Inland Sea (2018/Kazuhiro SODA/Japan-USA)

Opening sequence :

A brief black screen with the sound of water nearby, so that the film starts by titillating our ears first with a calming, soothing tonality. The soundscape lingers as the screen opens, in black & white, on an embankment with the setting sun straight ahead. Two old people, backlit beautifully, are busy working ; one crouching over a bucket full of water and the other bending over an entangled fishing net.
– Konnichi wa, says the cameraman off-screen as the old lady turns to the camera, and replies likewise. The film begins with a welcoming greeting (as we are casually introduced to who will become the two main characters of the film).
In the foreground, the old lady calls for Wai-chan in the distance. But she soon adds he doesn’t hear well. Cut to the reverse shot, looking back at the lady, and slowly panning toward the legs of the old man who has sit in the shade of a shack. Tilt up, revealing his head, hidden under a cap. Close up of his face, eyes down, from under his visor. He’s mumbling to himself, ignoring the camera. Cut to his hands mending a net by tying several solid knots. His wrinkled hands manipulate netting needle and scissors. Cut to the next shot as the old man cuts with the scissors (cut on cut). He raises the net, out of focus – as a nylon prison over his face – satisfied with his repair.
Now on his boat, he throws another net to the quay. Trice he repeats « it’s to catch rockfish ». A woman voice off screens asks a question twice, but doesn’t get an answer. He complains about the the price of nets, and how fishes are cheaper than the tools nowadays. At 86, fishing on his own... It’s dangerous. He should retire, he says. The cameraman films him at a low angle shot because he’s hunched over his net, his body folded in half. And we see the lovely tiny harbor of Ushimado behind him.
These were the first ever spontaneous takes of the shooting, without meeting, preparation, rehearsal or guidance. As per the filmmaker’s own « Commandments ».

Origin of the project

Inland Sea is the 7th « Observational Film » of Kazuhiro SODA since 2007. It emerged from the impromptu collection of side footage on location in Ushimado for his previous film Oyster Factory (Observational Film #6, 2015) [my review] – if you want to see these two main characters, from the opening sequence, in full colour and more, you should watch Oyster Factory. In fact Kazuhiro SODA was kicked out of the oyster factory after a week, so with two weeks left before his return to NYC, he decided to film a fisherman met on the waterfront. And from then on following several villagers, came to be Inland Sea.
Ushimado is the hometown of his mother-in-law, so he was familiar with the area where they spent vacations with his wife and producer, Kiyoko KASHIWAGI.

Observational film #7

This film comes after a series of documentaries in the same vein, following strict ethical rules : The Ten Commandments of « Observational filmmaking ». There was Campaign (2007) & Campaign 2 (2013) following a Tokyo University classmate who ran for office twice, once for the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party), once for himself to address environmental issues due to the Fukushima disaster. There was Mental (2008) a formidable exploration of the daily lives of outpatients from a neighbourhood clinic ran by the one of a kind psychiatrist Dr. Yamamoto, a kind old man who provides the most humane services pro bono. There was Theatre 1 & 2 (2012) a 5h 42min long documentary on the essence of theatre, through the work of playwright and director Oriza HIRATA.
There was Oyster Factory (2015) and Inland Sea (2018). And followed by The Big House (2018) his first documentary outside of Japan, on and around the largest USA arena : Michigan Stadium, filmed with the help of co-directors and students from the University of Michigan.

The Ten Commandments of « Observational filmmaking »

All these films were made according to his self-imposed rules (à la Dogma 95) which he developped during his experience as a TV director-editor for the NHK (National Japanese television) and perfected during the writing of his book on Mental. See the page on his website for futher informations.
From his experience he learnt how to make documentaries in everyway unlike the fabricated « world » of television. He’d rather skip the research and script part, to focus on the spontaneity of his characters discovered on the spot. And, like Frederick WISEMAN, he favors long takes, without narration, titles nor music.
This reminds me of a graphic I made to explain all the obstacles to contemplation in traditional cinema, with a set of interdictions in forbidden pictograms.

CCC & Observational Films

This is where Kazuhiro SODA’s « Observational Films » might meet the minimum (technical) profile forContemporary Contemplative Cinema (CCC) : Plotlessness / Wordlessness / Slowness / Alienation…
Plotlessness corresponds to his Commandment #3, #7 & #8. Wordlessness (doesn’t mean without speech altogether, but rather laconical and natural conversation) corresponds to #8. Slowness corresponds to #5, #6 & #9. And Alienation (with the caveat : distanciation of characters does not mean complete separation but the natural boundary we experience with strangers in real life) corresponds to #1, #2 & #7.
CCC is not necessarily documentaries made guerilla-style, like advocates his « Ten Commandments »… although these are conditions to produce a free and independant film form that film companies eschew. But the natural, free-wheeling, patient, extensive types of images resulting from his method correspond more or less to what other CCC filmmakers record in their films. Natural like Lisandro ALONSO, because the approach to the characters is genuine and direct. Free-wheeling like Naomi KAWASE, because she lets things happen in front of the lens and goes with the flow. Patient like Raymond DEPARDON, because he takes time to meet people and makes his camera become invisible. Extensive like Alexander SOKUROV, because he register hours and hours of footage.
For one thing CCC is not a homogenous stylistic block, it is more a general regimen of images that contrasts with everything else on the theatrical circuit. And it is a family of filmmakers who share the same spirit of dailylife rhythm and extended takes.

 

Observing, interpreting, observing, interpreting…

The rapid succession of these actions on location, defines in situ the framing of his images : Observing first ; interpreting second... Always going from on to the other, to and fro, in order to nurture and combine one another. The quick-witted interpretation that succeeds each passive observation leads to a transformation into an active observation. Thus the images reflect what is taking place on site. If the observer wonders what the onscreen characters are glancing, or addressing, the camera moves automatically toward this off screen space, with a continuous reverse shot, sans cut. The frame chiefly shows on screen what the audience wants to see at the right moment.

