Tuesday 21 June 2011

Yasujiro Ozu - Late Spring


I purposefully chose dialogue incongruous with the cinematography above because that's a feeling I often get with Ozu's movies, or doing business with the Japanese. Ozu's films are tender pieces and sensitive experiences to watch. They're atypical of my taste but despite the slow paced, violin laced narrative there's a lot to be learned about Japanese life from them.


Historically they're set in post war Japan which though not mentioned obtusely has cinematic gestures now and again. There's the collision of old and new society, the ease with drinking tea on the floor or eating cake at the table. It was a country in swift transition and one that did a tremendous job of coming back from the abyss despite the unambiguous victory and immediate attempts of cultural colonisation by the U.S army.


Even today not many Americans know that Pearl Harbour was provoked and set up to bring the U.S. into the war without being seen to precipitate the action. There's much about the Japanese that can be frustrating but they've managed to keep their essence as a culture in spite of ultimately being on the recipient end of the only atomic attacks any country has received. They're an unusually hermetically sealed race in many respects with most Japanese having no contact with outside cultures apart from vacations. The rest of the year it's pure or 99% Japanese contact especially outside Tokyo.


Ozu shoots his movies at ground floor level as if sitting on a tatami mat. The camera is fixed and rarely pans with typically long scenes of dialogue interspersed with silence. The father daughter relationship is revisited in this film from the previous movie Tokyo Story in which Norika's mother passes away after the family vacation. It's a strange kind of framework with old and new world's merging, and in this movie a tension over each party wishing to do the best for each other when in fact they are both happier with each other. When I listen to Noriko talk, I'd suggest his daughter is uninterested in men and likely more interested in women but unable to explore or live her sexual preference. This makes the movie even more melancholic but it's well choreographed punctuated-misery in that stoic Japanese and honourable way. It's about sacrifice I guess.


When I watch Ozu movies I see hundreds of centuries including one from the future condensed into a couple of hours. The tradition, the healing of post war Japan, the clash of traditional attire with the Westernisation of dress, the hints at Japanese futurism and a pragmatism mixed with respect for delicate but pointed ways of doing everything from formal introductions to stating one's Saki limit in advance. They make me sad and they make me admire the Japanese at the same time. I think the world may have been given a more elegant kind of brutality to live in had the atom not been split and the vulgarity of overwhelming fire power dominated the rest of the century. I think nature would have been respected so much more, and that corporatism wouldn't be the unmuzzled rabid dog it is today. I doubt the Chinese would agree with me but then Communism was an experiment they suffered under considerably more than the rape of Nanking and nobody talks about that too much in the People's Republic.

Jay Weidner on Stanley Kubrik, Saturn & Alchemy,


Time Monk Radio tend to ask more cerebral questions than some of the radio hosts. The first segment is straight up Stanley Kubrick including why he had to change 2001 Space Odyssey from exposing Saturns's influence on  planet Earth to Jupiter. He also talks about that Chi energy issue I mentioned earlier.

Those ideas most repressed are likely close to the truth.

Monday 20 June 2011

Large Fluoridated Soda, McTerror Burger & Conspiracy Fries Please.


One of my Google alerts is the word conspiracy. There are two types of article it returns day in and day out. One is the kind of conspiracy where the police apprehend the criminals and prosecute them for conspiring to commit crime. The other is the unilateral, ubiquitous portrayal of a global network of amateurs as conspiracy theorists for refusing to accept the appalling decline in our priesthood, our politicians, our businessmen (it's usually men) and our generals. I could go on but the most pernicious act of consensual cowardice has been Western media's utter collapse of moral backbone to prosecute through investigative journalism the assault on human rights and human decency. There hasn't been a single media scalp since Richard Nixon and it's an irony not missed on the seekers of better explanations that the loudest of voices attacking the conspiracy realists are guilty of manufacturing consent through the conspiracy theorist calumny with mainstream and corporate media pummelling.

Out of nowhere Foreign Policy has written the first article that challenges the bland, spineless and ubiquitous iniquity peddled by the corporate controlled media. It's so unusual that I'm inclined to paste my comment below.

"Extraordinary. The first authoritive media voice to break ranks and put forward another point of view. The lap dog press parading as guard dog have unilaterally smeared every single question that a network of amateurs without direct access to the evidence demanded with the conspiracy calumny.

Like the word terrorist, has the establishment trashed their own creation? I applaud Foreign Policy for having the guts to put forward a point of view that is not to be found elsewhere"