【CIMS304 Japanese Cinema】Discussion Post Week.3
As both the reading and the lecture mentions, Kurosawa’s “The Most Beautiful” serves as a motivating and inspiring film which could unify the Japanese spirit as one, bound with the country. Before analyzing the filmic elements that shows the concept of “ten thousand hearts beating as one,” I want to share an interesting “misunderstanding” that I once had towards this film. (It is very interesting that Qing also mentions this feeling in her discussion post.) When I first watched this film two years agon, I thought it is a sarcastic film by showing the girls in their youths mechanized by the Japanese imperialism. The reading and the lecture, for sure, reveals a more truthful understanding to the film, at least replacing it back to its contemporary context. It suddenly makes sense after I realized that Ozu also once was the soldier sent to Manchuria. This “misunderstanding” shows the drawback in the famous “observation” model inspired by Lacan’s theory: there is a gap of “time” at present that will stain the cross between the observers (audiences or art historians) and the object (such as the films).
Back to the prompt, I will discuss two parts of the film which shows the “spiritualist” concept. Firstly, the homogeneity and formality shown in most mise-en-scene could be seen as a symbol of the unified mind in Japanese people. At the beginning of the film, when the radio is disseminated, all the people, workers, soldiers or even students are standing steadily in lines, with their hands sticking along their legs. Besides showing them frontally, two following shots shows them from their back. They are in similar uniforms with similar serious facial expressions on their faces. It seems that the order from the speaker successfully hypnotizes the people, unifying their hearts as one. They are not human beings with particular characteristics. They are identical human forces that serve the country in emergency. By putting this sequence at the beginning, the director seems to homogenize the audiences’ minds as well, transforming the audiences in the theatre (also sitting in lines and rows) into this mode. This extends the “Ishin Denshin” from “inside screen” to “outside screen.” Similarly, the clothing of the girls is similar throughout the film. The machine in the factory also show this regularity, homogeneity and formality.
Secondly, by setting the story in an optics factory, the director seems to use this self-reflective device to put himself in this “Ishin Denshin” model as well. The optics factory is related to the lens, which could both be used as optical sights and as camera lens. When the girls are calibrating the lens, they turn the lens carefully when looking towards it carefully. The cameraman in film production also makes similar gestures. Film is all about optical devices and lens. This analogy is self-reflective to film medium and people making films. The girls are serving the country through making the sights. The film directors and producers can also serve the country by making films, especially “spiritualist” films.