Observing, listening

If « To observe & to interpret... » governs the framing of each sub-part of a shot, what instructs his directing style is another motto, two conjoined verbs again : « To observe & to listen ». The cameraman doesn’t frame static shots on a tripod but engages with the motion of the people on a mobile hand-held camera that interacts with the action, the words and the gestures.

Looking and Listening

Observational doesn’t mean distant or detached. The filmmaker must be part of the world he captures and describes. In Japanese, there is this concept of « Looking and Listening », two words combined to generate a « participative observation ». The matter is to look deeply, but to be attentive and reactive to what is going on, and what is being said.

Participative Observation

Here is another mantra of Kazuhiro SODA that explains his unique style of filmmaking. This is the combination of all these aspects of filmmaking : framing, directing, editing. After his first « Observational Film », he realised his observational style had to be participative.

Five Portraits in-situ in circle

Wai-chan (MURATA-san). First character, an 86 year-old fisherman who drives his boat, all alone, at night, like a hero ! He’s the first person contacted – the raison d’être of this documentary. He lays his net in the day, pulls back up his net at night (before the fishes die), sort out the rockfishes from the shrimp, and goes to the local fishmarket. There he auctions his catch. And KOSO-san – the only woman – buys some fresh assorted seafood as the sun rises...

KOSO-san. Back at her store, she preps, weights and condition the fishes under clim film. Then she drives her pick-up truck around town directly to her faithful customers. She calls herself a « late-stage eldery » (75 years-old and over). She’s been doing this job, alongside her husband – until he passed away – for more than 55 years straight. One customer at her shop is KUBOTA who came to collect offal (fish heads rejects)...

KUBOTA. Back at home, always accompanied by her son, she cooks the fish heads with rice. The heads are cut up in close up. Her numerous cats seem fascinated by this cook. Sure enough, the food was prepared for the cats. Some stray cats from the neighbourhood. As the filmmaker chats up with them outside their house, in a narrow alley, passes by MURAGIMI in a haste, embarassed by the idea of disturbing the documentary shooting...

MURAGIMI. Enticed by the KUBOTA family advice, the filmmaker follows this way, where people attend a flower festival. On his way, he finds again MURAGIMI crouched on the side of the path. She visits the neighborhood cemetery, up hill, to tend to her old ancestors tombstones overtaken by grass. Precisely on the day of the Chrisanthemus flowers contest. From this vantage point we can see Wai-chan’s boat entering the harbor. Call back to the seafront, where Kumiko is talking to an old lady friend on the embankment...

Kumiko « Kumi » (KOMIYAMA). Last story but first character on screen (she says « good afternoon » in the opening sequence). So the film comes back full circle by following this singular lady around, down on the shorefront. She is quite a character, full of pernicious comments, gossips and bizarre stories. She knows everything and guides the filmmaker and his wife up and down hill, from one extremity of the port to the other, and back, according to promises of great shots for the film...

Villagers directors

Kazuhiro SODA goes with the flow of real life. Following character after character, upon chance encounter, to their full extent, after exhausting the slow time spent with them, he assembles a formidable array of slices of life. He lets villagers direct the « show » at their will. Some appear camera-shy, some seem uncomfortable, some feel uninteresting. All want the best for his documentary.
Thus we hear « why don’t you go there ? » « Why don’t you shoot this or that ? » « Look ! » « Show this on camera instead »... And amused, confounded, complicit, he follows suit, aiming the camera in the right direction, chasing their footsteps. He also keeps those underachieved moments with camera adresses, these neutral transitions in the final cut, because they are integer part of the process of filming a documentary, moreover full of truth and sincerity.

The filmmaker who doesn’t cut out « camera address »

The « camera address » – looking directly into the lens for an actor – is the staple of Cinéma Vérité and La Nouvelle Vague. Jean-Pierre Léaud in the last shot of « Les quatre-cent coups » (The 400 blows, 1959, Truffaut), or the eponymous character in Monika (1964, Bergman). In documentaries, it is far more prevalent, even though most documentarians prefers to cut them out, for it stresses too much attention to the cameraman, and distracts from the narrative. Frederick WISEMAN, for instance, remains invisible behind the camera : never he utters a comment or a question, never he’s seen on camera, never he keeps the camera address in the final cut. He lets the images speak for themselves sans intervention from the filmmaker.
But Kazuhiro SODA doesn’t mind. He welcomes these little incursions of reality like a moment of complicity with his characters and his audience as well. He believes « observation » has to be « participative observation » ; meaning the involvement of the filmmaker-cameraman on location, amidst a crowd of people aware of the camera in their environment, is matter of fact and should not be concealed on screen.

Hands and faces

In particular, Kazuhiro SODA is fond of framing hands and faces as he films people who talks to him or just work. He films the hands manipulating objects or accomplishing a task. He films talking faces, listening faces, quiet faces, thinking faces.

Labor at work : an unspoken language

After the 5 minutes one-sided laconical chatter with Wai-chan (who is hard of hearing), from the opening sequence, the film goes wordless for 8 minutes, as the fisherman drives his boat out in the bay to lay down his net until he comes back at the harbor. A segment only animated by the sounds of the engine and the waves. Another 16 minutes wordless interlude – only briefly interrupted by a couple questions – while the fisherman retrieves his fish-full net at night. This is a powerful statement from the filmmaker who offers images free of commentary. Therefore he lets the audience swim solely in visual cues, without interferences, to simply enjoy the bare unspoken beauty of sounds with images and images with sounds.

Cycle of fishes

We first see the fishing net being repaired on the embankment : a testimony of previous fishing. Then the fishing net is lowered into the opaque sea. And it is only a few hours later, at night, when the boat comes back that we see the actual fishes caught – ensnared – inside the net, as it is slowly pulled from the dark waters. With some difficulty the fishes are disentangled one by one and thrown into a bucket of water. They flap around in an empty basket or spit out a jet of water in a full bucket. Before the first light of dawn, the seafood is sorted out by spieces, one basket each. At the fish cooperative, trays of seafood are weighted and auctionned for the retailers. The shopkeeper then cleans up the fishes and sells them at the shop or on the road from the back of her pick up truck. The fishes are cooked by one customer and fed to the stray cats. A long way from the sea to the mouth of these felines. A shorter way is illustrated later on, with a cat catching a fish rejected by a line fisherman on the pier.

