Sunday, June 18, 2017

Conflagration (Enjo)

At the end of Kon Ichikawa's 1958 Enjo ("Conflagration"), there are a couple of shots that I found annoying.  I think my reaction to those shots contains a key to understanding Ichikawa's film.  A young man, an acolyte or Buddhist monk-in-training, burns down a beautiful ancient pavilion.  Arrested for the crime, he refuses to speak.  While being transported by rail to another prison, the young man, Goinji Mizoguchi, breaks away from his guards and commits suicide by diving from the speeding train.  From a low-angle, we see a shot of the train thundering by, an image that emphasizes its lethal power.  Then, a long shot (the film is beautifully lensed in Daiescope, the Daie Studios proprietary wide-screen format)  shows a desolate landscape, power lines receding in the distance along the train tracks and a misty mountain at the horizon.  Mizoguchi's corpse is covered by a blanket and only his bare feet are exposed.  There is a closer shot of two policemen who are shivering in the cold and disconsolately looking down at the body.  There is a close-up of the dead man's bare feet.  Then, a reverse shot shows a big black sedan lumbering forward toward where the police are standing vigil next to the corpse.  A pile of railroad ties and other debris blocks the car so that it can not drive along the right-of-way to where the body lies.  From a high reverse angle, behind the car, we see three men emerge, one of them recognizable as a physician because he carries a doctor's bag.  There is a shot from a lower angle:  we see the three men walking along the ditch below the railroad track from the rear and, in the distance, the two policemen and the covered corpse:  The End.  As I have observed, for some reason, this closing sequence annoyed me.  The detail provided in the series of shots felt wholly unnecessary and cumulative.  We have the corpse and the shivering cops -- this establishes that Mizoguchi didn't escape but, in fact, died and that his precipitous exit from the train was suicidal.  Why do we need to see the coroner and two more officials arrive?  Their car has to be obstructed by the heap of discarded railroad ties to force the men to exit the car so that we can identify the doctor by his bag.  But the detail of the pile of railroad debris and the fact that it halts the car seems to have significance in its own right.  And what's the point of showing us an additional inquiry into Mizoguchi's death -- it's as clear as clear can be what happened to him:  an autopsy isn't likely to reveal any cause of death other than injuries caused hurling himself off the speeding train.  The peculiar detail that the dead man's feet are bare -- something that seems symbolic and non-naturalistic isn't emphasized although this is the aspect of the last scene that sticks with the viewer.  The film doesn't end with a "dying fall" -- instead, the introduction of the new characters, more police and a doctor, suggest that we are seeing the beginning of another film, the story of the inquiry into Mizoguchi's death.  Thus, the ending of the movie feels unnecessarily intricate, as if the director were setting up more scenes and more narrative and, as if the film isn't really over --but, in fact, in terms of the narrative, the movie is decisively done:  this is the end not some kind of additional development.  In fact, the film's ending like the rest of the movie is massively overdetermined -- there is too much information, too much motivation, too close an attention to details that don't serve the film's main project, Ichikawa's theme that, in an imperfect and absurd world, sometimes beauty is best preserved by being destroyed. 

