Mystery Train

So I often spend a lot of time watching movies made by cinematic industries outside the U.S. (I guess the regular genre tag for that is 'foreign films' but 'world cinema' seems more apt and 100% less U.S. chauvinism), but decided I should start watching movies by directors from the U.S. that I keep hearing about, one of which is Jim Jarmusch. Jarmusch is however pretty intertwined with sensibilities outside of the U.S., Japanese directors like Ozu and Mizoguchi, he has ties to Nicholas Ray who is sort of the American darling of at least 60s French cinephiles if not most cinephiles, he knows Claire Denis who is another "everything I hear is amazing I should watch her director", etc. He seems like the product of various cinematic traditions but brought back to look at America in particular, and he's from Ohio which is like probably more than Ohio deserves. So I decided to start with a movie of his that a friend recommended, Mystery Train.

Mystery Train is a triptych of stories, "Far From Yokohama", "Ghost Story", and "Lost in Space", each centering around someone from outside the U.S. who arrive in Memphis and spend the night there (teen

Japanese tourists, a recently widowed Italian woman, and a laid-off British immigrant). Their stories all take place the same night and are tied together by the same hotel, run by Screamin' Jay Hawkins with the help of a bell hop played by Cinqué Lee. Hawkins and Lee have the same few scenes repeated across each segment as well as different ones for each, most of which are just amusing little things such as Hawkins' stealing a plum given to Lee, Lee hitting the iron bug statue with a fly swatter, or the ongoing debate about how awful Lee's bellhop hat is. They're just the sort of anchoring presences and location for all three stories in the film, not much is revealed about them at any point during the film. There's also a gunshot at daybreak in all three stories, which isn't really explained until the last story.

"Far From Yokohama" is based around Mistuko (Youki Kudoh) and Jun (Masatoshi Nagase) and their trip to Memphis, specifically to see Graceland and the Sun Records studios. Mitsuko is the more Elvis-obsessed

 of the pair and she jokingly (probably) thinks Elvis' face is present in statues of the Buddha, the Statue of Liberty, and Madonna. Jun spends most of the trip saying how he prefers Carl Perkins, and in general their relationship is marked by a contrast between her enthusiasm and his stoicism, most obviously during a scene in the hotel room where she makes faces and smears lipstick on Jun's face, asking him if he's happy now, to which he responds "I was already happy." There's also some discussion of the differences between Yokohama and Memphis, with the two of them swapping opinions on whether or not Memphis is just like Yokohama "if you took parts of it away". The visit to Sun Records and the differing ways of enjoying blues, Mitsuko's enthusiasm for an icon and Jun's more directly emulating a detached coolness and rockabilly hairstyle, is sort of the general atmosphere of their segment, a love of the music of the area they're visiting but with none of the bewilderment (Ghost Story) or historical ties and anxieties (Lost in Space) of the other stories.

"Ghost Story" is the story of an Italian widow Luisa (Nicoletta Braschi) who is transporting her husband's coffin back to Rome, but has to overnight in Memphis. She walks through the streets in a way similar to Mitsuko and Jun from part one, even passing the same lot at one point, but her path is a little different, as she stops at a store to buy a newspaper and is cajoled into buying some magazines, and then stops at the diner just across the street from the hotel. That's where the first "ghost story" happens, when she's told a story by a
fairly creepy looking man about how he picked up the ghost of Elvis by the side of the road. She gives him money despite not believing the story, only for him and his friend to follow her as she decides to go into the hotel to hide from them. As they start to follow her you can really notice a frequent tracking shot of character's as they walk, as Braschi is foregrounded while the men creep along behind her further in the background, and these sorts of close-ups around a character sort of make me think of the extremely long tracking of actors in Mizoguchi or Ophuls movies maybe more like the latter since Mizoguchi's are often a lot further away. Anyways, she ducks into the hotel where she spends the night with Dee Dee (Elizabeth Bracco), who has just left her boyfriend but can't afford a room on her own. She goes to sleep after Dee Dee finally stops talking only to wake up to a visit from the ghost of Elvis. The visit is pretty brief and then it cuts to Dee Dee waking up to discover Luisa still awake not having slept at all. I don't really know what to say about the Elvis apparition, it fits with the general preoccupation with mourning and a widow and I suppose the sinister pair of men are a part of the creepy hauntedness of Memphis, but more likely they are just meant to be standard street harassing creeps if not worse, and the one is just taking advantage of the spookiness of the city for outsiders. This feels like a representation of what Memphis and sort of Americana are like for someone foreign to it but not in love with it, sort of haunted by the ghosts of celebrity past.