Connections with Kazuhiro SODA filmography

Mental (2008) : Presence of Dr Yamamoto (from the Chorale Okayama clinic) at the oyster bar
Peace (2010) : feeding stray cats
Oyster Factory (2015) : cooked oysters (from the Hirano Factory) at the oyster bar. Presence of Kumi and Wai-chan two characters first met in this film.

Comparison with CCC (Contemporary Contemplative Cinema)

Leviathan (2012/Véréna PARAVEL, Lucian CASTAING-TAYLOR/FR-UK-USA) video excerpt
This couple of filmmakers from the Ethnographic Sensory Lab in Harvard, made an extraordinary performance art piece by strapping 10 « Go-pro » cameras to a fishing ship : to the mast, to the cables, to the forehead or the chest of a fisherman, to a pole plunged underwater… As many surveillance cameras perched to peer and survey each move of the fishermen and women, each activity on deck, each process of the labor chain. No narration, no interview, just the cadence of images colliding with one another making sense of a fragmented whole.


Profil Paysan (2001-2008/Raymond DEPARDON/FR)
Former photographer, DEPARDON filmed a series of three documentaries on the aging rural world of French peasants, each three years apart : L’approche ; Le quotidien ; La vie moderne. There we follow the daily lives of old peasants and their successors when present. He films them with a static lens, at work, in the fields, at home, in a very intimate yet respectfully distant way. He lets them, taciturn introverts, talk to the camera with their own words, and collects memories and despair.

Desertification : The twilight of Ushimado

The little town of Ushimado is getting older. People are aging and passing away. The youth and families are moving to the cities. Seafront houses are empty because nobody takes the sucession. Even the cemetery is deserted because families bring their tombstones with them closer to the city where they live. This is a problem of the countryside towns : only the eldery rooted in Ushimado for so many years, all their life and many generations past… This town sees its last days since in a few years, when the eldery have vanished for good, there will be nobody to inhabit these houses, to work those jobs, to eat and drink, to walk around the pier, to fish, to smile and laugh in the twilight…

A dedicated ascent to the Hospital

BONG Joon-ho : « The scene in which one of the subjects briefly takes over the film – bringing the camera with her to finally tell a story she probably had never told anyone – was so calmly stunning, raw, and emotional. It didn't feel forced or manipulated. It just seemed like something very naturally walked into the filmmaking. It's an art of documentary filmmaking. »

Indeed this sequence, with Kumi, toward the end of the film, is a piece of art. It starts on the embankment in the harbor, where Kumi and Wai-chan always hang out. Kumi, as usual is pointing at somewhere else, up hill, behind them, to drag the shooting there with her. « You should film the hospital » The filmmaker is first reluctant to go, but eventually follows along, for what will become the best scene at the heart of the film : a 10 minutes of confession non-stop, after a couple of minutes of walk.

From the director’s statement : « In Japanese noh theatre, there is a popular form called “mugen noh,” in which a traveler meets a ghost who tells him what happened at a specific site. »

This moment is like an oracle.

Related :

• Oyster Factory (2015/Kazuhiro SODA/Japan-USA)

Oyster Factory (2015/Kazuhiro SODA/Japan-USA)

Opening Sequence 

Up close, a white cat basking in the sun on the pier, then it walks off screen. Painterly framing of the Ushimado bay, with micro islands in the distance, and a tree branch striking the foreground of the frame top like a Japanese etching. Another view of the bay from higher ground, with the sea cluttered by oyster farms and a boat crossing at mid-screen.
Now the camera is handheld onboard of a fisherman boat, looking in at an oyster rack approaching. It’s made of bamboos. Cut to a crane flying off of one of those racks. Face of the fisherman through the windshield of his driver cabin. The fisherman is walking on the bamboo rack without leash or safety gear, wearing a yellow vinyl overall finished with boots. Whip zoom on him crouching to untie one rope. Several shots of him retrieving the ropes.
Back on the boat, the hydrolic crane is pulling out of the water a bunch of ropes tied together, revealing clustered oysters hugging the ropes as the ensemble elevates in the sky, slowly moves over the deck and is promptly dropped into a rusty wire crate. Then slowly raised again in the air and violently dropped again to free the oysters tightly secured to the ropes. One last time dropped from high up in the same long take. A drop of mud splashed in the corner of the lens. Whip-zoom to the fisherman piloting the crane in the background to put the splash out of focus. He’s now approaching with a stick and starts beating the ropes to unleash the oysters left attached.

– It may splash, says the fisherman as he rakes his stick between the ropes hanging down.

Cut to another batch of ropes being pulled out of the sea in a similar fashion. Whip-zoom on the clusters of oysters covered in algae and mud, dripping down heavily, with the fisherman in the background. Once again he beats down the persistent oysters glued to the ropes, in close up, with the ropes in the foreground barring his face. He operates all this by himself, alone on the boat (the cameraman being an unparticipating companion). Cut to two static shots of the bay from higher ground and a trucking of a boat passing by, against the sound of waves lapping on the beach.
9 more quick shots taken from the boat approaching the harbor against the noise of an engine. The fisherman on the quay, tying up his boat to a mooring bollard. Opening credits on a black screen.

Origin of the project

Kazuhiro SODA and his wife (and producer), Kiyoko KASHIWAGI, use to spend vacation time in Ushimado, hometown of Kiyoko’s mother. On a dare, he decided to film there, for three weeks, a fisherman he met on the seaside. Upon shooting him, some times later, having arrived from New York, the fishing season was over and the fisherman was starting to care for another activity of his : aquaculture. So the fishing documentary became about oyster farming by necessity. This is how Kazuhiro SODA proceeds to pick and film a subject without preparation nor script.

