particularly true when the soundtrack contains additional noise or people are speaking over each other. A handful of moments when the characters speak Japanese and the film uses subtitles are very helpful. But it is head-scratching how Gene and Aileen end up together by the end of the film and, according to the end titles, get married around the same time. They are merely two people in the same place more or less sharing an experience or two, although he spends most of the day taking and developing his pictures on his own without her help or support.

But beyond the ludicrous relationship that the film wants to suggest, the most objectionable part is the stylised approach to the objects of suffering, namely the children of Minamata. In particular, the film features an extended take in which the real Gene’s famous Tomoko in Her Bath picture comes alive. Meticulously restaged to be identical to the photograph, albeit initially in colour, we see the mother holding her deformed daughter in the bathtub. The moody lighting perfectly conveys the feeling that this is a moment of significance. When Gene’s editor subsequently receives the picture, the significance is further underlined by him nearly bursting into tears. This is tragedy porn at its most grotesque.

The story of how a Japanese company could get away with deforming people barely 25 years after the Americans’ atomic bomb had created tens of thousands of hibakusha (in fact, Nagasaki is located close by) seems like material for a significant dramatisation. But we mostly get Gene walking around (drunk) with his camera, conspicuously taking pictures of as many of the town’s inhabitants (and their deformities) as he can, which feels very much like an invasion of privacy. In addition, the cinematography is not only all over the place and without a perspective but is sometimes rather crude, as when close-ups on faces go in and out of focus or a tracking shot of one female assistant fills the frame with her skirt-covered bottom as she moves down the corridor.

Minamata feels like it was produced in a rush. The basics of the tragedy are intriguing, and some title cards remind us of similar catastrophes around the world, but the people who are used to tell the story are made to look one-dimensional and uninteresting. Add to that the absolutely immoral decision to artfully depict the victims as freaks, and you get a film that is an abject failure.

Viewed at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival.

Unbroken (2014)

André Crous

Story of Louis Zamperini gets sumptuous treatment in a dramatically uneven retelling of his World War II ordeal.

unbrokenUSA
3*

Director:
Angelina Jolie
Screenwriters:
Joel Coen
Ethan Coen
Richard LaGravenese
William Nicholson
Director of Photography:
Roger Deakins

Running time: 135 minutes

Life is what happens while some are just trying to survive. In Unbroken, Angelina Jolie’s epic, ambitious but also commendably restrained retelling of the life of Louis Zamparini, the canvas is vast and so, too, is the range of pain inflicted on a young man during wartime. Jolie proves to be enormously talented as a storyteller, but unfortunately, the film is preoccupied with showing us that everybody has their reasons. In so doing, and by watering down the violence and bloodshed, it also commits the indefensible sin of downplaying the horrors of war.

Zamparini’s life was filled with good fortune but also a great deal of physical suffering at the hands of his captors, and the desire to survive obviously makes him a heroic character that deserves the big-screen treatment. The film plays it safe throughout, making sure to achieve nothing higher than a PG-13 rating by having children-friendly dialogue and restraining its depiction of violence; however, in its final moments it goes for broke by clearly drawing a visual parallel to Jesus Christ on the cross, and the absurdity of this comparison leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

British actor Jack O’Connell does a fine job in the lead, his clean-cut face serving him well as both the romantic representation of the wholesome American and ultimately as the object of sadistic affection of one of his detention camp guards in Japan, the feared Matsushiro Watanabe, better known as “The Bird” (Takamasa Ishihara).

The first half of Unbroken opens above the Pacific Ocean, aboard a B-52 bomber during the Second World War, where Zamperini is in charge of dropping the bombs at exactly the right moments. There are some hairy situations with the boys in the aircrew nearly losing their lives, and at the most dramatic point in the scene, the film cuts back to Zamperini’s early childhood in Torrance, California, with his Italian immigrant family. He was headed towards teenage delinquency when his older brother noticed how fast he can run, and suddenly, in a jump cut that comes as no surprise, we see him running as a teenager who has turned into an athlete of some renown.

After a few more scenes during the Second World War, we get yet another flashback to Zamperini’s early years, during which he sets off to compete in the Olympics in Berlin, Nazi Germany. This section of the film is magnificent, not only because of the overwhelming success of director of photography Roger Deakins in recreating the feeling of being inside the enormous arena but also because of the subtle but powerful moment that is so brief the viewer might miss it on the first viewing: When all the athletes gather inside the stadium and the cauldron is lit, Zamperini looks behind him and sees a Japanese athlete looking back at him. They smile at each other in sportsmanlike camaraderie, both elated to participate at the highest level of their game. But as we watch them, the dramatic irony is evident as the bloody United States–Japan war scenes from earlier in the film still ring in our heads.

Once we return to the battlefield, we stay there, and it is a never-ending parade of misery for the poor Zamperini, who spends weeks on the open sea before being taken captive and held as a prisoner of war by the Japanese until after the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The quick pace of the first half slows down significantly in the second, as the screenplay focuses intently on Zamperini’s ordeal in the detention camps and the unjust treatment he receives at the hands of the androgynous Watanabe, whose ambiguous behaviour towards the Olympic athlete makes him a menace from whom we can only expect the worst. Viewers familiar with Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence will notice familiar traits in the Japanese sergeant, but unfortunately, Ishihara doesn’t bring much to his performance except sexualised menace.

In the film’s final moments, however, Jolie reveals the story behind Watanabe, and while this explanation in no way excuses his actions, the glimpse into his own story does offer us a way of recognising the humanity in some of the most malicious people we have ever come across. But perhaps it is a good thing Jolie decided not to show Adolf Hitler at the Berlin Olympics.

“A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain”, Louis’s older brother tells him in one of the film’s many trailer-ready snippets of dialogue. “If you can take it, you can make it” is another oft-repeated saying. The inspirational power of these two expressions is lost because the moment we hear them, very early in the film, we know they will be important later on.

Given Deakins is the film’s director of photography (the visual stalwart of the films of the Coen Brothers, who co-wrote the film’s screenplay), it should come as no surprise that the images are gorgeous, as all the yellows and browns are tinged with gold, and the blues of the sky and the ocean hew between azure and a clear green-blue, respectively.

As Russell “Phil” Phillips, one of Zamperini’s crewmen aboard the bombardier, who endures much of the same hardship throughout the film, Domhnall Gleeson delivers a poignant, highly memorable performance. By contrast, Zamperini’s parents are caricatures of Italian-Americans, and his mother in particular, who never learns a word of English, is maddeningly simplistic.

With Unbroken, her second feature film as director, Jolie plays it too safe. Despite the publicity around the film that stresses the personal importance of the project to her, we feel little passion, and only a handful of scenes have the visceral quality we expect from a war film. The notable exceptions come during the characters’ near-death experiences, when the tension is handled admirably without sentimentality or exaggeration.

On the whole, however, the film is rather disappointing, with dialogue that is often stilted and situations that, while perhaps historically accurate, have little credibility when they are stacked together like here. It remains to be seen what becomes of Jolie as a director; as a storyteller, she is very capable, but as a filmmaker, she still has some way to go.