[–]▶ No.2572[Watch Thread][Show All Posts]
We close this month's harvest/autumnal Film Club series with another Japanese classic from the early 1960s.
> Kaneto Shindo creates a visually distilled, minimalist, and understated, yet compelling and profoundly expressive portrait of human struggle, perseverance, and survival in Naked Island. Crafting a remarkably fluid and tightly edited film that is entirely devoid of dialogue, Shindo effectively exploits the characters' silence in order to capture an organic rhythm that, in turn, reflects the cycle and ritual of human experience. ~~ filmref
> The Naked Island is a fascinating early hybridization of documentary and fiction that takes to an important extreme the focus of Shindo’s early films on Japan's working classes. An epic yet intimate chronicle of the daily lives and struggles of a farmer family on a remote Inland Sea island, Shindo's internationally celebrated film revitalized the legacy of Flaherty's Man of Iran and sharply divided Western critics, with the majority embracing Shindo's poetic ethnography while others, led by Pauline Kael, critiqued the film as prurient exoticism. Today Shindo's innovative use of non-actors to restage their own lives seems ahead of its time, equally innovative as the film's use of a lush yet modernist score and near avoidance of dialogue - another remarkable updating and reinvention of Flaherty’s literary realism. ~~ Harvard Film Archivehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056049/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Island ▶ No.2573
▶ No.2599
No comments yet on this masterpiece? Lately I look for films set outside the typical urban environments of LA, NYC, London or Paris. In general, Eastern Europe seems to be fertile ground for a more rural cinema.
Of course Japan has many films that qualify as well, and The Naked Island fits perfectly into this category. Its bucolic lyricism has strong resonance with me, bringing to mind later works by Tarkovsky and Malick. Visionary and poignant.
Month ago I happened to watch Shindo's underrated Haha / Mother (1963). It's also shot in beautiful black and white, and it also stars frequent Shindo actress Nobuko Otowa. The two films share thematic parallels of humble people clinging to survival, maintaining family bonds despite adversity. Check it out if you get the opportunity.