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| From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QHH4jeoxHfA/Sh51eRCWQQI/ AAAAAAAAADU/d56CEO0gOK0/s320/Poster.png |
Dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara
Japan
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Pitfall is a fitting follow-up from Death Laid An Egg (1968), two political films with abstract tones. But
Pitfall’s politics, set within miner’s
strikes and evoking the post WWII political strife of Japan, is more upfront,
and while Death Laid An Egg is a
testament to technical skill and unconventional editing, Pitfall is a completely lyrical piece. A man is killed by an
unknown male dressed completely in white, watching on at everything that takes
places as a newly born ghost and wanting to know why he was murdered. In ninety
minutes, the debut of Hiroshi Teshigahara
manages to develop a full, fascinating narrative whose mysterious tone,
questions left unanswered, makes it more compelling and emphasises a bitter
political commentary that can be seen within its allegory. But Pitfall is more than this, to be
expected from a director whose next film after this was Woman In The Dunes (1964).
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For the most part, even at its
goriest, perverted and questionable, Japanese cinema is calmer, considered and
methodical in tone than their Western counterparts, the sense of contemplation
emphasised in Buddhist and Shinto belief, as well as their other types of art,
explicitly practiced. Even the exceptions, like director Shinya Tsukamoto, have embraced this tone for certain works when it
seems appropriate, even melding it with the contrasting, more violently toned
mood within the same film. Pitfall
is as much about its visual and audio texture as its content. Teshigahara’s film, shot in deep focus,
rich monochrome, is of sweat, blood, grains of sand or mud, the sodden shirts
and skin of the characters in the hot sun festishistic and yet real, showing
layers to human beings physically we take for granted. The story’s ominous
tone, written by Kôbô Abe, is
emphasised by this aesthetic of liquids and substances, natural or not, being
graphically lensed, the murder that pushes the film into its more supernatural
territory having a more impactful tone for the mess created to the participants
and the pond land it takes place in. Even in animation, Japan and its countless
artists have emphasised the small details of life like this, from the famous
rainfall of Seven Samurai (1954) to
their obsession with cicadas and their noisy cries, offering a view of terrain,
natural or manmade, that pushes the cinematic image further than films made in
other countries. This methodical, contemplative tone causes you to think about
the content more and gives it greater impact on the viewer. It is filtered through
a percussion heavy, unconventional score by Toshi
Ichiyanagi, Yuji Takahashi and Tôru
Takemitsu that is comparable to Death
Laid An Egg. In contrast to Guilio
Questi’s film though – a Godardian genre piece steeped in baroque gestures
and chique aesthetics – the score set over the naturalistic, supernatural Pitfall is more gradual, less tense and
underscoring the mood rather than about to break out in frenzies compared to Death Laid An Egg, whose score
perfectly matches a more lurid take on murder and the noises of hundreds of
chickens in a battery farm together. As the ghosts of an abandoned village
merely drift along like ethereal mannequins, the ordinary industrial
countryside of rock quarries and mines becomes more fantastical, the border
between the living and the dead only existing because the ghosts cannot be
heard or seen. The actions of the mysterious man in white, and what entails,
evokes a scathing damnation of how the Japanese public may have been treated by
their government, a message like with Death
Laid An Egg’s that is more potent in this current recession, while also
still being the machinations beyond such petty reality, white the colour of
death in Eastern culture and the man comparable to Death itself in his on-looking
nature.
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| From http://ishootthepictures.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/vlcsnap-2010-08-07-22h50m06s192.png |
I have only seen two of Teshigahara’s films, already mentioned
by title in this review. There is still The
Face of Another (1966), science fiction on the concept of identity, his
later work, and a visual essay-like documentary on the work of architect Antonio Gaudí. I want to see them all. Once
Pitfall was a mere curio from the
British DVD company Masters of Cinema,
unfortunately so out of print now it sells for silly money; now it’s far and
away more necessary and greater in its slight but rich ninety minutes than more
known films. On rewatches you realised how lucky you were to have watched some
films for the first time many years ago, even when you hated them then, and
like fine wine, some like Pitfall
become superior to others in every way. You realise what you ingested with your
eyes and ears back then, when you couldn’t even appreciate a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie properly as
an adolescent let along a complex, lyrical film like this, and enjoy it while
being grateful for being older, even in your early twenties, to be able to
appreciate it now.
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