Japanese director Nagisa Oshima once famously said, “My hatred for Japanese cinema includes absolutely all of it.” Harsh words, but compared to contemporaries like Kurosawa and Ozu (whom Oshima regarded as servers of unchallenging product to the status quo), Oshima’s work was politically and socially radical, his use of explicit sexuality downright potent. “I’m a country farmer; Nagisa Oshima is a samurai,” proclaimed fellow director Shohei Imamura.
Once among the most celebrated international filmmakers, Oshima has languished in relative obscurity in recent decades, best known to the occasional horny teenager who unwittingly rents In the Realm of the Senses. Cinematheque Ontario hopes to change that with their month-long retrospective “In the Realm of Oshima,” beginning in Toronto on October 31, soon to tour across the continent. It is an invaluable chance to revisit a great filmmaker.
Oshima’s early works are his most pointedly political. Death By Hanging (VVVVv) begins with a botched execution, leaving a convicted murderer alive but with no memory of his crimes. Beginning as a conventional docudrama, it evolves into something more surreal before a blisteringly political climax. Boy (VVVVv), one of his most intimate and affecting films, follows a poor family reduced to faking auto accidents to collect money. Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (VVV), with its copious nudity and frank dialogue, was among the most sexually explicit Japanese films of its time. Unrelentingly bleak and maddeningly edited, this film is both an intriguing time capsule and a frustratingly impenetrable experiment in the style of later Jean-Luc Godard. Repeated viewings are a must.
Oshima took his increasing interest in explicit sexuality to its logical extension with In the Realm of the Senses (VVVVV), a film notorious for being among the first non-pornographic releases to contain actual intercourse. As it follows the love affair between a wealthy man and his maid in pre-war Japan, the film is sometimes condemned as mere pornography, but the unsimulated sex heightens its blunt intensity. The relationship turns into sexual obsession, and the emotion Oshima evokes is startling. Aside from its status as a masterpiece, certain film buffs see In the Realm of the Senses just to experience the infamous egg scene. (Don’t ask.)
Empire of Passion/In the Realm of Passion (VVVVv) was marketed as a sequel, and it once again follows an illicit sexual relationship in pre-war Japan. When a man forces his mistress to kill her husband, they are disappointed to find themselves haunted by his ghost. (I hate it when that happens.) Oshima won the Best Director prize at Cannes, and his work here is particularly atmospheric.
With newfound clout from his previous two features, Oshima mounted a few international co-productions late in his career, notably Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, a WWII film starring Takeshi Kitano and David Bowie, no less. Of his later films, Max Mon Amour (VVVv) initially seems to be an anomaly. Set in an affluent Parisian suburb, a British couple (Anthony Higgins and Charlotte Rampling) enjoy a respectable upper-class existence, until Higgins discovers that Rampling is having an affair with a chimpanzee named Max. (This time, Oshima mercifully keeps the sex off-screen.)
Max’s flat, unremarkable cinematography and editing are in stark contrast to the stylistic experimentation of Oshima’s previous work, but they effectively heighten the deadpan absurdity of the premise, which takes Oshima’s preoccupation with gender and sexual politics to strange new extremes. It’s a tough joke to maintain for over 90 minutes, but Oshima confounds expectations by ending on a weirdly upbeat note that plays like a parody of the live-action Disney movies of the 1970s. What is he up to?
A well-known columnist and TV personality in Japan, Oshima’s cinematic output declined after Max, and a massive stroke in 1996 seemed to quash any hope of a comeback. Yet to everyone’s surprise, the director came out of retirement for *Gohatto/Taboo (VVVV)
*, a poetic film about a gay samurai in feudal Japan. Kitano stars as a tolerant general, and his staid screen presence enhances the film’s sense of repression and melancholy. If Gohatto turns out to be Oshima’s last film, as most predict it will be, the legend will have gone out on a high note.
