A year after completing one of the great epic achievements of epic cinema and Masaki Kobayashi was not done even a little at showing the dark side of Japanese society. The Japanese Economic Miracle had now officially begun in earnest and everybody was trying to get rich after thirteen years as a war-ravaged third world country. Though the war was over for most of Japanese society and its economy, one man was not through with showing his society how sick it was. This movie would be the last contemporary film or "Shomin-geki" by Kobayashi for 6 years. He would follow this film-up with one of his greatest–Harakiri–later that year. This a film that would set the tone of the more darker tone that emerged over the course of The Human Condition.
This story is as hardcore an allegory as Kobayashi could offer. A terrible industrialist is dying and decides to leave his fortune to his illegitimate offspring. His young wife and all his cronies decide to scheme him for as much they can. That is the movie in a nutshell. The point of the film is to show how each person sets about doing it and to analogize it for Japan at-large. This film maybe smaller in scope that The Human Condition, but it is as anti "feel good" as that film saga. There are no good people or heroic folks in this movie. It is a game of thrones of greed. Also, it is interesting to hear Toru Takemitsu doing a jazz score as oppose to a Western or Japanese classical score.
No comments:
Post a Comment