Pluie noire

"The Bomb finally got me" is a phrase used in the film by the survivors of Hiroshima as they succumb to radiation sickness years later. Americans prefer their stories of historic disaster, Titanic or Pearl Harbour, to lead towards catastrophe, to build up to it and give it final word as though it's the main attraction. Imamura opens Black Rain on the fateful 6th of August 1945, it gave me chills to read that title because as a Japanese professor hurries on his way to the train station one can imagine the engines of Enola Gay whirring a few thousand feet above in the air, and probably a clicking noise which no one can hear and now the plane's hatch opens to drop Little Boy, and the professor looks at a clock in the train station and doesn't even have a way to know that life as he knows it will be over in approximately 45 seconds.

Imamura gets over with destruction in the first reel, but he doesn't get over with death. This is a movie that takes place in 1950, five years after the Bomb razed Hiroshima to the ground, and the Bomb still looms heavy over everyone's life, like something foreboding and inescapable that you can only see with the corner of the eye, and Imamura's quiet domestical drama takes place in the shadow of all that so that life and death don't happen in one final upflare of heartbreaking disaster but in spite of it, in dogged defiance, on a bed in a quiet farmhouse in the countryside as though what happened five years before was only a bad dream.

I read a review that said Black Rain shows Imamura's apprenticeship to Yasujiro Ozu like no other of his films, and that may be true, for the most part this is a quiet provincial drama about an uncle trying to marry his young niece to anyone who may have her while prospective grooms flee at the idea that she may be sick with radiation after her exposure to the black rain. But then Imamura cuts to flashbacks of a city in flames, cauterized victims of the blast staggering around blind, skin melting off their bodies, faces deformed. It's a monstrous sight of hell on earth, and it's amazing to me how restrained is Imamura, in both depicting carnage and evoking sympathy for the survivors, the sick and the mad, who must go on with their lives.

For people who have seen and loved Come and See, this should be an interesting counterpoint. In that film Elem Klimov doesn't spare us any details, wherever he can find atrocity he's there to show us; Imamura on the other hand shows us the tragedy of war for a moment and then lifts it from our eyes, as to the survivors, literally to inhabit the memory. This is life after death.

I am a pioneer to the films of Shohei Imamura. I've been aware of his legacy, which ranks alongside other Japanese directors such as Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa, for a long time but I've only just started to expose myself to his creative prowess. The first and only Imamura movie that I have seen to date is his 1989 film "Black Rain" unrelated to the Michael Douglas thriller of the same name. And all I can say is that based on this one experience, I am more than ecstatic to continue delving into this artist's plethora of films.

Mr. Imamura was celebrated for the way that he provocatively told stories that exposed the good and bad in not mankind, but the society of his own country. In this film, for example, he examines the effects of the bombing of Hiroshima on a small group of people. However, as one would not expect from a Japanese filmmaker (or any director, regardless of his race) he does not go for a sentimental approach. He does not go for a cheap shot plot that could be worked into a target for political controversy and false anti-American accusations.

"Black Rain" is not about who dropped the bomb or why it was dropped. What it is about is the way that the bombing or Hiroshima and Nagasaki influenced not only the physical health of Japanese people, but their morality and sense of ethics. After the movie's sobering open, it follows an aunt and uncle and their attempts to find a husband for their niece. The problem is that all three of them were exposed to the radiation of the H-bomb and have, in many ways, been shunned by those who were fortunate enough to escape the nuclear holocaust. During this time, radiation poisoning was like a scarlet letter: a label forewarning the healthy from the condemned as if the victims of Hiroshima had brought this tragedy upon themselves. Just as people in the United States turned on each other after the loss of the Vietnam War, the people of Japan turned on each other following their loss. And Mr. Imamura shows that with astounding detail.

That great New York Times critic Vincent Canby made a sobering remark in his excellent review of the film. Mr. Imamura's intent was not to make us weep, but to open our eyes and make us think about our own morality. Because after all, isn't there a fair amount of scapegoating placed upon people with tuberculosis, cancer, and AIDS in our own society?

Mr. Imamura, like his peer Akira Kurosawa, was clearly an artist with an eye for detail. It can be found all throughout his film, but just look at the opening sequence, depicting the bombing. There is a real sense of horror in the movie as we see the mushroom cloud, the poisonous black rain, and finally the decimation of the city itself. As many characters in this scene note, "Hiroshima is gone" and replaced with an apocalypse created by man.

Mr. Imamura co-wrote the screenplay with Toshiro Ishido and created a very memorable story. He has also has a great cast. Kazuo Kitamura and Etsuko Ichihara are convincing both physically and psychically as the aunt and uncle fearing their own deaths but hoping for a better life for their niece. She is played by Yoshiko Tanaka, a very good actress whom Godzilla fans will likely recognize. Supporing performances are created by Shoichi Ozawa, Keisuek Ishida, Akiji Kobayashi, and many others, all of whom help complete this magnificent, haunting portrait of humanity.

"Black Rain" is a very, very good movie that I think should be required study in not only film and film history classes, but sociology as well. For there is a lot of psychological footnotes made by Mr. Imamura regarding society, ethics, and social status. And furthermore, he had the guts not to wrap up with a throwaway ending, but an ending that leaves you in the place of many Japanese people of the late 40s/early 50s: hoping for the best, but fearing the worst.

I didn't really concentrate on the larger Genocidal aspects of the story (although the horrific images at the beginning are very powerful). I was really taken with the human story of the girl and her family. Imagine living your life not knowing if you have a time bomb ticking away inside you. I was really wrenching to see Yasuko being rejected as "tainted" by the bomb. The image that stays with me most is when Yasuko stands before the mirror combing her hair, silently watching it come out in clumps.

It infuriates me no end that, now and forever, I will have to identify this movie (which I consider a masterpiece, and I don't use that word lightly) with the qualifier "Not the Michael Douglas movie!" Not only are the titles the same, but they refer to the same thing- the radioactive fallout that rained upon the survivors of the first nuclear bombings. In Imamura's film, this is no cheap metaphor; the whole movie is about the fallout, physical and emotional, from Hiroshima and the war itself. As the deterioration of a couple and their grown niece becomes more grimly clear, the ironic imagery becomes more potent, from the old clock that is reset each night to the stone gods that gradually pile up outside the heroine's door. (These, in turn, are carved by a shellshocked veteran who is compelled, in a series of tragicomic episodes, to attack anything with a motor that approaches the town.) The bombing day itself is shown in piecemeal flashbacks that are coolly horrifying. Yet "Black Rain" ("NtMDm!") can be watched, even repeatedly, because of Imamura's compassion for his characters. I repeat: a masterpiece.

Not many Japanese films have dared to confront the shame and neglect felt by victims of post-Hiroshima atomic fallout, which makes this sober, emotional portrait of slow death by radiation poisoning one of the more emotional dramas in recent memory. Most of the story revolves around a young woman unable to marry because of her condition, with vivid flashbacks to the chaos of August 6th, 1945, The recreation of Hiroshima after the blast is unflinching in its horror, but can't begin to suggest the impact of the actual devastation, and these scenes are often at odds with the rest of the film: a gentle domestic drama characterized more by its reserve, dignity, quiet poetry, and sometimes over-earnest anti-war appeals ("…war is bad", observes one character). Even with such powerful subject matter, the lasting impression of the film is one of grace, subtlety, and profound sadness.