Having seen only three of Shimizu’s films so far, the following thought crossed my mind: if Ozu’s work can frequently be reduced to intricate family dramas and the decline of the patriarchy, if Mizoguchi’s work can be described as being concerned with female explorations of modernity and, say, if Kurosawa’s work can be seen as a humanist eradication of Japanese history, Shimizu has to be the one director concerned with travel and migration and what it symbolizes for a population living in times of upheaval. I am generally wary of such sweeping characterizations, but I am fascinated by the very idiosyncratic and original feel of Shimizu’s movies and by the careful tuning of his style to his narrative flow. For there is no better way to evoke the sensation of travel (equaled with forward motion) than to have a camera that unrelentingly tracks back and forth as we move along. In Mr. Thank You, billed as being the first Japanese road movie ever made, Shimizu uses the device of the tracking shot copiously, giving us the sensation as if we were part of the travel.
The film follows the bus driver Mr. Thank You, who holds his name from the fact that he always thanks people who make way for his bus when he overtakes them on the road, and various passengers. There is no goal-driven narrative, no story so to speak, the film is comprised of small vignettes and character moments. We never find out the names of any of the characters and in most cases we don’t know where they travel to or why, with the exception of a 17-year old girl on her way to the capital where she is to be sold into prostitution by her mother who accompanies her. There is another young girl on the bus, dressed in modern clothes, who may or may not be a prostitute herself and who warns the 17-year old that Tokyo is full of “badgers and sly foxes”. But the 17-year old has no choice. Her family is poor and selling herself is the only way for her to get by.
This is where the larger theme of the film emerges. Under the cheerful surface of the movie lies a serious consideration of a poverty-ridden Japan struck by recession, where workers are forced to travel long distances to find badly paid work and where young people have it especially hard. “Young girls don’t smile anymore” says a sleazy man on the bus, and another one remarks: “it’s bad to have kids now”. The passengers constantly talk about how better it was in the past (drivers were more considerate, girls smiled, etc.) and it is one of Shimizu’s achievements with Mr. Thank You that he is able to make potent political observations by having his characters talk about seemingly trivial things. The recession is hardly mentioned specifically, the hardship of the rural migrant workers is never really alluded to, and the 17-year old’s mother eventually tells everyone that they are visiting relatives in Tokyo so as to not embarrass her daughter. Shimizu let’s the character’s situations speak for themselves, and simply shows us the dichotomy between the bus (sign of technological advancement) and various carriages, coaches and wagons creeping along the dusty country roads (not to mention all the people who travel by foot, and even chickens who Arigato-San dutifully thanks as well for letting him drive passed them) without insisting on it. In this context, it only makes sense that the film ends before the bus ever reaches Tokyo. The capital remains a symbol – for modernity, poverty, despair, but also for prosperity and, strangely, hope.
As mentioned, tracking shots are the main stylistic ingredient of the movie. Shimizu uses what can only be described as point-of-view shots of the bus approaching someone on the road. As they move to the side in order for the bus to overtake them, we fade to a point-of-view shot of the rear of the bus, pulling away from that person, as we hear Mr. Thank You shout "Arigato!" Shimizu uses this device countless times and it is the linking element between the various episodes inside the bus. There, Shimizu uses 180 degree reverse cutting almost exclusively, but the action never seems stagey or claustrophobic. By simply positioning his camera on different points on a vertical axis, the director creates enough variety that we are never bothered by the contrivance of the bus interior. Come to think of it, the forward and backward tracking shots could be described as 180 degree reverse cutting as well, making it Shimizu's chief editing technique in this movie, although he hadn't used it as systematically in the two films I discussed earlier.
With every Shimizu movie I see I become more eager to explore further. I only wish more of his work was available.
0 comments:
Post a Comment