Depending on one's critical perspective, or even as simple a consideration as one's mood of the moment, Nagisa Oshima's Japanese Summer: Double Suicide can be easily regarded as brilliantly scathing social satire of a radical sort, or an example of plodding "anything goes" self-indulgence of the sort that bears distinct hallmarks of the times in which the film was made. I've held both opinions myself, fluctuating frequently between sharply attuned fascination and eye-rolling exasperation even within the same viewing as I've sat with the film a few times over the past couple of weeks, pondering what I'd have to say about it in this space.
For those who haven't seen the film but might decide to read along anyway, here's a rundown of the basic ingredients that Oshima tossed into this concoction: a busty, promiscuous 18 year-old girl eager to throw her body at any man who would have her; a quasi-suicidal shell-shocked soldier in camouflage gone AWOL and on the lookout for anyone willing to kill him so that he doesn't have to pull the trigger himself; a teenage high school student with a fascination for guns and insatiable eagerness to wield them in combat situations; a mysterious paramilitary unit that's taken up residence in an underground bunker where they hold the three aforementioned characters hostage, along with a few other unfortunates who've stumbled into captivity; and later on in the film, a young white American assassin, apparently modeled after Lee Harvey Oswald, whose entry into the plot interrupts the stasis that all of the previous machinations had resulted in after all the other combinations and interactions had been explored, at least to Oshima's satisfaction. In keeping with the ethos of his hard-earned freedom to make movies the way that he wanted, with scarcely any concern to entertain the masses or satisfy the studio bosses, Oshima set out to explore what he considered to be new creative possibilities in cinema, guided more by the impulses of the moment than the conventions of resolved narratives, dramatic tension and character development that must have seemed so stale and pointless to him at the time.
This original release trailer gives evidence of how Shochiku marketed this film as popular entertainment in the "long hot summer of 1967." I wonder how many in the audience left the theater feeling a bit cheated? This was right around the same time that Nikkatsu was terminating its business relationship with Seijun Suzuki due to his refusal to make films within the limits they sought to impose upon him, after he submitted Branded to Kill - in my opinion, a much more accessible, satisfying and comprehensible film for general audiences than Japanese Summer: Double Suicide. Oshima didn't seem to suffer any backlash for turning this one in "as is." Funny how that works...
So what we get is a free-wheeling muddle that compiles bunches of images, gestures and situations that contemplate the human predilection toward violence in a wide range of expressive forms. The collective force of organized crime, anonymous random killings, secretive assassination conspiracies, forcible rape, passive self-destruction and other varieties of masochism, glorified militaristic heroism, juvenile exultation in the power of a gun, a simple morbid curiosity about what happens to our bodies when wounded by bullets or stabbing knives, even the tension of sitting around waiting, knowing that death approaches soon, suddenly, inevitably, but uncertain as to exactly when: Oshima unspools all these grim scenarios for the benefit of our contemplation, but for uncertain, maybe even dubious effect. There seems to be a critique of how the news media exploits our fears and fascination, but of course Oshima is as guilty of exploiting his viewers as well. And it's not clear to me if he even has a desired outcome in mind as to what kind of impact he wants to make. He's experimenting here, working out a process, unconcerned with avoiding "failure," if that's the verdict any of us care enough to come up with.
Despite the inconsistencies, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide offers up more than enough substance and intrigue to keep me curious in tracking the director's career and justify its inclusion in Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties. But it also requires the most deliberate effort to stay fully engaged with throughout its running time of any of the five films in the set. The last third, after the appearance of the American gunman, feels especially aimless, not the work of a crack sharpshooter at all, to extend that metaphor. My initial take, written back in 2010 and published on Criterion Cast, was pretty positive, even though I now look back on that review with a feeling that I didn't really know what I was talking about in regard to what Oshima was trying to achieve. Still, I'm not sure that I care to come up with an analysis much more brilliant or insightful at this moment in time after having deepened my awareness of Oshima's work throughout the intermittent years. I mean, I really could, if I had to - and I will when it comes time for me to discuss the film on The Eclipse Viewer podcast. I don't really see much room for middle ground in the assessment, even though such contrasting evaluations still lead to a middling "3 stars out of 5" rating if you were to force me to give it a score.
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