Eureka

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A few comments on points Aaron made about Aoyama's "minimalism":

>Aoyama and a lot of others would balk at having his work called minimalist

Of course, they would, if minimalist means "emotionally desiccated,
stylistically mannered excursion into self-involved angst" -- which it does
in more than a few recent Asian films I have seen. "Minimalist" has already
become something of an epithet in American lit crit circles -- a literary
equivalent to "PC" and "yuppie"; i.e., labels no one will own to. The film
world is heading in the same direction, from what I can tell. Mr. Holden's
review is only the latest sign.

>But what  must be understood is that Aoyama and others would draw a strong
line between his style and that of Maboroshi, Suzaku, Nemuro otoko or other
"Japanese" minimalist films.

I agree -- Aoyama's films are too stylistically diverse to be lumped in the
"minimalist" or any other category. I do feel, though, that he has been
turning down the emotional temperature in his recent films. By comparison
with the explosions of freak-out violence in Helpless, Eureka would seem to
be quite cool indeed. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

>Thus while I too am sick of a lot of the minimalist films, there is a big
danger in just labeling and ignoring the rich differences that exist between
works.

Exactly, but if even a good Japanese film has certain minimalist markers --
long running time, long cuts,. slow pace, little dialogue, subdued tone --
it may well run into a stronger critical headwind that it would have a few
years ago. Such seems to have been the fate of Eureka in the NYT.

The moral -- it's not the best of times to be a minimalist, though I can't
see minimalism (or whatever term comes to replace it) ever dying out. For
certain talents, the struggle to wrest more from less produces great work.
Think Bresson. For others, minimalism is a seductively easy way to look
serious and deep. Any idiot can let the camera run for three minutes after
the characters have left the room and claim to "be influenced by Ozu." Both
types will no doubt long be with us.

Mark Schilling
schill at gol.com




----- Original Message -----
From: "Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow" <onogerow at angel.ne.jp>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2000 9:37 PM
Subject: Re: Eureka


> Too early to give my full review of the film, but here is a section I
> wrote on the film for the Viennale catalog (the Vienna Festival is doing
> a special on Aoyama).  Be forewarned there are some spoilers here:
>
> Eureka is a rich reworking of these issues.  Made in a context where a
> spate of sensational youth crimes have sparked a wave of discussion about
> the inability of contemporary youth to recognize the humanity of others,
> the film centers the issue on the problem of mourning.  If Naoki ends up
> repeating the killings he was at first only witness too, it is in part
> because he, as the one who destroys the "graves" in the yard, cannot
> fully mourn those who were lost.  While this can serve as an allegory for
> the fact that Japan, by not properly mourning/acknowledging the
> atrocities it committed in WWII, is doomed to internally suffer their
> reoccurrence, it bears more individual meaning on the level of cinema and
> character.  Eureka in itself, featuring the same Akihiko from Helpless,
> is in some ways the filmic work of mourning those lost in Aoyama's debut
> feature.  Eureka is thus an odd "sequel" or "repeat" of that film, but
> not because of a failure to mourn on the part of Helpless.  While those
> who do not properly mourn are likely to repeat the loss, conscious
> repetition can itself become the way to overcome what was gone.  Makoto
> must return to the town, meet the children, and go back to the scene of
> the crime (Akihiko's problem is precisely that he has not done that).
> The option he gives to Naoki upon finding him stalking a woman is to
> either continue repeating the circle they are making on their bike, or to
> stop it--to reject mourning--and go off and kill Kozue.
> Importantly, this process of repetition and mourning is also Naoki's way
> of recognizing his love for his sister--and her existence as an other.
> It is significant that one of the most repeated acts in the film--the
> tapping on the walls--is actually a means of communicating with others.
> It, however, is not a tool for relating specific information; it
> recognizes the Other only to the degree the reverberations in a material
> thing confirm the physical presence of an other.  This reminds us of the
> difficulty of contacting the Other, especially in a film where laconic
> characters abound.  But compared to the excessively talkative Akihiko,
> who seems ultimately unable to understand his cousins, Kozue and her
> materialized "words"--the shells named after those she has
> encountered--are more eloquent.  The shells become her first speech, but
> also her means of overcoming loss precisely by being thrown away; she
> acknowledges loss precisely by recognizing her separation from all those
> others.
> Eureka still evinces the cold, intellectual gaze of Aoyama the
> intellectual, who even in this film seems to be engaged in a conversation
> with his critic colleagues.  At the same time, the sheer weight of the
> film, both in terms of its temporality and the cinematicity of the image
> returned to its spectacular black and white, reinforces the materiality
> of its world and individual characters.  These two sides to the film
> reflect the dual intellectual and physical facets to Aoyama, but I would
> argue promises a better resolution to their union.  Unlike Yoichi, who
> continues to mope around the beach after Michio's death, Makoto and Kozue
> turn away from the sea and head back to the closed space of Japan to find
> a way to speak.  Their discovery--their "eureka"--is in part the
> revelation that the material can feeling and have significance.  It is
> not a return to internality, but rather an acceptance of its loss, and
> the blazing of a new path combining the material, the intellectual, and
> love.
>
> That's, in part, my reading of the film.  So what did I think of it?  I
> liked it a lot, though I'll probably have to see it again in Vienna to
> mull it over a bit more.
>
> A few quick comments on the things mentioned already.  First, Aoyama
> definitely does not have a bad reputation in Japan.  If he did, he
> wouldn't get so much film work, have Eiga geijutsu and Cahiers du Cinema
> Japon do special issues on him, or get jobs like editing the KineJun
> special book on Wim Wenders.  He is, however, controversial.  Just read
> the Arai Haruhiko interview with him in the latest Eigei and you see one
> person who simply is from a different school of filmmaking and has a hard
> time understanding Aoyama (Aoyama, however, is his usual polite, humble
> self...).  There are a lot of people who have the same problems.
>
> About what Mark said about minimalism.  We've had this conversation in
> part before, but I do want to note here that Aoyama and a lot of others
> would balk at having his work called minimalist (see some of the writings
> in Cahiers Japon).  Part of this is a stylistic issue which I do think
> needs clarification: I too would call elements of Aoyama's style
> minimalist and I intend to press him on this issue sometime.  But what
> must be understood is that Aoyama and others would draw a strong line
> between his style and that of Maboroshi, Suzaku, Nemuro otoko or other
> "Japanese" minimalist films (I was very surprised by Dennis's comment on
> Eureka's similarity with Maboroshi: I think Aoyama made that film in part
> because he disliked Maboroshi.  See Hikoe's article on melancholy in
> Maboroshi versus Aoyama).  While the latter, they would argue, helps
> construct a unified Japanese self based on "mono no aware" and the
> subsumption of the other in an aestheticized nature, Aoyama has been
> presented as rejecting that through a stance that resists
> aestheticization, emphasizes the individual as an unknowable other, and
> questions history.  Maybe sounds like nitpicking, but these are serious
> divisions in the critical and filmic sphere here.
>
> The problem remains, however, if these stances can be reduced to style.
> Personally, I am more and more convinced style is ambiguous, while at the
> same time being amazed how only slight changes in the use of a camera can
> make two films, both ostensibly "minimalist," totally different.  Thus
> while I too am sick of a lot of the minimalist films, there is a big
> danger in just labelling and ignoring the rich differences that exist
> between works.
>
> Aaron Gerow
> YNU
>