The third segment, "Lost in Space", is about Johnny (Joe Strummer), the boyfriend of Dee Dee from the second segment, who has just been laid off. It opens on him drinking in a black-owned bar called Shades (seen earlier in the film closed during the day) with is co-worker and maybe friend Ed (Vondie Curtis-Hall) getting incredibly drunk and starting to pick fights with his black co-workers who refer to him as Elvis due to his hair. The racial tensions in this scene are pretty on the surface as Johnny is upset they call him Elvis while his co-workers seem to be mostly irritated and confused why he's mad (he attempts to parallel it by saying he doesn't call them "Sam & Dave" the name of a 60s R&B duo but the one man replies "My name is Dave"
leaving him looking just rude and silly). It feels, and the later events sort of back it up, that he's upset to now be a part of the history of American racism, even if the people calling him "Elvis" don't really seem to be doing it out of any sort of malice despite how rude he is. Johnny also pulls out a revolver and mimes killing himself, but Ed stops him and Johnny gives the gun to the bartender. Ed calls Johnny's friend Will Robinson (Rick Aviles) and his "brother-in-law" Charlie (Steve Buscemi), who take Johnny out of the bar, along with his revolver. Charlie and Will were both shown earlier in the film, Charlie at his barbershop trying to fix the pole in "Far From Yokohama" and Will swearing at his broken-down truck in "Ghost Story". Johnny convinces them to stop at liquor store, at which Johnny and Charlie go in first to buy the booze while Will checks on the truck again. As they purchase the booze Will comes in and looks at a couple of bottles, only to be told to stop by the owner who refers to Will with the N-word and says "you have to watch them all the time man" to Johnny. This prompts Johnny to threaten the man with the gun, and then shoot him. This again feels like a moment where Johnny is upset at being included in the scheme of American racism and in this case reacts by shooting a man, an action which for Will and Charlie seems like a clear overreaction. They end up driving around all night drinking after shooting, ending up at the hotel where it's revealed Screamin Jay Hawkins' character is Will's brother-in-law. They spend the night in a dilapidated room, where they keep drinking and have a discussion about how Will's name is the same as the boy's in "Lost in Space", which leads to Will saying he feels "Lost in Space" with them (two white guys esp. Johnny/Elvis who got him involved in a shooting) to which Johnny responds "We didn't ask to be white". Johnny is also upset about the sheer amount of Elvis memorabilia at the hotel, as its more evidence of a sort of racist version of American music history too. At this point the fact Johnny and Dee Dee broke up is revealed to Charlie, as well as the fact they never got married. When morning comes the gunshot heard in the previous two segments is revealed to be Johnny accidentally shooting Charlie in the leg as Charlie wrestles with him for the gun when he attempts to kill himself. I would say this segment, which is sort of the longest and definitely the most plotted, is where a foreigner (Johnny) is caught up in a part of America's past and legacy that he definitely doesn't want to be, American racism. This isn't to say there isn't British racism as obviously there is, but the character seems upset at being included by white Americans into their particular brand of it, or the casual comments of his co-workers meaning he could be. It also definitely comments on the uses of Elvis in the first two parts as for Jun and Mitsuko Elvis is the subject of a music debate and for Luisa just a strange American obsession, while for Johnny he represents all of the stuff about America he doesn't want to be a part of.

The movie ends with the various characters leaving Memphis by train, plane and truck respectively, and the credits are inter-cut with shots of the train moving along the tracks. All in all this is definitely one of my favorite movies I've seen in a while, just in terms of the film-making itself, the subject matter, the way each segment seems put together to visually represent the respective attitudes to America showcased in each, it's just a really great movie, and I'll definitely be watching more Jarmusch in the future.