(Director’s statetment)

Companion piece : Inland Sea (2018)

Alongside Oyster Factory, which shooting only lasted 1 week out of the three required, Kazuhiro SODA decided to continue to film the area, on a whim, until his planned return to NewYork. This side project became a documentary on the local population of the small harbor of Ushimado : Inland Sea, released three years later. In this new film, we meet again, in depth, two figures appearing in Oyster Factory ; as well as the vernacular cycle of the local fish commerce.

Observational Film #6

Since 2007, Kazuhiro SODA makes « Observational Films » following a strict set of rules of thumb, and Oyster Factory is the sixth of them. Observation as mantra both for the filmmaker and the audience. « Observation and Interpretation » are guiding his framing; « Observation and Listening » are guiding his directing. These rules he calls the « Ten Commandments of Observational Filmmaking » Interesting remarks about the making and post-production of a guerilla-style documentary, such as « no research », « no script », « shoot as long as possible », « no narration », « use long takes »… These principles are the customary routine of CCC (Contemporary Contemplative Cinema). See the (Technical) Minimum Profile here 

Hirano Oyster Factory

Next to « Toyota Seafood », there is a huddle of ancillary oyster factories implanted in the harbor all assembled together around the Hirano Oyster Factory, directed by Watanabe. They are perched up there on the pier, between the sea – the Inland Sea – and the town – Ushimado – in direct liaison between oysters and consummers. The oyster farms are dispersed racks anchored in the bay, around the Mouse Island. The boat comes and goes between the farms and the harbor at harvest season. Docking next to the factories, the boat empties its three metal crates of oysters forthwith into the wall of the chucking room, where oysters are opened and reserved. Promptly carried around in a bucket they are unloaded by the hundreds onto a cart that wheels straigth to the nearby collective warehouse (because they cannot be frozen),where all the neighbors work in unisson. They are then transferred by truck to the Okayama Fishery Cooperative.

The cycle of oysters’s life

Buying seeds. Farming at sea. Harvesting. Chucking. Storing oysters in buckets with frozen water bottles. Moving them to the cooperative. Cleaning the workshop. Cleaning the buckets and water bottles. Cleaning the vinyl aprons. Collecting and cleaning shells. Cleaning the mud. Cleaning the crates. Cleaning the boat. Repeat.

Kazuhiro SODA doesn’t film the cycle in its chronological order, but rather accumulates daily footage, day after day, in situ. This disparate aggregation of tasks and practices develops nonetheless into a mirror of this local industry. And we piece together, in after thought, like a mystery game, the process in the right order, after seeing it done over and over, at different factories and on different days. True observation puts the spectator in the pilot seat, engaging with the natives and forming a portrait of each recurrent character, each at a precise place on the chain.

Slow pace of daily life

The ingenious cameraman masterfully captures a monotonous labor with poignant dexterity. He follows effortlessly in the footsteps of various colourful characters, mingles with everybody, enters their homes… His enticing camera, which records direct sound synchronously, projects us inside an underestimated world, little known and self-sufficient. Interspersed by « pillow shots » (à la Yasujiro OZU) of still life, landscapes, building corners, abandonned tools, the scenes and days unfold like a treasure trove of compelling activities and genuine behaviors. One shot after another, the vicissitudes of a millenary tradition manifest before our eyes at an unhurried pace. The faces tell a tale of sudden mutation. A microscopic metamorphosis, with each discerning minute, transitionning old habits to reluctant new ones.

Work and Talk

People do not sit down for an interview in « Observational Films »… unlike with Errol Morris’s Interrotron, with a lot of talking heads. Preferably, Kazuhiro SODA’s immersive style of documentary catches off guard the people at work, while they are busy doing other things. Busy hands : loose tongues. We might not get eye contact all the time, but the conversation is more natural, unrestrained and relaxed. Hollywood has the « Walk and Talk » to show protagonists busy while delivering exposition dialogue. « Observational Films » have « Work and Talk » to capture the speech in its natural habitat, its ordinary context.

One of these lasts 3min 30sec, when the filmmaker questions Watanabe about the tsunami and his move to Okayama prefecture, in Mushiage, as a nuclear refugee. Watanabe washes the rusty crates full of mud, and shares about his painful past. As one of the Chinese worker just quit, Watanabe feels compassion for someone who is away from home, like him.

Again with Watanabe, another day, this « Work and Talk » long take reaches 5min of confessions as he and the cameraman walk around the truck.

Not only that, but Kazuhiro SODA films extensive takes of the « action », whether they are talking or not, whether they are working or not. And he keeps the down times in the final cut. These intermediary moments without conscious activity, but where a lot happens : hidden body language, meaningful pauses, suggestive faces, demonstrative expressions…

Tsunami refugees

Watanabe, who is one of the main character of this documentary, used to work in aquaculture in Miyagi prefecture, before the 2011 Tsunami hit Fukushima on this coastline. They had to move out because the government declared their land restricted area, and the consumption of oysters forbidden. From his own admission, he moved first and foremost because his kids could not live in an irradiated zone. But he’s not a « nuclear refugee », insists his boss, Mr Hirano, he’s a « tsunami refugee ». This only superficially removes the stigma. Watanabe was removing debris in Miyagi. He moved to Mushiage (Okayama prefecture), not far away from Ushimado. He’s now directing the Hirano factory, and will succeed to the owner who is retiring.

In another scene we learn that oysters seeds from Miyagi are banned in Okayama, because of the rumors of nuclear radiations. Ironicaly, they buy them instead from Hiroshima !

The workshop contraption

This family factory, partly mechanised, partly manual, is pretty ingenious. With the simplest means. Fresh from the sea, the oysters collected are carried through a motorised conveyor belt into the main room of the factory built on a raised floor and split in two halves. In the middle of the room stands high a double wall within which is stored the live shells shut closed. Each wall, on either side, is pierced with trap doors to catch the oysters pouring in from above. And a man can walk between these walls to scather the oysters towards each hatch. The oysters are picked up onto a counter, through the hatch, one by one, by the workers who are seated on the raised floor. And underneath is another motorised conveyor belt collecting the emptied shells, between the two walls, dropped by a hole in the counter. Thus the course of the oyster : in come the full shells, out come the empty shells. These shells are then automatically cleaned up outside and evacuated by trucks (probably recycled and sold).

