Nikudan

[Roger Macy]

Dear Kinejapers,
Could I pose a couple of questions on Okamoto's Nikudan ?  It was screened at the BFI in the atg season, with notes from Roland Domenig and an intro. from Tony Rayns.

The unnamed protagonist goes round muttering mathematical formulae and even finds love through maths.  So much else of this film is autobiographical, but I'd not heard of Okamoto being a mathematician.  It brought to mind the post-war book 'The Naked Island' by the Australian Russell Braddon who mystifies the Changi guards with maths.  It seems a very unlikely influence.  There's a couple of copies at Waseda - not in translation, so presumably it wasn't translated.  But then Okamoto feels the need to pull up Peter High in Wide Angle, 1977, and change the english title from 'The Human Bullet' to 'A Human Bullet'.  That suggests some facility in english.
And I see from IMDb that the book was produced as a play and staged in London - by the Arts Theatre Club.
I expect someone on this list can shoot this overstretch down ...

The other thing is the focus. or lack of it.  The reason I don't think it's entirely accidental is that there are shots in extreme close-up that are in focus and then, when the actor moves away, they walk out of focus and it's never adjusted.  Murai Hiroshi seems to have been a safe pair of hands in a long career.  So is it all a clumsy metaphor for myopia ?
The misfocus was accentuated, either in print-striking, or the projection, by centering on the very crisp subtitles.

Roger
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