Back in my day, you know, before tabbed websites and wikis, parents generally dreaded the long road trip. Today they seem to dread the lack of communication with their IPODed, vidiotic little brats (not recognizing their complicity in the process).
I comment about cars. I have no idea what it takes to be a parent. I do know, however, that most parents rarely consider the idea of watching a video by themselves while driving long distances. Did you realize, for example, that the navigation screen on your Toyota Prius can also become a swell DVD player for your bored spousal passenger?
Yes, you too can watch movies in the car. If you read this blog then you can already go to IMDB and search for the latest Hollywood titles to entertain yourself. I will therefore go back to an earlier mindset and consider a few picks that the late, great Pauline Kael would have approved for long car journeys. I think I will start with Japanese flim (to keep it exotic while you drive across Nebraska.)
Akira Kurosawa is often the first and last name that comes up when you fall into conversation about Japanese film. The same could be said about Sajiyt Ray (sp?) and Indian film. But why watch what everyone else watches? If you want exotic, try this film: Onibaba (available from The Criterion collection).
Onibaba was made in 1964. It is a film made after a Buddhist fable about chastity and the passions that arise over sex. If this sounds boring, then I’ll provide the Cliff notes here.
An old lady and a much younger one live in a hut in the mid-1300s. The two women attack lost and wounded samurai then kill them and make a living by selling what they steal. That’s the simple story.
The entire movie is shot in what seems to be an endless grassy marsh. The grasses sway back and forth througout the film as the story unfolds to symbolize rage, passion, confusion and so on.
Once the women have killed the samurai they throw the corpses down a large open hole in the middle of the swaying marsh. Obviously the large open hole symbolizes all kinds of things. It is an orofice, and I’ll leave it at that.
Early in the film a neighbor returns from the war. Things get interesting when the neighbor tells the two women that he saw the younger woman’s husband die in the war over a scuttle with bandits. The viewer questions why the neighbor lived to tell the story, but that’s all forgotten once the younger woman develops an interest in the man. The older woman tries to stop her but fails.
Soon the younger woman is running through the marshes every night to the hut of the neighbor to make boom boom. The older woman becomes distraught by this and soon tries to offers herself to the neighbor only to be rejected (great scene). This pisses her off so much that the the older woman resorts to scaring the younger woman into chastity. The old woman steals a mask from another samurai that she kills and taunts the younger girl on her nightime runs.
Soon all hell breaks loose. The swaying grasses, the open hole, and the stark, naked shots of the actors all combine to create wicked, palpable tension. This effect is heightened by a soundtrack that mixes the mating sounds of pigeons with Kabuki drums and urestrained saxophone (yeah, all back in 1964).
More stuff happens, but I hope you get some feel for the picture. Its not an easy flim to watch, but it is allegorical and unforgettable. Its also not that long. Which is something I cannot say for many of the flims Kurosawa was making during this period.*
* The best of which is The Bad Sleep Well. Based on an Ed McBain novel–like most of his early 60s films.
