Father
Released in 1988, directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
This seems to be a bad movie, although the exact vector of its badness is unclear. It might be a parody of bad movies (but of bad movies I’m unfamiliar with); it might be an exercise in irony; it might be transgressing certain cinematic rules in order to make a point; or, something may have gone wrong in the process of making it. It is not however a standard bad movie. It is cruel and ramshackle – these are standard – but it has also has a dazed, high-fever quality, a determination to avoid the point and to see the world in the stupidest possible positive light, or the most positive possible stupid light, that sets it apart; and I think I liked parts of it, the parts where the least happened (but I did not like the entire thing). I should also say before going on that the film contains a sub-plot about a black man trying to make it as a Japanese pop singer, and that this is not treated with anything like the necessary thoughtfulness and empathy.
Kinoshita’s first film came out in 1943; he worked a heavily parodic style in his early years and then later became very stylistically diverse; Father was his last film, although he lived another ten years after releasing it. It presents episodes in the life of a small family: Kikutaro, the father; Matsu, the mother; and Daijiro, their son. Kikutaro and Matsu do not love each other. Kikutaro seems impossible to love: he’s a garish cartoon, hustling and bullying, obsessed with get-rich-quick schemes which, in an odd touch, are not only unlikely but actually insane. Matsu is well-coiffed and practical; she runs a small cozy bar, and is considering an affair. They divorce. There’s no question that Daijiro – who narrates the film – is on the side of his mother, and he goes to live with her while, post-divorce, she opens a Spanish restaurant; Kikutaro drops out of sight to travel the world. Yet Daijiro retains a fondness and a longing for his father, a suite of feelings so deeply unjustified that, as time passes in the film and Daijiro grows into adulthood, we begin to see him as naïve, and then almost as clownish. When, during a late scene, Daijiro thinks he spies his father in a crowd and runs towards him, and we are treated to a slow-motion view of his desperate joy, it’s so silly that it’s a little uncomfortable, like a joke at the expense of someone too sincere to take it.
The aesthetic practice of doing the wrong thing is compelling to me, and this film does many things wrong. For example, it’s often held that scenes should have a point, but many scenes in Father have no point. The lack of point generates a certain tension, as you watch, very slightly breathless, waiting for a point to appear; but having ratcheted the tension up the scenes simply continue, pointless, loosening into formlessness. Over time larger networks of pointlessness become evident; there is a recurring bit about some sort of land dispute that is just – chef’s kiss – narrative nihilism. Donald Richie posits that Japanese films of the classical era have, in contrast with their Western counterparts, a tendency to let scenes play to their natural conclusion - rather than cutting away once the necessary plot beat has been achieved - even if doing so means that there is narrative dead time. Father, while being quite short, takes this concept to architectonic extremes,
Kinoshita is a director who during his career played with Sirkian ideas of patently fake surfaces which conceal real feeling. His The Ballad of Narayama is an aching, fully sincere drama about large and sad themes, set among studio sets that make no effort to conceal their artificiality (see here for an excellent discussion). But to fully relax into the pleasure of artful lapses, you do in general need to trust in the artful part; otherwise you’re watching The Room - although Father doesn’t, despite the remonstrations above, reach that level of art brut. There is a lot of refinement here, mixed in with the garish characterizations and dead-end plotting – enough for the solecisms to take on a mysterious quality. You aren’t sure if there’s a veil but you want to pierce it. The aura of mystery is deepened by the fact that it’s impossible to find much information about the film online in English. The very few contemporaneous reviews treat it as a mildly diverting, normal comedy, which is inexplicable. I would definitely pay money for a commentary track by Kinoshita’s ghost, although I think the result might be a little sad.
NOTES
The soundtrack for the film is very, very similar to Ravel’s Bolero, but is not, presumably for copyright reasons, actually Ravel’s Bolero.
I couldn’t find any stills for this film online, and so the image above is of Kinoshita from earlier in his career.