Contempt/Le Mépris

So I started with a movie that I thought was really powerful and like not easily summed up and that I think everyone should see, and I'm going to follow it with a movie that I suppose was intended to be very tough to summarize and that everyone is told to see, which is Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt. I have only seen a few Godard films, not even any of the alleged "must-sees" like Week-end or Pierrot le Fou, and my experience of them has been pretty uneven. They're divided into two sort of camps for me which are interesting and not-as-sexist (Une Femme est Une Femme, Vivre sa Vie) and not-as-interesting and more sexist (A Married Woman, Band of Outsiders). I am possibly being ungenerous to A Married Woman because maybe it is a critique of bourgeois married life or something I don't know but I am struggling to remember any details of it besides lots of disembodied parts of a woman and I don't think the man during a sex scene and shots of lingerie and make up and I don't know it was just very blah. Anyways, Contempt is definitely in the latter camp.

Contempt follows a scriptwriter Paul, played by Michel Picolli, and his wife Camille played by Brigitte Bardot, and the decline of their marriage as Paul is hired by an American executive played by Jack Palance, to write a script for a movie directed by Fritz Lang played by himself. Now, I really like Fritz Lang, I watched M and the Mabuse movies and Metropolis forever ago, and would probably still like them as much. And the fights between Lang and the executive are pretty great and I can see how doing a movie about a director who Godard loves as much as Lang would be a great opportunity. And the film itself often looks really interesting, the first meeting with Palance at the studio where he emerges from the studio as if he were emerging to address an adoring crowd works really great with his megalomania and the sort "it's all about the money" philosophy he's supposed to incarnate. And the shots in the villa with the sneaking around and walking up to the roof, the watching Lang make the movie, there's lots of things in the movie that are interesting to see, and if the movie had focused solely on Lang and the film, or to be honest just been a film starring Lang making a movie and fighting Palance, it would have been great.

It however is also about the disintegrating marriage, and Camille eventually leaving Paul for Palance's character and that is probably the worst part of the film, as it equates Camille I suppose to Paul's artistic integrity and I don't know, is meant to make use of Bardot's already established sexual "it girl" thing to sell the film and maybe be a discussion of commercial vs. artistic nudity/sexuality? I assume there was some standard level of nudity required because there is a lot of it, from the very beginning where she asks him what his favorite parts of her are to just in general a lot of scenes with her naked and him clothed. In general it just comes off as being very much the same sort of two men one woman scenario that happened in Une Femme est Une Femme (but not as light and definitely feels much less sympathetic to the woman) and Band of Outsiders except with a lot more emphasis on sexualizing the woman of the triangle. Sure there is nudity in Femme and like I would probably categorize as the same sort of titillating, but it is definitely less sort of deliberate as in Mepris. The worst one is probably one of the ones that seems the most "actually I am subverting the use of nudity",  the long lingering shot while Paul has an internal monologue about their fights, of a naked reclining Brigitte Bardot on some white rug I think it was. Now I know Bardot was that sort of like swinging 60s' sexual icon or something but the ways in which her body gets put on display during the crumbling marriage scenes, where she is a backdrop while Paul thinks, the fact she runs off with Palance who is the incarnation of Commercial Interests and then dies in a car crash do not really make me feel like the film is really interested in women's bodies or feelings beyond how they relate to a male artist's.



Also note the famous Bardot-in-a-wig scenes where she is supposed to look like Anna Karina, and the apparently very common reading that Paul and Camille is really Jean-Luc and Anna, and that her dying with the man representing commercialism could be a not super veiled comment on the strains in their marriage. I don't know the details of their marriage at the time but it seems like a gross thing to kill off an analogue of your wife, even if for some sort of "artistic purpose" reason.

So in general I think there are interesting film discussions and some interesting stuff to look at (less of the like 'let's do something technically intrusive and sort of random' stuff that I feel like often occurs in other Godard movies I've seen) but, and maybe it's the fault of the original Moravia novel, the whole parallel marriage plot just comes off as being entirely about the man and the woman is only there to be an analogue to his artistic creativity and then to die. This movie and Band of Outsiders are why I haven't watched another Godard movie yet, I suppose I might try Masculin Feminin but who knows.

Also like I did not know about Brigitte Bardot's morphing into a bizarre far-right demagogue until I looked up more about her for this post, and I am tempted to like align it with the politics of a sort of hetero sexual liberation world of the 60s and how it is part of the French "politics of the veil" debates, but it is probably just standard French racism and nationalism.

