Sadao Yamanaka once said, "I do the reverse of what Pudovkin taught." Regular readers of this blog, if such exist, will recall that I discussed Pudovkin's editing technique a few weeks back. The soviet director regarded editing as "the foundation of film art." In this context, content is defined by how the shots are arranged in relation to each other. For Yamanaka, as was the case for a lot of Japanese directors in the 1930's, the shots themselves created meaning. Editing equated assembling the final product. Little esthetic work was done in the editing room. This was one of the reasons why Japanese directors were able to churn out staggering amounts of films. Post-production time was cut down by carefully planning out shots and sequences beforehand. There was a specific reason for each new shot. But mostly, careful blocking and shot compositions enabled the directors to let scenes play out in a small number of takes.
In Kochiyama Soshun, Yamanaka's second surviving film, there is one scene in which two characters bid on a small knife at an auction. They are both filmed in a medium shot showing only the two. We don't see or hear anyone else attending the auction. Yamanaka's confidence as a visual artist and the performances of both actors enable the director to hold the shot until the scene's resolution.
Kochiyama Soshun, even more than The Pot Worth A Million Ryo, is an extraordinary stylistic achievement. We miss all the flamboyance of a Mizoguchi or Kurosawa, but it's in his restraint, much like his colleague and friend Yasujiro Ozu, that Yamanaka shines bright. He predominantly uses wide angle shots employing all the depth of field. The narrow alleyways and claustrophobic interiors where the action takes place provide the perfect setting for this. Yamanaka activates the space on a vertical line. Characters frequently enter a scene from the background and make their way to the center of the frame where the action takes place and is captured in long shots. There are no reverse-angle shots in conversation that I could recall.
There is a tranquil rhythm that carries us along, a smoothness of the plot that is enhanced by the seamless succession of shots. Yamanaka also uses a lot of repetition to underline how the characters change and how they are trapped at the same time. When the plot calls for it, Yamanaka ups the ante without losing his clarity of vision. The climax of the movie involves an escape from ruthless henchmen. Characters chase each other through narrow streets and back alleys, and Yamanaka increases the suspense by accelerating the pace of the editing. The last shot of a monk trying to hold back a horde of sword swinging badasses while a stream of water erupts in the foreground of the frame is among the most poetic and most violent of the film.
Based on a famous Kabuki play by Kawatake Mokuami, Kochiyama Soshun is a genre film unlike you have ever seen one. Naojiro, a young knucklehead, steals a small but invaluable knife from a samurai and with that offsets a chain of events that eventually leads to his sister having to sell herself into prostitution, the samurai almost having to commit harakiri, his girlfriend jumping to her death and a lot of people getting killed in the climatic battle. Like in The Pot Worth A Million Ryo, an object is at the center of the narrative and structures the multiple plotlines that intertwine and add to a narrative web that gains in complexity with each new scene.
And again, the fabric of reality is put into question. Reality, which is pieced together through knowledge, is constantly negotiated between the characters as they exchange knowledge and broaden or narrow down their intellectual spectrum. When the samurai contemplates the possibility of committing harakiri if his master ever finds out that the small knife was stolen from him, the two men who bought that knife at the auction quarrel over its worth: "who could pay 10 ryos for such a trivial small knife?" asks one. "It's such a waste of money!" By showing us these two extremes, Yamanaka emphasizes once more the complexity of life. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
Yamanaka also seems interested in the malleability of reality. Time and time again, characters speak about the same things without realizing it and misunderstand each other or getting to the wrong conclusions. If the same thing can have different meanings for different persons, how can one perspective be superior to another? At one point, the samurai, contemplating his supposed harakiri, reveals that he is 53 years old. His counterpart nonchalantly tells him: "with 50, a man has already lived his life." Such is the beauty of Yamanaka's work. In one amusing one-liner he expresses several complex ideas.
Whoever said that thoughtful films can't be entertaining?
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