Chucking Oysters

Oysters have sharp shells. Workers wear thick gloves. Shells are muddy. Work is messy.

This is hard work. Arduous and repetitious. Workers in this agrarian region are getting old. The rural exodus of the youth depletes the workforce for local businesses. The next generation hates this backbreaking job, and prefers one of a salaryman. Mostly eldery female workers, they have the skills to chuck oysters at a breakneck pace ! The rare younger helping hands struggle to keep up. The eldery are kneeling on the floor, Japanese-style. The youngsters are seated on their asses.

One hand picks up an oyster, pivots it in the right direction (mouth to the palm). The other hand plunges a pointy knife, or a hook, between the two calcified valves. And with a twist of the wrist, it breaks open the mollusc. The mantle is delicately but swiftly scraped and dumped into a bucket. At the bottom of each bucket sits a frozen water bottle to maintain a cool temperature. The empty shells are soon discarded downstairs. And the reiterating operation begins all over.

« China is coming. »

This decaying workforce needs new blood. And the Japanese don’t want to do this anymore. One employee, Watanabe, calls it a « hard, dirty and dangerous work » , he later adds « People who come here are kind of losers, aren’t they ? ». The next best thing is to hire help from abroad, in this case, from China. And the local community is not ready for this « invasion ». Japan, being one of the most homogenous ethnicity in the world, is not acquainted with foreign visitors, let alone labor force from their arch enemy : China. They are afraid. One standbyer confides « Chinese are terrible, they steal anything they see ! »

The neighboring city has 200 Chinese workers. And there is a total of 10 in Ushimado. However, the Hitano Oyster Factory has ever employed indigenous workers, despite, is getting ready to accomodate two new Chinese aids. On the calendar is noted « Saturday the 9th, China is coming ». Not even « The Chinese workers are coming », but that deprecative metonymy…

At the factories nextdoor, there are already a couple of Chinese expatriate working on the line. The Chinese language is not subtitled, so the foreigners stay at a distance, behind a language barrier. And with their rudimentary Japanese, they hardly interact with the filmmaker or others. Regardless of English.

More than a factory

This is an idiosyncratic microcosm of Japanese society, with a dozen Japanese figures surrounding half a dozen Chinese expatriate workers. This multigenerational bunch spans all ages. From a toddler carried on her mother’s back at work ; to young girls playing around the facilities ; to teenager worker from China ; to young adults, married, ready to take over the succession ; to older men from the neighborhood ; to 65 year old bosses about to retire ; to eldery workers on the line… Kazuhiro SODA’s camera alternates the viewpoints, jumping from one person to the next.

Assorted points of view

Watanabe, father of four girls, the nuclear refugee who empathizes with the Chinese expatriates.

The Hirano family old boss who is retiring, and hands his family business to Watanabe

Hirano junior (salaryman) who would « never » succeed to his dad.

The bubbly daughter-in-law of the Toyota factory who is interested in the world.

The Toyota factory owner who has opinions on the state taxes on succession.

The A/C repairman with racist views on Chinese immigrants.

The cameraman and his wife, from NYC, who have seen the world outside of Japan.

Self-references

We find recurrent themes that have been treated in previous « Observational Films » :

LDP (Liberal Democrtatic Party) political poster from Campaign (2007)

Mental health problems (attributed to a Chinese quitter) from Mental (2008)

Feeding stray cats from Peace (2010)

Nuclear meltdown consequences from Campaign 2 (2013)

Shiro the cat, Kumi and Wai-chan from Inland Sea (2018)

Contemporary Contemplative Cinema documentaries

We could contrast Oyster Factory with Frederick WISEMAN’s Belfast, Maine (1999) where he films a mechanised line in a canned sardines factory. Or compare it to Niklaus GEYRHALTER’s Our Daily Bread (2005), a wordless documentary on agricultural industries in Europe. With a succession of symetrical static shots filming the robotized food collecting, calibrating, processing and conditioning. But « Observational Films » are not from a cold surveillance camera, and much more immersive and reactive to the workers being filmed.

Crisis

Out of nowhere, when the time for the new Chinese employees to arrive came, the shooting of the documentary is interrupted by Hirano, the old boss. Seated back to the camera at the counter, without stopping his oysters chucking, unwavering, he utters these damning words. According to him, the shooting may offend them and you never know what could happen… You’d need to get their permissions first, and the permission of the agency. Will the documentary stay at a stand still ?

Comedic relief

The documentary is peppered with touches of laughters – often the filmmaker’s own infectious laugh.

An old lady asks for the fish price, twice, with a puzzled look on her face because she gets no answer, before realising she was asking the cameraman ! She then walks away in shame but also amused, followed by the laughing filmmaker.

Another impromptu scene : we see the chucking workers laugh without knowing what is the fuss all about. Then a guy walks in from behind a wall, approaching bent over, looking into a plastic tube, without a word. « What are you doing ? » asks the filmmaker. As he realises he’s being imitated, he bursts in laughter with everyone else.

A long scene where Watanabe and his wife pay for the prefab house bought in for the new Chinese workers. Money goes from Watanabe’s hands, as he counts the bills one by one, in stacks of tens, to his wife’s hands, who counts again ten bills by stacks, and in the hands of the seller, who also counts the bills by tens. Ultimately, the salesman counts the number of stacks and counts again and counts again : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… Everyone, eyes on the stacks, notices there shouldn’t be a 7th stack. There is too much money ! Everybody laughs out loud nervously.

The daughter-in-law of the Toyota Seafood is interviewed while she is preparing a miso soup for lunch. Pots and lids fall on the floor. The filmmaker laughs. She asks « What is so amusing ? You’re not going to use this ? » Concerned about coming out well on screen, she asks « Am I doing OK ? » between each question asked...

