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JAPON
4/10
aka Japan : Mexico/Spain 2002 : Carlos Reygadas : 122-147 mins
It’s
standard practice to describe certain directors as ‘influential’, but
what isn’t often acknowledged is that this kind of influence can as often
be negative as positive. Quentin Tarantino famously ‘influenced’ many
young film-makers of the mid- and late-nineties, but few would argue that
cinemagoers were consequently any better off. What they took from Pulp
Fiction wasn’t the script’s audacious formal experimentation – they
just stole the idea of having comic gangsters exchanging pop-culture smalltalk
along with their bullets.
Mexican
writer-director Carlos Reygadas could never be accused of being a ‘Taranteenie’,
of course – like the protagonist of his debut, Japon, he’s aiming
for much higher ground. Though there are generous dollops of Werner Herzog
in there, it’s clear he’s been watching more Andrei
Tarkovsky than is good for him – or us. Moments after a title-card
revealing the name of one of the production companies as ‘Solarisfilm’,
Reygadas’s first shots are so accurate a ‘quotation’ from the Osaka-highway
section of Solaris itself
that you have to check the frame to make sure there are no Japanese signs
on view, and that Reygadas hasn’t simply spliced in a section from Tarkovsky.
But
as Japon slowly unfolds – and, despite around 25 minutes having
been trimmed for international release, it unfolds extremely slowly
– it becomes clear that Reygadas has appropriated elements of Tarkovsky’s
style, but very little of his substance. Solaris, Andrei
Rublev, Stalker
and The Sacrifice
are hardly breezy viewing experiences – but the Russian maestro invariably
scatters his films enough magical, transcendent images and events to ensure
audiences will bear with him during all the surrounding slower patches.
He’s also careful to place all of this within a reasonably coherent structure
to support his weighty philosophical ambitions. Reygadas, however, seems
to think it’s enough to train his camera at some spectacular landscape
and play some stately, atmospheric classical music, and that, by some
cinematic alchemy, art will result.
His
‘plot’ could easily be accommodated within a 15-minute short - no less
than three editors are credited, Reygadas presumably reckoning
they’d feud among themselves and thus allow Japon to ooze beyond
the two-hour mark. A man in his sixties (Alejandro Ferretis) travels from
the city to a remote mountainous region of plateaus and valleys, where
he intends to kill himself. He moves in with Ascen (Magdalena Flores),
a religious widow in her eighties, and the pair strike up a flinty but
productive friendship. Part of Ascen’s house is to be demolished by a
rapacious relative. Her lodger makes some feeble attempts to intervene,
but these prove unsuccessful. Tragedy ensues.
But
Japon doesn’t concern itself too much with specific narrative events
– it wants to be about moods and atmospheres, gestures and attitudes,
communication without words. Reygadas’s goal is enigma: with grinding
predictability, our hero is never named – he’s referred to in the end
credits simply as “El Hombre.” Likewise, there’s no reference to ‘Japon’
(Mexican for ‘Japan’) anywhere – in interview, Reygadas has suggested
it’s something to do with the Rising Sun representing Rebirth, but one
would struggle to make such a connection from the film itself.
As
such statements suggest, Japon is a tedious, pretentious piece
of work – and, as such, has of course been hailed as a masterpiece in
certain quarters. To be fair, there are some good things here:
Magdalena Flores is a welcome oasis of no-nonsense energy, even if what
Ascen is required to do in the latter stages is more a result of Reygadas’
graceless intellectual caprices than anything to do with plausible character
development. Diego Martinez Vignatti’s cinematography is first-rate, his
mountainous images recalling Herzog’s dreamy Teutonic landscapes from
Heart of Glass
(a work no less rewarding for being quite astonishingly soporific).
But,
presumably goaded by Reygadas, Vignatti's final shot strains so desperately
at being a tour de force that it goes, quite literally, off the rails
- criminally wasting Arvo Part's 'Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten',
which, of course, we hear in its full seven-minute version. Reygadas'
most unforgivable lapse, however, is his on-camera treatment of animals
(one recalls Tarkovsky's unacceptably harrowing treatment of a horse in
Andrei Rublev). In interviews, Reygadas has defended himlself by making
specious claims that Japon represents how close country people are to
their local fauna. We're supposed to take this as justification for the
moment when, barely minutes in, there's scene in which a wounded bird
is decapitated before our eyes. Reygadas cuts to the severed head, still
blinking and moving its beak - it's all too clear that no special effects
have been employed, and many viewers will be tempted to walk out, even
at this early point. They wouldn't be missing much.
24th August, 2002
(seen 16th, Filmhouse Edinburgh – Edinburgh
Film Festival)
For all the
reviews from the 2002 Edinburgh Film Festival
click here.
by Neil
Young
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