The Human Condition/Ningen No Joken

So for a first post on the recently refurbished and hopefully to be reborn blog, I've decided to write about a film that deserves more attention or that at least demanded a lot of mine, Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition. This is a film that a lot of people probably haven't watched due to its length, which clocks in at over 9 hours if you treat it as a single continuous narrative. The film is actually broken up into three 3 to 3 1/2 hour parts, and was made with that in mind, so it can be viewed as 3 separate films or one large one, for the purposes of this post I want to talk about the film as one large work rather than as a trilogy. This may mean a particularly long first post, as the amount to talk about in each single film is humongous, let alone the themes and structures that recur in all of them.

The narrative itself is taken from a novel by Jumpei Gomikawa, and is the record of the life of Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai), a man who attempts to hold on to his ideals in WWII Japan, struggling not only with the overwhelming forces of imperialism and militarism among his peers but also with his own compromises and self-described hypocrisy.

The most barebones description of the monumental plot is that it chronicles the life of Kaji, a humanist and socialist who makes various compromises with his beliefs in the very beginning of the film, some that even cost people their lives, but who remains committed to the at times painful path he has chosen, as well as to his wife Michiko (Michiyo Aratama)
.

A plot summary for all three films would be incredibly long, and also I don't want to spoil the film's details, or don't feel qualified to really do justice to all of them myself. But a summation could be that Kaji becomes a supervisor at a labor camp in occupied Manchuria, is unable to realize his ideals or adequately do his work as a member of a brutal occupying force, and his attempt to live halfway between the two only results in his being drafted, as well as the execution of three men among them Kao, a young man who Kaji attempted to prove to that he "wasn't like the rest of them". He then attempts to survive in the army while trying to create some space devoid of brutal corporal punishment, yet never deserts because of his commitment to Michiko. When Manchuria is seized and most of his own unit wiped out, Kaji becomes part of a wandering group who meet various survivors of Japan's colonial project, both innocent victims and vicious opportunists. Eventually he ends up a captive in a Soviet prison camp, only to eventually escape and wander the snows, talking to a Michiko of his own imagination.


The film is incredibly bleak, but that is fitting considering its structure. In attempting to sort of encapsulate it for a blog post I've had to leave out so many secondary characters and plotlines: Kaji's co-workers and fellow soldiers, the Chinese prisoners and the comfort women, the sole surviving civilian of a group met by Kaji's band (a young Japanese prostitute), the civilians who died and how they died, the village of women met shortly before their captor, Kaji's various friends such as the general or the two different soldiers who defect to the Soviets, not to mention his young fellow soldier Terada. All of these lives are the background of Kaji's story, and the inability of his single narrative to really do them all justice, and his inability to save those among them who deserve saving (Kao, his recruits, the young woman Kirihara murders, the prostitute who gives her life warning them of an ambush) are an exploration of both the consequences of his own choices as well as simply the limits of his single human life. As Kaji says in part one, "I cannot help being Japanese, yet it is the greatest crime that I am." He cannot control the circumstances of his birth as a member of a colonial power, and his attempts to mediate rather than choose between two options, only result in tragedy. It's not only a powerful use of a single human life to examine the entirety of a historical period, enough material for volumes, but also a searing depiction of how intentions do not change the consequence of choices, Kaji himself narrating to an imaginary Michiko in part III how his situation is the price he must pay for the relevant comfort they enjoyed at the expense of Chinese labor in part I.

Throughout the film his relationship to Michiko is paralleled by the lives of men and women, particularly Kao and the comfort woman he loved, a soldier who commits suicide from bullying and his wife, the women of the village who have lost their husbands and spend the night with Kaji's soldiers. Some of these comparisons serve to illustrate the relative structural privileges inherent in Kaji's and Michiko's lives, such as how they can be together during the war that separates Kao and Chun Lan, whereas others serve to illustrate Kaji's devotion to Michiko even when it is almost certain they will never meet again, such as the treatment of women by the misogynist if not rapist Japanese camp manager or soldiers.

Visually what is most obvious about the film are the vast landscapes, which often dwarf Kaji and Michiko as much as the various forces around them do. These are most obvious during some of the climactic moments in the ending of each film, the such as Kaji and Michiko's embrace after he learns of the draft, his wandering the devastated battlefield of the border, and finally his last moments in the snow.

I don't really think I've done justice to this film, or even just one of its individual parts, but I recommend you see it, it's more than worth the time and effort.