Wakamatsu Koji's "United Red Army"

[jesty@uchicago.edu]

Sorry, me again. I reread your message and see yes, they 
were reenactments ... but I'm still having trouble 
visualizing them. 

Do they compare in any way with his representations of 
similar events in his films of the late 60s and early 70s? 
Like the beating scene in "Shinjuku Mad", or the group of 
revolutionaries in, I forget the title, but it features a 
lounge singer, singing a song about the lonely "saizensen" 
all through it. In these ones, I get the feeling that he's 
quite sympathetic to the young protagonists, is it that way 
in Red Army?

One more question keeps nagging at me, so I have to ask it: 
how is the acting in these reenactments?

Thanks again
Justin Jesty




---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:24:24 +0900
>From: "Mark D. Roberts" <mroberts37 at mail-central.com>  
>Subject: Wakamatsu Koji's "United Red Army"  
>To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>
>The Tokyo International Film Festival opened this past 
weekend, with  
>Wakamatsu's Koji's new "United Red Army" as one of the 
first films  
>screened in Roppongi. Wakamatsu and many members of the 
cast (itself  
>a small army) were on hand for Q & A and a press photo op. 
The film  
>treats at the infamous Asama-Sanso incident of 1972, during 
which  
>members of the Japanese Red Army in flight from the police 
entered a  
>mountain lodge in Karuizawa, took the innkeeper hostage, 
and then  
>held off the police for ten days.
>
>In a brief statement before the film, Wakamatsu suggested 
several  
>objectives. The film would explore the reasons behind this 
incident,  
>the reasons that university students became involved in the 
radical  
>movement and eventually chose to fight the police directly 
at  
>Karuizawa. He noted that the two previous films treating 
this  
>incident were more from the point of view of the police, 
and implied  
>that this was really inadequate for a deeper understanding 
of it.
>
>Over three hours long, "United Red Army" indeed elaborates 
and frames  
>the incident, which itself comprises only the last third of 
the film.  
>The first portion of the film is almost entirely newsreel 
footage  
>showing the history of violent conflict between the student 
movement  
>and the Japanese government in the period 1960-1970. 
Beginning  
>logically with the Anpo-t?s?, this includes many minor 
clashes and  
>effectively creates a context for understanding what is to 
come.  
>Rather than focusing mostly on the conflict around Anpo, 
this  
>sequence emphasizes the continuity of struggle throughout 
the decade.  
>Clashes with police, the occupation of university 
buildings, the  
>occupation of Shinjuku station, the construction of 
barricades ? all  
>of this is shown and described by voice over. Dates and the 
number of  
>arrests (often in the thousands) for each incident are 
given using  
>superimposed text. Where the films of the generation of 
Oshima and  
>Shinoda tend to represent the Anpo-t?s? as a kind of peak, 
followed  
>by malaise and disillusionment of the militant Left, 
Wakamatsu shows  
>it more as a point of focus and amplification in a longer 
and more  
>pitched struggle.
>
>Wakamatsu's own dramatization begins in the later 1960s, 
first  
>showing the various rifts in the student movement, and the 
formation  
>of the more extreme communist tendency that would soon 
declare war  
>against the Japanese government. There are a few scenes of 
conflict  
>with police in a university setting, but the emphasis is 
more on the  
>internal dynamics of the groups. At this point, we leave 
the newsreel- 
>based depiction of the conflict and begin to follow some of 
its key  
>players. This is somewhat confusing, because we leave the 
realm of  
>mass protests, and enter a story of would-be 
revolutionaries  
>themselves. While the film is a dramatic (and thus in some 
respects  
>fictionalized) re-creation, all of the characters are based 
upon real  
>people and there is still much historical detail used to 
assemble  
>this segment. Interestingly, Wakamatsu does not try to 
create a  
>seamless transition between them, but instead subtly 
emphasizes their  
>discontinuity. The "documentary" parts of this first 
segment of the  
>film are all in black and white, with some treatment of the 
video  
>image (cropping, horizontal compression), while the 
dramatized  
>portions are in muted color.
>
>With its declaration of war, the Zenkyoutou undo goes 
underground and  
>begins a phase of preparation for armed conflict. The 
film's action  
>now moves to a network of safehouses and bases created to 
shelter  
>members of the movement. A series of brazen robberies are  
>orchestrated to gather cash and weapons. As the movement 
builds  
>itself and seeks to further escape the police, the key 
players move  
>to bases in the countryside. The film now focuses on the 
one cell  
>that will eventually be involved in the Asama-sanso 
incident, and we  
>get a clearer sense of their life underground. What is most 
striking  
>in this middle portion of the film is their emphasis on 
practices of  
>increasingly violent "self-critique". Here, Wakamatsu 
spares us  
>nothing, and captures a very strange dynamic of bonding 
and  
>bloodlust. The group's leaders prove themselves to be 
utterly  
>ruthless, especially with some of the younger members and 
the women  
>involved. The meaning of "critique" becomes completely 
distorted, and  
>is eventually used as justification for savage murders. 
While  
>exhausting and at times quite painful to watch, 
conceptually this is  
>one of the most interesting parts of the film.
>
>The last segment of the film shows how the police gradually 
close in  
>on the group, and their final standoff in the Asama lodge. 
Again,  
>this is entirely from the point of view of the group itself 
and we  
>don't even see the police until the moment when the storm 
the lodge  
>at the very end. There's one sort of perverse and funny 
scene in here  
>concerning an "anti-revolutionary cookie" but otherwise 
it's played  
>straight. During the Q & A, Wakamatsu was asked how he went 
about  
>dramatizing the inn sequence, and he revealed that he'd 
spoken for  
>many hours with Bando Kunio, one of the surviving members, 
who  
>(seemingly for the first time) described some of the things 
that  
>happened at the inn. Bando and the others had apparently 
made a vow  
>of silence about this, which he broke to speak with 
Wakamatsu. Based  
>upon this description, Wakamatsu sought to give a greater 
air of  
>reality to the inn sequence.
>
>At over three hours long, "United Red Army" is a sprawling, 
detailed  
>treatment of the Japanese Red Army. It provides a lot of 
interesting  
>historical context and sheds much light on the backdrop to 
the Asama  
>lodge incident. It doesn't flinch from showing the 
extraordinary  
>violence of the Red Army against its own members. I found 
myself  
>wishing the film tried to explore the whole question of 
motivation a  
>bit deeper, though. Wakamatsu begins to get to this in his 
treatment  
>of the practices of "self-critique" but then sort of 
refuses to  
>personalize or psychologize it. The practice is left 
somewhat  
>ambiguous to emphasize part of the group dynamic. Of 
course, if his  
>goal is to force us to think about this, then the gesture 
of refusal  
>could be described as effective.
>
>During the Q & A, Wakamatsu expressed a sense that the anti-
 
>government movement and student movement in Japan was 
deeply affected  
>by Asama-Sanso incident, in effect blunted by the media 
treatment and  
>consequences in the national consciousness, and especially 
by the  
>revelation of the violent purges within the movement. At 
the same  
>time, he suggested that the internal violence was poorly 
understood,  
>and that indeed the present era seems to shy away from 
such  
>exploration. In one of his final remarks, he rather 
provocatively  
>stated that the Japanese had greater freedom during the 
later Showa  
>period, that people could say what they really felt without 
fear of  
>judgment or exclusion.
>
>"United Red Army" is scheduled to screen at a few different 
theaters  
>in Japan next year. In Tokyo, it will show at Cinemabox in 
Shinjuku.
>
>M