Inexplicable

The Eel is a story of a man returning to society after 8 years in prison for killing his wife. He starts working as a barber in a small rural town, meeting colorful characters and spending most of his time talking to his pet eel. This is the first time I have watched an Imamura film and since I have considerable knowledge of the work of other Japanese directors of his time and after his time, I want to ask a question that has always intrigued me: What is it about the long takes and the wide angles and the natural light that suits the storytelling and the narrative structure of most Japanese films so efficiently and beautifully and why do I love it so much?
 
Let’s start with the extract that I saw in class. It’s very intelligent the way Imamura started the first sequence of the film. The first three or four shots work as establishing shots for the working district of Tokyo and then we see our Main Character but not prominently. He’s afar amongst the crowd. Now, people from Japan who know Koji Yakusho would immediately know who’s the main character, but I also believe that through well-designed composition, even though he is far and even though there are many other people in the frame it is quite apparent who is the protagonist. This is something I have noticed with Japanese directors that they have quite a unique grasp on the composition of a wide shot because they don’t tend to use it like other Hollywood directors. I’ve always been fascinated with how the Japanese working life is depicted in Nihon films. It’s a common trope of Japanese films from that time and yes it’s a no-brainer to show him in a way that sends the message to us audience members in an instant that he is just a cog in the machine and anyone else boarding that train could have gotten that same letter. Then comes the letter reading scene in which there’s a frame within a frame. I love this shot because it tells us a lot about the thought process of Yamashita. It’s the initial stages. Now, from a storytelling point of view ridding this whole sequence of any voiceovers (which come later in the film) is a brilliant move. What Imamura is left with is the visual medium through which must he show us the decision that Yamashita makes later so that it’s expected but also inevitable (I truly believe shock and expectation are two very different things in film language) and that is where the climb comes in – the short scene of him walking up the road. Brilliant and yet subtle. Someone else might have shot it differently showing close-ups of Yamashita for us to really get into the mindset of the character, probably using more of a Kuleshov approach. But I remember once Takeshi Kitano saying in an interview that Japanese people don’t express their emotions that much. So, one should find an organic way to incorporate the environment as the mindscape of the character. It’s a simplistic and instinctual approach that often is disregarded in modern films. Japanese directors have always been instinctual and that is evident from the fishing scene. Yamashita didn’t stay home – hiding and waiting for the guy to come, he actually went fishing. Everything before that, him saying hi to his wife, him getting ready to go fishing  – our eyes are glued to his wife. And the shots are designed in a way that makes us look around more. We are looking at her face like idiots as if we will find something on her face that verifies the letter. So, keeping that in mind – the fishing scene is like a comma to the whole sequence. It’s not interesting to see the start of the sex nor will it have a greater impact on Yamashita to make him kill his wife. So, it’s both practical and efficient. But also instinctual – he said he will go to fish and he does it. Speaking of the sex scene, I am interested in the length of it. It’s just perfect. It reminds me of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human. There’s a similar scene in it and it is really necessary that cheating scenes like that are shot with the person being cheated on in the dark and the person who is cheating in the light and a tunnel that connects them, in this case, the window. It’s another trope of the Netorare Genre (Netorare is Japanese for cuckolding, but it means much more than the English word). And finally, the look of the wife – that calm and serene look is what differentiates the directing style of Imamura from other directors. At that point of the sequence, you want to know how the wife feels – an “it’s not what it looks like” scene – but instead you get another peak inside Yamashita’s mind as a reflexive emotion from his wife. Because it is his story. He is the protagonist. 
 
When I watched the whole film, I could see that the directors who came after Imamura were heavily influenced by him. Particularly – Takeshi Kitano. Being a big of fan of Kitano and having watched all of his films, I can safely say that there is an inherent stillness in Imamura’s films that is also present in Kitano’s films. The side characters are similar as well. Acting in his own films, Kitano always gave himself very few lines but the characters in his films are very active and talkative and that comparison somehow reflects on him – something he perfected. The colours are quite similar as well., For me, blue and green are the colours I associate with Japanese films and I think the reason for that is the character that is present in all Japanese films – The Ocean. This brings me to another aspect of the film which is the representation of rural Japan. I think certain directors have a tendency to look at things from outside making them seem extraordinarily unique which is not a bad thing but also sometimes undercuts the main emotion. Here, I’m talking about the fishing scenes of this film, being from rural India myself, I know and can do most of the unique fishing techniques that are in the film and one thing that made me like the film so much is that it didn’t dwell on explaining a lot about the environment and these actions that the characters were doing and this is again tied to the insistence of staying always a bit far away from the characters and the actions. Seeing these films and being a fan of Japanese films in general my eyes might have been trained to home in on the action during these long takes but sometimes I feel like I want to watch them again with no prior judgment. When the camera moves a lot along with the characters, there’s a sense of urgency be it as diminished as it can be but when the camera is still with the occasional pan and tilt and characters are moving around a lot – the feeling of being an audience is different in a way that makes you feel you’re inside the frame standing right where the camera is and watching this whole thing unfold and that’s where the magic happens. 
 
In conclusion, to answer “why I love this style of filmmaking so much?” – I like things which look simple but are extremely intricate and finely designed. I would love to work for years on something if it meant it also might look like it was made yesterday. I find a kinship with the sensibilities that the Japanese people hold and the parallels between India and Japan are immense. The way we communicate might be different, but the social structure and the hierarchy are the same.