Pillow Book

[Birgit Kellner]

Junko Tanaka wrote:

> I wonder if _The Pillow Book_ is seen in line with such films as
> Bertolucci's trilogy on the Orient and perhaps Attenborough's _Ghandi_. For
> example, when I saw _The Little Buddha_ (in Canada), no one in the theater
> seemed to take the film seriously because they just didn't think Keanu
> Reeves was the right actor to play this role in terms of
> physical-ethnic-racial (?) resemblance to Buddha. <skip > 
> there was one scene in _The Pillow Book_ where I just had to burst into
> laugh, when Ewan McGregor, playing an interpreter supposedly fluent in
> Japanese, said something in Japanese that was far from it. This might have
> provoked some laughter among the Japanese audience, but not others?

I can't give you the general audience reaction, but I also can't resist
making a few personal remarks - 

For my personal viewing-experience, I have by now arrived at
distinguishing two levels of "authenticity" whenever I see films like
"Little Buddha", "Pillow Book", or other 'epic' works on Asia by
non-Asian directors. The one is what you describe above, laughter about
obvious mistakes (I think I recall that the dead body in "Little
Buddha", supposed to provide Gautama with a shattering experience of
death, was visibly  breathing) and puzzling incongruities. Fine. To me,
this is the same as finding factual errors in novels. Superficially
funny, informative in that such findings show that the author (or
director) was not primarily concerned with factual accuracy or technical
plausibility, but no more. (Historical inaccuracies are a different
thing, though.) While "authenticity" in the sense of "how would it be in
real life", "could that happen (biologically, physically, socially) in
real life", is certainly violated in the Pillow Book etc., I tend to
think that one would be mistaken in calling these films artistic
failures merely on such grounds, or in attributing a quest for
"authenticity" to Bertolucci or Greenaway on this, and only this, level. 

The second level of authenticity which such films at least profess to
display, is related to the particular layer of history, culture or
society which they choose to put on film, such as the life of Buddha &
the "warm" (usually red, yellow and brown) Orient in the case of "Little
Buddha", or aestheticism in the case of Greenaway's Japan. (Also, I
recall that in both films the "Western" elements were shown in a
combination of stale blue and white - implying coldness, technicality;
though one should probably add that the axis North America-India/Tibet
is notably different from the axis Hongkong-Japan, and not just in terms
of colours). The way in which such films choose their settings is based
on the assumption that there is a sort of authenticity in terms of
something that existed 'originally' (always seen as a positive value),
usually endangered by modernity, usually associated with traditions
(Buddhism, calligraphy). I cannot see anything which exceeds the age-old
mystification of the Oriental in that, and find it immensely annoying. I
was personally heavily disappointed with "Pillow book", as I had hoped
for a more profound commentary on contemporary hybridity, and not just a
mere juxtaposition of Hongkong jetset images and Japanese icons (the
scene where the boat drifts on the lake in mist, complete with women
with parasols, actually made ME laugh out loud; even my otherwise very
cinema-silent Japanese friends started chuckling). In this particular
area of addressing hybridity, I found Hal Hartley's "Flirt" much more
interesting, and thought-provoking (for some reason, Derek Jarman's
"Caravaggio" also springs to mind, though not connected with Asia). But
perhaps this indicates a difference of generations of film-makers, as
well as of targeted audiences. 

My three Japanese friends found "Pillow Book" interesting because it
said something about Greenaway, but disappointing in its vision of
Hongkong and Japan (and yes, they also pointed out some factual error in
one of the calligraphy-scenes, but I have to confess that I forgot what
it was). Some non-Japanese people of my acquaintance who play the Koto
and practice calligraphy loved the film. 

Could one meaningfully link this with the thread on Iwai's "Swallowtail"
and its way of taking up ethnicity? 

-- 
birgit kellner
department for indian philosophy
hiroshima university