Consider the crucial question of motivation:  why does Mizoguchi destroy the ancient pavilion, a small wooden pagoda set on an idyllic island in a pond draped in duckweed like something from a late painting by Monet?  The protagonist is a loner -- he has a bad stutter and has been bullied.  At the outset of the film, everyone else has been conscripted for the war effort:  presumably, Mizoguchi's stutter has saved him, but, also, resulted in his sense that he is crippled somehow, emotionally stunted and different from others.  The young man is mentored by a cheerful old monk, the abbot responsible for the temple.  The monk keeps a geisha on the side, an offense that appalls the young man.  (These are Zen Buddhist monks, apparently not required to be celibate -- some of the monks have wives and children and the hero is the son of a monk.)  Mizoguchi's has one close friend, Tsukura, but he has died.  (On this point, Ichikawa's direction is elliptical:  we see Mizoguchi talking with Tsukara about hypocrisy, then, the character disappears.  Later, Mizoguchi says that his friend is dead.  After another ten minutes of screen time, we learn the Tsukara died when a truck ran over him in Tokyo -- this is characteristic of Ichikawa's narrative strategy: frequently something is said or shown that we can't understand and, only later, do grasp the significance of these words or this incident.  Further, the narrative technique is intricate -- the film starts with Mizoguchi's arrest, then, initiates a long flashback that will last until the last ten minutes of the film.  However, there are numerous flashbacks within the main flashback so the chronology of events is sometimes uncertain.  It is clear, however, that the film's events span a decade or more.)  In one scene, we hear air raid sirens and there is fear that the American bombers will destroy the ancient pavilion.  Mizoguchi debates issues about the preservation of the pavilion during war time with his monstrous mother -- then, the film cuts abruptly to a shot of a bus stopping at the pavilion and disgorging crowds of American servicemen who are touring the temple and pavilion as tourists.  This is a startling cut and leads to a nasty scene in which Mizoguchi is instrumental in causing an abortion in a Japanese girl pregnant with the baby of her American-soldier boyfriend.  (In Mishima's source novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Mizoguchi tramples the girl's stomach intentionally to abort the child in exchange for being paid two cartons of Chesterfield cigarettes; in the film, the miscarriage occurs by accident when the protagonist throws the girl to the ground to keep her from profaning the temple pavilion.) 

Mizoguchi is a sort of Japanese Holden Caufeld:  he is upset because the abbot is a hypocrite; his mother is also a hypocrite -- we learn that she betrayed the young man's much beloved father with Mizoguchi's uncle.  The other monks or novitiates at the Temple see the pavilion as a money-making tourist attraction -- they don't seem to have any real reverence for the building and what it represents.  (At one point, the ghost of the protagonist's tubercular father appears and tells him that the pavilion represents something like heaven on earth.  The dead man's neck is twisted in an odd serpentine way and his adam's apple is prominent -- it's an eerie effect.)  When the abbot sends Mizoguchi away to college, paying his board and tuition, the novice becomes friends with another young man, the horribly crippled Togari.  Togari's mind is as crooked as his body -- he uses his affliction to seduce young women whom he, then, abuses.  Togari is like a character in a Dostoevsky novel, a sort of reverse saint of villainy, and he claims that everyone is fundamentally evil -- people are all irredeemably hypocritical.  The hero seeks solace with a prostitute but can't perform -- she's cheerful and upbeat and says that she's heard of the temple pavilion but never seen it.  So why does Mizoguchi destroy the temple:  first, he doesn't want it to change and knows that he can preserve its beauty only by burning it; second, he think all people are hypocritical and that they are unworthy of the pavilion's divine beauty; and, third, he wants to punish his mother by shaming her with his crime; and, fourth, he wants to punish the abbot for his hypocrisy; and, fifth, his evil friend, Togari, encourages him toward the crime; and, sixth, what's the point of having a beautiful temple if the only people who really enjoy it are vulgar American servicemen on weekend leave.  And, seventh,of course, as a stutterer, Mizoguchi wants to revenge himself on the world that has rejected him, and, finally, as an eighth cause, we must consider the possibility that Mizoguchi is schizophrenic and suicidal. (And I've left out imagery in the film suggesting that Mizoguchi is also obsessed by fire and may be a pyromanic.) So, of course, Mizoguchi's motives are overdetermined -- this means that film is probably very true to life, but, also, exceedingly intricate in a way that is purely cumulative:  one or two motives to burn the temple would suffice -- is it helpful to have a dozen?  (Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is derived from an actual incident that occurred in 1950 -- a Buddhist novice burned a pavilion built in 1400 and registered as a National Treasure.  The motive that the Japanese public thought caused acolyte's crime -- the so-called Herostratus syndrome, the desire to achieve fame through infamy -- is not really adduced as a cause in either Mishima's book or the film, although in reality, many people thought this factor was primary.)

There is a Zen koan relevant to this film:  "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."  In the movie, the abbot discusses another koan -- the eastern and western schools of monks disputed ownership of a beautiful cat.  Unable to solve their conflict, they approached a Zen Master.  He took a sword and beheaded the cat.  This is a difficult film, beautifully made, but exceedingly complex and, at times, dull -- the film's intense realism undercuts its interest.    

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