Film reviews in 500 words or fewer

Category: 1960s

  • The Insect Woman, dir. Shohei Imamura (1963)

    The Insect Woman, dir. Shohei Imamura (1963)

    “Ma, what other way is there?”

    There is just so much to unpack from that remarkable line from another of Shohei Imamura’s masterpieces, the taboo-revelling The Insect Woman (1964), that I believe it represents both the narrative-thematic and emotional cores of the film. Imamura delivered through this film with his deftness not only with the black-and-white format but also with cinema’s unique language–editing. By combining masterful editing through the effective use of stills and a callback to the Japanese cinematic tradition of benshi, Imamura was able to showcase a masterpiece that not only unfolds in the viewers’ screens, but more importantly, in the fertile imaginations of their minds.

    On the surface, The Insect Woman is a tale of survival and rising through the ranks, only to be met by the harsh realities of life after war and an unequal society. Sachiko Hidari is remarkable as the protagonist Tome, who played with such ease and depth the life of a farm girl-turned-prostitution madam in the fast-changing Tokyo of the 50s and the 60s. Tome’s life, as well as the lives of those around her—her daughter, her friends, even her lover and her family back in rural Tohoku—represent the life of insects, with its endless cycle of birth, growth, transformation, and death.

    But is it just their lives though? We can answer this by looking more closely at the transliteration of the film’s Japanese title, “Entomological Chronicles of Japan.” To Imamura, Tome’s life is but a representation of the Japanese people and indeed, of Japan itself. Or is Japan really the “insect woman”?

    From the tailend of the Taisho period to the nascent years of the post-war Japanese economic miracle, the movie contends that nothing has really changed; everything but a part of a cycle. The sincerity of the religious is always undermined by the greedy. Women’s achievements are always treated as lesser and more easily dismissible. And sex, for good or for ill, is always a potent tool and path that women can wield to achieve a better life. Life is a bitch, Tome decried in the film, and bitching and being bitched on, whether literally or figuratively, is a constant throughout the film. The external circumstances might be in constant flux, but the substance of the Japanese psyche remains the same, a powerful thesis to make in a country that is proud of its newfound pacifism manufactured less than two decades removed from its imperialistic adventures. 

    That life is just a cycle of predictable phases, like that of an insect, can be downright nihilistic in its reductionism, especially in the face of human striving and objective progress. But therein also lies the power to be able to turn certainty on its head—by knowing how it goes, one can crack the code towards change.

    As it will be revealed in the end, The Insect Woman shows that in a sense, what seems to be the only way can also be the way out.

  • Woman in the Dunes, dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara (1964)

    Woman in the Dunes, dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara (1964)

    “Isn’t it exhausting, walking around so aimlessly?”

    Those searing and profound words, uttered by the titular character and what I think is the core of the film’s pathos, would find incredible vindication in the unfolding of this ambitious work of cinema. I usually write these “reviews” as if I’m thinking out loud, but the experience of watching Woman in the Dunes is so astounding I’m still trying to organize my thoughts on the breadth and depth that this film explored regarding the fundamentals of human nature.

    The narrative premise of the film is not unique but as with other great films, the proof is in the showing (and not just the telling). The camera work in this film is one of the most effective I’ve seen in Japanese cinema, making you feel what’s happening more than just making you know. The hyper close-up shots of skins, eyes, hair, and pores, juxtaposed with shots of slow-moving sand dunes buffeted by the wind are not just claustrophobic—they’re carnal. There’s such a sensual quality to the images of the dunes dripping like bodily fluid, but the hydraulic quality also gives off the sense that the dunes are about to fall on you and trap you, in the way they threaten the characters. The claustrophobia gets to your skin then through to chill your bones, as if you’re watching horror fare without the ghosts and the jump scares.

    But just as the oasis have to be dug up so are the more precious gems of film can be found deeper in the story. Aside from being a visual treasure, this film is a commentary on our understanding of the basest drivers of human existence, those that set us apart from animals. It is a debate between tradition and modernity, between self and community, between being firmly rooted and starting anew. Throughout the film, one will be disappointed by how contented people can be in situations that seem to hostage them, until one realizes that they themselves might also be in situations where they are “trapped” yet have no will to get out because that’s what they have been used to. Habit then becomes the enemy of progress and freedom. Or is it? Are progress and freedom even that desirable? Those are some of the big questions that this movie leaves.

    I didn’t mind how the movie is quietly triumphalist in the end. First, because it was not patronizing. Second, and more importantly, the film earned it both narratively and emotionally. By emotionally, I meant that the film retained its pathos while being satisfying in the end. There is resignation, yes, but there is also hope, purpose, and creativity, those qualities that set us apart from other creatures and ensured the survival of our species from the beginning.