To the Chinese workers, recently arrived, the filmmaker asks « Speak English ? », then again in Japanese. But they reply « Yes. No. » in a laugh.

The cat periodically tries to come in the house of the filmmakers.

Shiro the cat and the circadian rhythm

Kazuhiro SODA can’t help but film cats when he sees them. And they stay in the final film. On the seafront, there is a white cat with a bell, roaming around, looking for food and petting. Everybody calls him « Shiro » (white in Japanese). He opens the film. He’s the punctuation of each new day passing. We see him at night, or in the morning, in between two days of shooting. So every time we see the cat’s frolicsomeness we know another day of shooting went by.

Repeat Viewing

The characters in the documentary are not named on screen, but at one point or another they stand out with a particular conversation or a gag. Therefore their personality is imprint in our brains. And with a subsequent viewing, it is easier to notice their presence in the background, or in a crowd. Thus connecting different scenes together and tying the relations, geographical and interpersonal, between all onscreen characters.

A Press Review (An Elephant Sitting Still)

HU Bo (1988-2017)

[..] Despite the constant antagonism, the soundtrack is largely drained of ambient sounds. The resulting quiet combines with the predominance of facial close-ups and extensive use of shallow focus, which keeps the surroundings indistinct most of the time, to generate a heightened sense of intimacy that reflects the characters’ self-absorption and lack of perspective. [..]

An Elephant Sitting Still review: a shattering, soul-searching Chinese one-off (Giovanni Marchini Camia; 13 dec 2018; Sight & Sound)

* * *

[..] but his [Jin's] most memorable episode in the story is his visit to the retirement home to check it out – a sequence as hellish as the tour of the hospital basement in the second part of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century (2006). Wang represents the film’s voice of age and experience. [..]
Elephant assuredly has death on its mind: four people die in the course of the story, only one of old age. The underlying vision is inescapably bleak. But the overall tone is far from pessimistic: the emphasis on stoic resistance, on inner fortitude, on faces grappling with moral doubts, makes the film much more engaging than, say, Peter Emmanuel Goldman’s profoundly depressing Echoes of Silence (1965). [..]

Film of the week: An Elephant Sitting Still is a howl of desperate defiance (Tony Rayns; 13 dec 2018; Sight & Sound)

* * *

[..] A voiceover opens the film with a parable about an elephant that sits motionless in the city of Manzhouli, closing its eyes to the chaos of its surroundings. Hu seems to suggest that ignorance is a means of survival or, for some, the humiliation of daily life is immobilising. [..]
Though he often uses long takes in the style of his mentor Tarr, this doesn’t feel like slow cinema. The camera is mesmerising and frequently in motion, Steadicam trailing and circling the characters closely, with them until the film’s bittersweet end.

An Elephant Sitting Still review – melancholic and mesmerising (Simran Hans; 15 dec 2018; The Guardian)

* * *

[..] If the characters seem desolate they also seem alienated in the full sense of the word. For much of the film the main characters are more introspective than social. When they do carry out actions involving other people it seems misdirected, illegal or just likely to go wrong. [..]
But Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies / Werckmeister harmóniák (2000) features a whale that seems to represent the alienation of the village setting; perhaps an influence. [..]

 An Elephant Sitting Still(Da xiang xi di er zuo, China 2018) (15 jan 2019; The Case for Global Film)

* * *

[..]The film is a masterwork of a rare sort, perhaps of a unique sort, among young directors: others, notably Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, and Chantal Akerman, have transformed the cinema enduringly while in their twenties. But all three create aesthetic realms that fuse with personal experiences and philosophical ideas in a sort of preternaturally precocious leap of abstraction.
Hu, by contrast, is as much a documentarian as he is an aesthete; the emotional complexity of his observations are matched by his clear-eyed and uncompromising view of the locale and of his society at large.[..]
In depicting a society that inflicts cruelty and violence on a large scale and reflects it intimately, Hu has created a crucial modern work of political cinema.[..]
Street fighting, casual insults, easy rudeness, and brazen scams and frauds among the local citizenry are matched by cavalier political power. [..]
Hu’s method is no mere theatrical recording or efficient staging; he relies on the dashing, floating, pressing, retreating camera to construct the action and to analyze it dramatically. For Hu, the camera is as much a matter of exclusion from the frame as inclusion. The distance of characters from the camera—who’s facing and who’s not, who’s in and who’s out—is as crucial to the movie’s emotional power as is its action.[..]
Without a glimmer of mysticism or spirituality, “An Elephant Standing Still” is metaphysical.

A Young Chinese Filmmaker's Masterly Portrait of Political and Intimate Despair (Richard Brody; 6 march 2019; The New Yorker)

* * *

[..] This is a film in which people tend not to take responsibility for their own actions. When he discovers that his relationship with Huang Ling is exposed, the vice-dean flips: his career is ruined, he says, and it’s all down to her. When Wang Jin confronts the owners of the dog that killed his beloved pet, they turn nasty, concerned only about their own precious Pipi. [..]
An Elephant Sitting Still is so artfully composed, narratively and visually, that you don’t always notice what’s going on or how cleverly it’s done, but it’s often done by emphasizing certain visual elements while downplaying others—a method that ensures that you’re paying attention. [..]
[..] This legendary creature [the titular elephant] is this film’s answer to the preserved whale around which the world’s chaos and violence revolve in Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies: like that fabulous giant, Hu’s elephant is a hazy nexus of unfixable, possibly terrifying meanings.[..]

Film of the week : An Elephant Sitting Still (Jonathan Romney; 8 march 2019; Film Comment)

* * *

[..]Unsparing as Hu’s anatomy of moral drift may be, there is something graceful in his sympathetic attention to lives defined almost entirely by disappointment and diminished hope. Unlike the titular elephant, the film never stops moving, and by the end, instead of feeling beaten down, the viewer is likely to feel moved as well.[..]

