Even though I've reviewed several of Nagisa Oshima's earlier and subsequent films over the past several years, this brief article on Violence at Noon marks the famously transgressive Japanese director's debut on this blog. Those other reviews are hosted over on CriterionCast.com, to which I contributed my weekly Journey Through the Eclipse Series column from 2010 up until early 2014, when I finally decided that I'd covered enough (though not all) of the individual titles included in Criterion's DVD-only sideline to informally wrap up the project and focus more of my time on podcasting and staying current with this blog. But I'm now planning to mount a brief resumption of that column from time to time, as I reach Eclipse Series films that come up in my timeline. The resumption of this blog in late 2014 caused me to rewrite my rules, so now I will include any other Criterion-related films found in the Eclipse line, on Hulu Plus, iTunes, LaserDisc or any other format associated with that brand. So expect write-ups of 1966 films lik Antonioni's Blow Up, de Broca's King of Hearts and Troell's Here's Your Life in the weeks/months ahead - none of which are currently available on Criterion discs of any sort.
Anyway, sorry for the news update that has little to do with the film in question, but this is my new "bloggy" style of reviewing and commentating on movies at work here, and I can't fit all that information into a tweet, so I guess you'll have to indulge me.
Even in an era where many Japanese filmmakers were seriously intent on pressing the limits of propriety and challenging their society's reserved, some would say repressed, social norms, Oshima operated the extreme end of the spectrum. My most recent post here, on Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Face of Another, raised serious questions of the malleability of personal identity and medical ethics. Yukio Mishima's lone directorial effort Patriotism dramatically depicted the suicidal ritual of seppuku in a context emphasizing the act's erotic and political implications. Shohei Imamura leveled a jaded, cynical eye at the squalid ambitions of working class strivers in The Pornographers, and even a garish explosion of pop-cultural exuberance like Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter wove a world-weary message of disgust with the betrayal and exploitation of supposedly trustworthy authority figures in chronicling the tale of a contemporary ronin in exile from his yakuza bosses. (Side note: these are all movies released within the first half of 1966 - what an incredible season it must have been for Japanese cinephiles!)
As jarring, and in some cases even demented, as each of these films may have been, I think it's fair to say that Oshima exceeded them all in sheer outrage and amorality in Violence at Noon. (OK, I will concede that the sword 'n entrails bit in Patriotism wins the award for Biggest Visual Shock Value.) Here we have a dispassionate portrayal of Eisuke, a serial rapist and killer (based on a true story from the late 1950s in Japan) whose deadly, abusive rampage apparently began when he rescues his female friend Shino from a botched double suicide by hanging, in which her male lover died. While the man's corpse remains suspended by a rope from the limb of a tree, Eisuke sexually violates Shino, thinking she was already dead (not that his mistaken assessment justifies the subsequent act in any way.) Shino eventually wakes up, rather disoriented of course, and goes through the onslaught of conflicting emotions one is likely to feel upon discovering that that one has been both rescued and raped by the same man. Adding further levels of complication to this already incredibly depraved story line is the fact that Eisuke is involved in a loveless marriage to another woman, Matsuko, toward whom he feels mostly contempt whenever he's roused from a more general indifference. But he can't bring himself to unleash the same savage forces on his wife that he has on the women strangers that he's randomly accosted in broad daylight in their homes (hence, Violence at Noon) as opportunities present themselves. Furthermore, the two women, who each harbor some kind of twisted loyalty to the rapist/killer they claim to love, inadvertently get enmeshed in a somewhat clumsy effort to cover up Eisuke's crimes as the police start piecing together the clues and closing in on their target.
So... just articulating this summary of the general action of Oshima's film is enough to leave me feeling rather soiled of conscience and even a bit confused as to my own motive in writing about the film. Clearly, these are characters with profoundly debilitating ethical blind spots, tragically disconnected to the real-world consequences of their actions, or failures to act, as the case may be. There's nothing that I can consider to be liberating or enlightening about the struggles they go through, nothing close to virtuous about the course of life that they've embarked on, and very little that I can draw from to illuminate my own path forward from where I currently find myself in my own journey.
And yet I do find myself admiring Oshima's steely nerve and audacious technique in putting this story in front of his audience. I suppose the reality-based nature of this sad series of events provides a certain degree of legitimacy for his explorations. He's doing what he can to provide some insight as to what might drive otherwise sensible people (Matsuko is an elementary school teacher, Shino is a domestic maid who's trying to work her way into a respectable life) to support a violent, remorseless sociopath. We might even conclude that Oshima, like many other directors who focus their lens on society's dark underbellies, is doing his culture a harsh but necessary favor by reminding us all of the hideous depths to which we can sink when we find ourselves profoundly disappointed and disconnected from our fellow humans. Whether we land in the role of criminal, accomplice or mere enabler, I know without a doubt that very many fundamentally decent people have, for various reasons, found it within themselves to rationalize very horrible deeds, to the extent that they continue to proceed with their lives as if everything were normal, while they work desperately behind the surface of things to manage impulses, behaviors and circumstances that have grown far beyond their control. To the extent that watching a film like Violence at Noon can prepare us with wisdom and discernment to prevent falling into such a dire predicament, I think it serves a beneficial purpose.
As for Oshima's substantial contributions to the cinematic arts in this film, that is the territory I want to explore over on Criterion Cast, in that Journey through the Eclipse Series column I mentioned at the beginning of this essay. So my plan is to do this in dialogue with an online friend (who I hope to meet in person someday), Aaron West. Aaron is the author of the Criterion Blues blog, and I've greatly enjoyed making his acquaintance over the past several months. He recently reviewed Oshima's first "Criterion proper" release, In the Realm of the Senses, and has even more recently viewed Violence at Noon. I happened to see his mention of that film on his Twitter feed the other day, and since we watched it at just about the same moment in time, I thought it would be a perfect occasion to collaborate on reviewing this rather complex and multi-faceted film. Our method will be to correspond by email over the next several days or so, until our conversation runs its course. I'll then edit our contributions down into something neat and comprehensible, and publish it soon. I'm far from putting in my last word on Oshima's pivotal film from 1966, but this will serve as my placeholder here for now, as I prepare to move on to the other movies in my queue.
Next: Zatoichi's Pilgrimage