Читать книгу A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors - Alexander Jacoby - Страница 11

(b. July 13, 1964)

青山真治

Aoyama’s work resembles that of Kiyoshi Kurosawa (also a former student at Rikkyō University of film theorist Shigehiko Hasumi) in its offbeat approach to generic motifs. The gulf between his nineties exploitation films and his twenty-first-century art movies is more apparent than real: his recent, more rarefied work has drawn inspiration, at several removes, from thrillers and science fiction, while his early genre films borrowed the stylistic attributes of art movies. In such offbeat gangster films as Helpless (1996) and Wild Life (Wild Life: Jump into the Dark, 1997) he used extended sequence shots and slow, meditative camera movements to record not only violent action, but also the dead spots in between: snacks in cafes and restaurants, morning showers, journeys, time spent waiting and doing nothing. The individuality of these films lay in their unglamorous concentration on the mundane realities of criminal life. An Obsession (Tsumetai chi, 1997), another crime thriller, reworked Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (Nora inu, 1949) in its story of a police detective whose stolen gun is used in a series of murders. This film’s setting in an alternative present-day Tokyo, peopled by executioners in anti-radiation suits, foreshadowed the apocalyptic tone of Aoyama’s later work.

In the late nineties, Aoyama also worked in genres other than the crime film. Embalming (EM Enbāmingu, 1999) was a silly horror movie pastiche, notable mainly for a slyly self-mocking performance from director Seijun Suzuki.Shady Grove (1999), loosely inspired by a Sōseki Natsume short story, was a melancholy romantic comedy about a young woman trying to come to terms with rejection. Around this time, Aoyama also made a documentary, To the Alley (Roji e: Nakagami Kenji no nokoshita firumu, 2000): in part an examination of the plight of the burakumin underclass, this was more centrally an investigation of the role of cinema itself in preserving history.

Aoyama gained an international reputation with Eureka (2000), about the gradual recovery of three survivors from the trauma of a bus hijack. Over three hours long, virtually plotless, and shot in sepia-tinted monochrome, this extraordinary, haunting film took its director’s style to a new extreme; its slow, sinuous camera movements, sometimes following the characters, sometimes moving independently, conveyed the sense of a world indifferent to individual suffering. Even closer to abstraction was Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani (Eri eri rama sabakutani, 2005), a Werner Herzog-like vision of apocalypse set in a dystopian future where an infectious disease is inducing mass suicides. Though lacking the narrative control of Eureka, it contained passages of breathtaking visual beauty. Desert Moon (Tsuki no sabaku, 2001) was a more socially critical film, focusing on a selfish businessman whose obsession with work threatens to destroy his marriage. While thematically intriguing, it was somewhat ponderous in execution.

Aoyama’s films have often focused on the tension between free will and determinism. He has seemed sometimes to view human actions as wholly governed by external factors: in Embalming, for instance, the human brain can be mechanically reset like a computer. Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani, albeit more ambiguously, traced suicidal actions to the influence of a virus, and even Eureka, though more psychological in emphasis, saw violence as a kind of infection, the trauma of the original hijack leading one victim to commit murder in turn. Sad Vacation (Saddo vakeishon, 2007), about a man scarred by his mother’s desertion, also examined the way in which past events determine human behavior, a theme given a metacinematic dimension by the presence of characters from Aoyama’s own earlier work. Nevertheless, Aoyama’s recent films have generally been therapeutic in theme, charting a process of recovery. Often a change of environment permits a cure: if Eureka portrayed a countryside contaminated by urban phenomena such as crime, Desert Moon found tentative hope in the protagonists’ rejection of urban for rural life, while the suicidal heroine of Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani is cured in a remote field. In these films, the affection between individuals was also seen as grounds for hope, and it may be that Aoyama is moving towards a genuine humanism.

The tension between freedom and determinism is reflected in Aoyama’s technique, which allows his collaborators a certain latitude to improvise: thus, he apparently often permits his regular cameraman, Masaki Tamura, to make his own choices about where and how to move the camera. This improvisional aspect relates also to Aoyama’s interest in the spontaneity of music (which cures the disease victims in Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani). Significantly, in addition to fiction features, he has directed concert films, and collaborated with students at the Film School of Tokyo on an epic documentary about music critic Akira Aida, who introduced free jazz to Japan in the 1970s. The variety and eccentricity of his work make it difficult to predict future developments, but Aoyama will likely remain an original and suggestive filmmaker.

1996 Helpless

Chinpira / Two Punks

1997 Wild Life: Jump into the Dark / Wild Life

Tsumetai chi / An Obsession (lit. Cold Blood)

1998 Kaosu no fuchi / June 12, 1998: The Edge of Chaos

1999 Shady Grove

EM Embāmingu / Embalming

2000 Eureka

Roji e: Nakagami Kenji no nokoshita firumu / To the Alley (lit. To the Alley: The Film Left by Kenji Nakagami)

2001 Tsuki no sabaku / Desert Moon

2002 Sude ni oita kanojo no subete ni tsuite wa kataranu tameni / So as Not to Say Everything about Her Already Aged Self (video)

Shiritsu tantei Hama Maiku: Namae no nai mori / A Forest with No Name

2003 Deka matsuri / Cop Festival (co-director)

Ajimā no uta: Uehara Tomoko tenjō no utagoe / Song of Ajima: Tomoko Uehara, Voice of Heaven

Nokishita no narazumono mitai ni / Like a Desperado under the Eaves (short)

Shūsei tabi nikki / Days in the Shade (short)

2004 Reikusaido mādā kēsu / Lakeside Murder Case

2005 Eri eri rama sabakutani / Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani / My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

2006 Kōrogi / Crickets

AA

2007 Saddo vakeishon / Sad Vacation