'An Elephant Sitting Still' Review : Bleak, Graceful Realism (A.O.Scott; 6 march 2019; NYT)

* * *

[..] Some of this is doubtless due to Hu’s follow-from-behind shooting style (shot by Fan Chao), which feels deliberately pitched between an RPG video game and Dardennes-style verité. [..]
The murky landscape, marked by the distant sound of industry, recalls Pedro Costa’s Fontainhas films and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert through a low-grade digital filter. [..]
The film’s gritty, mundane agonies come to feel like a series of moral tests with genuinely unpredictable outcomes. [..]

Review: An Elephant Sitting Still Is a Mournful Vision of a World Abandoned (Christopher Gray; 3 march 2019; Slant)

* * *

A mournful, magisterial, and often moving debut feature, Hu Bo’s An Elephant Sitting Still might best be described as a contemplation of despair—or, more specifically, as an incremental, painful probing of how much a single person can bear before they're driven to tragic release. [..]
The opening passage, which cuts between its four principals and a snowy void, immediately locates An Elephant Sitting Still in a pensive, liminal space far afield from kitchen-sink realism.[..]
At the same time, the film's numerous fractious relationships, often defined by a generational divide, are so drained of the usual markers of tenderness and warmth that they register as affected, recalling, through notably different stylistic means, the stark, "model"-like interactions in the films of Robert Bresson, whose The Devil, Probably (1977) serves as a useful model for Hu's feature.[..]
As shot by cinematographer Fan Chau, the film is almost perversely drained of color, composed largely of stark whites and ash-gray tones—and yet it’s part of Hu’s methodology that we find infinite variation within this narrow register, that this spatiotemporal slice should feel boundless the more we look at it. [..]

Review: They Live By Night—Hu Bo’s “An Elephant Sitting Still” (Lawrence Garcia; 7 march 2019; Mubi)

Read also :
• Contrechamp interdit (An Elephant Sitting Still) First part
• Spoiler Territory (An Elephant Sitting Still) Second part
• An Elephant Sitting Still (2018/HU Bo/China) a few links and a trailer

Spoiler Territory (An Elephant Sitting Still)

SPOILER TERRITORY

WEI Bu

A 16 years-old student at the worst high-school in town, wakes up to a salvo of insults from his abusive father because he opened a window when stray garbage stinks outside, because he supposedly stole her mom’s coupon… Bu joins his best-friend, LI Kai, who is accused by YU Shuai, the school bully, of stealing his smart phone to confront him. At recess he’s rejected by his crush Ling. After a vehement argument and a violent push from Bu, the bully falls down a flight of stairs and is evacuated to the hospital. Bu is on the run, to escape the authorities and the angry family. He looks for money at his grandma only to find her dead in her sleep. He goes straight to his big borther’s who lives nearby to announce the bad news and gets insulted. Desperate for cash, he fetches his cherished billiard cue at the club, where he almost meet Cheng who’s on the lookout for him. He resorts to sell his cue to his neighbour Jin, after assisting him with the harassment of the owner of his dog’s killer. At the familiar monkeys pavilion of the local zoo, he meets in secret Ling, who refuses to go to Manhzouli with him. Following Ling to a restaurant outside of which he meets Cheng who doesn’t recognize him. Encouraged by Cheng, he writes down a threat letter to his rival : « You’re screwed » and sticks it on the restaurant window. Betrayed and deceived by his best-friend, he roams alone in the city, en route for Manhzouli. At Shuai’s hospital he sees Shuai’s big brother, Cheng. In the street he steals the Jianzi shuttlecock off of a group of elderly he insults copiously, losing all respects for the ancients and the paternal figure, which puts a momentary smile on his face. The sacred taboo is broken because he’s now a criminal. At a deserted riverbank dumpster, he yells his lungs out that this world is full of shit. Unfortunately he buys a fake train ticket to a street dealer who happens to work for Cheng. But Cheng pities him and let him go to Manzhouli.

YU Cheng

A local thug, wakes up in bed next to his best-friend’s wife. His best friend shows up at the door of this apartment he couldn’t afford, to find Cheng hidden in the bedroom. After a long pause in silence, losing both his wife and best friend at once, he’s had enough of this world and proceeds to jump out of the window to his death. Cheng barely budges or flinches. Though he rushes downstairs to witness the dead body laying at the bottom of the building. He blames the wife for the incident in a one-sided argument. He’s then on the phone with his best friend’s mother who is flying over immediately. But he could not pick her up at the airport. The mother is now at her son’s apartment where he committed suicide, and sits a lingering moment with Cheng who puts on a straight face. Cheng meets Bu outside a restaurant without recognizing him, and encourages him to do something about his girlfriend going out with an older man. Cheng meets his ex-girlfriend in a tunnel, where she lets him know that he should give up, because they’re no match. But before that, he took her to a restaurant where the kitchen caught fire. And Cheng took it on himself to save the burnt cook, for the first time caring for somebody else’s life. Cheng catches up with Bu, who bought a fake train ticket from one of his henchmen. Cheng pities him and buys him a ticket to Manzhouli. But Bu’s best friend shows up with his dad’s gun and hurts Cheng in the leg.

WANG Jin

A 60-year-old retiree, wakes up with his small faithful white dog, on the balcony of his own apartment, utilized by his daughter and family, who desperately try to convince him to move to a nursing home. He’s Bu’s neighbour. After an altercation with his daughter, he exits to walk his dog in the streets. There he faces a stray dog, recently lost by its owner. A big white dog who attacks his little dog and kills it. Fortunately the owners posted lost dog notices on the street so he could track them down. At the door of the owner’s apartment he asks for excuses and compensation but he’s received by arrogance and insults. Bu meets him on the river bank where Jin disposed of his dog’s dead body. Bu begs him to buy his cue in order for him to buy himself a ticket to Manzhouli. Down in the street Jin is followed and harassed by the owner in his car. Bu stands his ground and threatens to scratch his car. Jin finally accepts to buy his cue. Former military, he’s not afraid of Cheng henchmen who hold him captive because he now owns Bu’s recognizable cue. With his new cue, he visits the nursing home with all the sickly elderly in a long and sad corridor. He follows his grand-daughter in the street and « kidnap » her to take her to Manzhouli.

