I was excited to see a screening of this in the MoMA. Although far different from his first three films and lacking in their youthfulness, it offered several vivid themes. First I will say he is one of the finest actors directors I've ever seen, comparable to America's Sidney Lumet in how he hands the reins to performers to light the screen, and creates these pleasing compositions to just watch the actors work.
This film is really about manhood. Think of a cowboy and his horse. A samurai and his sword. A fisherman and his boat. I swear at some points it feels like it's about an aged samurai, but in this modern melodramatic setting.
A director must cinematically fetishize his subject. It just depends what he chooses, here the boating, the fishing. I am seeing it as his sexual frustration. While land is so subdued. The ocean is a wild animal.
There is a whole gay subtext how these men seem only impotent with women, coming alive at sea and nearly getting killed. Look at the extended love scene is just them smushing each other in a dull way. Then the guy shows up and they fight, and the sparklers go off behind him. Now he is turned on. Or how muted the boy is to the daughter, until the rape scene that is only in the context of her father disapproving his fishing ability.
Every scene with the boats are electric. Every scene on land is melancholic.
Funnily, the early scenes, this idea of manic Japanese people alone in sea desperate to find tuna, were amusing. The film is far weightier than this though to the point of a slight pretentiousness. I feel I have seen this movie already in that sense, you would expect this story on TV somewhere; although not even close to the melodrama and craziness it achieves.