HUANG Ling

A lovely 16 years-old teenager (today is her birthday), Bu’s schoolmate, wakes up alone, as her mom passed out on the couch, and there is a leak in the bathroom again. She yells at her derisive mother who yells at her.

Ling turns down a date with Bu in the afternoon because she’s busy. Indeed she is having an affair in secret with the vice principal of her school. But after the incident between Bu and Shuai, she joins him, on the loose, at the monkeys pavilion where he often goes. There she refuses to go to Manzhouli with him where he envisioned to live with her, earning money with his foot juggling skills (Jianzi shuttlecock). She laughs at him and leaves. At the restaurant she meets her adultery lover who bought her a yellow rose and a birthday cake. Bu shows up and disturbs their date with a threat note on the restaurant window. Back at home, she talks to her mother who begs her not to become pregnant. At the hotel, she believes to be happy, treated right by an older man, possibly a father figure missing in her life. Up to the point when her affair becomes a viral Internet scandal. Then, he becomes aggressive and insulting because they’ve been spotted together at a karaoke, thus ruining his school career for ever…

She returns back home where her mom is confronted by the vice principal and his wife. She sneaks out, but soon comes back with a baseball bat to hit the two intruders in front of her mom.

Now she’s on the run as well and joins Bu at the station to reach Manzhouli eventually...

Unrequited love

Love is hard to get. Not to mention tough love from their parents (or son for Jin), the main characters experience unrequited love (except for Jin who is loved to bits by his granddaughter). Cheng is dumped by his girlfriend, and rebounds right away with the wife of his best friend. Bu has a crush on his classmate Ling who disregards him because she has an affair with the school vice principal. But soon she learns that love isn't eternal, especially with an older man who is fine to take her to the karaoke, restaurant and hotel until he's caught red handed. Then love turns sour and he insults her as if she brought that onto him. And Jin is all alone (possibly widower), only living for the attention he gets from his granddaughter who is caught between her parents and her favourite grandpa.

Losing face and honor

The tables turned when Cheng faces his mom and dad, at the door of the hospital room where his baby brother is dying. The thug becomes bullied by his parents who he pays respect to even while being yelled at and insulted. They reproach him not doing enough to avenge the honor of his brother who was defeated, injured and ultimately killed by his schoolmate Bu. Losing face is the ultimate humiliation in China. But respecting elders (especially the family elders) is utmost important. Cheng dislikes his brother, a nobody, and lacks the motivation to pursue his killer as well as he should.

One person though is not ready to lose face, and fights back. It’s the owner of the killer dog. When confronted with the remains of a beloved pet in a plastic bag, he starts off by denying any implication of his dog. Then he blames Jin for hiding his missing dog. Finally he follows Jin down the street in his car to insult him. Bu who wants to obtain money from him, stands as an eye witness of the earlier carnage and confronts the owner. He threatens to scratch his car with a rock three times, and three times the owner dares him before pushing him on the floor with his foot. Three times Bu rises again and fails to touch the car. This small incident is enough to earn him the heart of Jin, who finally accepts the deposit of his pool cue. By being humiliated by the owner, he somehow avenged the honor of Jin.

Death

The certitude of mortality menaces throughout the film. Its apprehension overshadows the mundane lives of brave personalities.The film begins with a traumatic error causing the precipitous suicide, out of passion, of a novel cuckold. Bu’s best friend pretends to put his dad’s stolen gun to his temple, before, by the end of the film, pulls the trigger with the same gun and take his own life off screen as a train sounds off in an epic 20 min plan séquence. Shuai falls down the stairs to his death, turning a heroic act of self defense into a murder Bu will have to live with for the rest of his life. Casual accident turning into a life sentence. Jin’s little dog is killed rabidly by an enormous stray dog for no apparent reason. Bu’s grandmother is found on her deathbed, who died of her natural death, leaving Bu alone, depriving him of a precious ally in the family that hates him.

Follow up : A press review (An Elephant Sitting Still) Third part


Read also :

• Contrechamp interdit (An Elephant Sitting Still) first part
• An Elephant Sitting Still (2018/HU Bo/China) a few links and a trailer

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018/Hu Bo/China)

An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo) 3h50'

In the northern Chinese city of Manzhouli, they say there is an elephant that simply sits and ignores the world. Manzhouli becomes an obsession for the protagonists of this film, a longed-for escape from the downward spiral in which they find themselves. Among them is schoolboy Bu, on the run after pushing Shuai down the stairs, who was bullying him previously. Bu's classmate Ling has run away from her mother and fallen for the charms of her teacher. Shuai's older brother Cheng feels responsible for the suicide of a friend. And finally, along with many other characters whose fates are inextricably bound together, there's Mr. Wang, a sprightly pensioner whose son wants to offload him onto a home. In virtuoso visual compositions, the film tells the story of one single suspenseful day from dawn to dusk, when the train to Manzhouli is set to depart.

Reviews :

• An Elephant Sitting Still review: a shattering, soul-searching Chinese one-off (BFI, 13 dec 2018, GiovanniMarchini )
• Film of the week: An Elephant Sitting Still is a howl of desperate defiance (BFI, 13 dec 2018, Tony Rayns)
• An Elephant Sitting Still review – melancholic and mesmerising (TheGuardian, 15 dec 2018, Shimran Hans)
• « An Elephant Sitting Still » : périple en train à travers le spleen (Le Monde, 9 jan 2019, Jacques Mandelbaum)
• An Elephant Sitting Still(Da xiang xi di er zuo, China 2018) (The Case for Global Film, 15 jan 2019)

Read also :

• Contrechamp interdit (An Elephant Sitting Still) First part
• Spoiler Territory (An Elephant Sitting Still) Second part
• A press review (An Elephant Sitting Still) Third part