Conflagração

Disillusionment and existential themes dominate this film, which opens with the interrogation of a young man who has been charged with burning a temple down. The bulk of the film is then a flashback, where we learn the young man (Raizô Ichikawa) has been mocked for a stuttering problem his entire life. Things don't get any better for him when he's taken on as an apprentice monk by a Buddhist master (Ganjirô Nakamura), who was a friend of his deceased father.

We get our first glimpse of the master's character when we see him peering into a mirror and making himself up prior to letting someone enter his room, which is a small bit of foreshadowing by director Kon Ichikawa. He looks out for the young man and isn't evil per se, but we find that he hasn't given up the vanities of the world either, as he routinely sees a geisha and happily sells admission tickets to the temple. It seems as if this Buddhist temple is a business with 'normal men', not those who sacrifice their desires on a path to enlightenment. Nakamura plays the part well, and with nuance.

Everywhere the young man turns he sees falseness, and it was fascinating to see the themes of isolation, adultery, and religious hypocrisy in this context. "No one understands me," he says while out alone at night, in a universal moment. He alone seems to revere the meaning of the temple and guards it jealousy, in large part because of the teachings and purity of his father. Ichikawa gives us some fantastic shots, including the two of them on a hill, and then later as thousands of small sparks fly up into the air when the temple is on fire. It's a solid, well-made film, but it's also pretty somber, so you may consider that before watching it.

Until film directors or writers can transmit information telepathically, I believe it's a complete waste of time to try to make a movie based on a novel like Mishima's "Temple of the Golden Pavilion". This movie is basically only a sequence of episodic occurrences without any explanation of the thoughts, feelings, and obsession that drove Mizoguchi to his final, self-destructive act; the novel, on the other hand, is almost completely dominated by such explanation, and the episodes depicted in this film serve in the novel essentially as jumping-off points for Mizoguchi's expostulations on beauty, deformity, isolation, etc. The very essence of his story is exactly what's missing from this film, and its absence renders the movie incomprehensible to those who haven't first read the novel. I watched it within a couple of weeks of having read "Temple of the Golden Pavilion" and so had a good idea of the story; my wife had not read it and found the story frankly puzzling, and I was at a loss as to how to explain to her Mizoguchi's motivations for his actions. The episode of his defacing the scabbard of the naval cadet's scabbard, for example, comes across in the movie as just a peevish act of petty revenge for the other students mocking his stammer. Completely absent from the movie are such central issues as his feelings towards his father and, especially, his mother (including the traumatic experience of witnessing his mother's adultery, which passes almost invisibly in the movie); his feelings towards the Superior and his need to rouse the old man to anger and condemnation; his relationships with Kashiwagi and with Tsurukawa (the latter missing entirely from the movie); and above all, his overarching obsession with the Golden Pavilion itself and all it symbolizes to him. From the movie alone, one gets the impression that the almost completely inarticulate monk just suddenly decides to burn the temple down for virtually no reason, whereas in the novel, he explains frequently and at almost exhausting length what the Golden Pavilion means to him and why he comes to decide that he has to destroy it. Where, for instance, in the movie is even the hint that his obsession with the Golden Pavilion renders him essentially impotent? By his telling in the novel, that is one of the main factors of his desperation. This movie is only a paltry shell of the work on which it was based. If you must watch it, read "Temple of the Golden Pavilion" shortly before you do, or you'll be completely at sea!

Director Ichikawa passed away in mid-February; having no unwatched films of his in my collection, I decided to pay him tribute with this (which I only recently acquired and was, reportedly, his own personal favorite among his films) and the anti-war drama THE BURMESE HARP (1956; via the Criterion DVD) – both of which are among his most renowned works.

I had attended part of an Ichikawa retrospective at London's National Film Theater in 2002, where I watched eight of his movies – comprising both well-known and more obscure titles; incidentally, I first watched CONFLAGRATION itself in a specialized local theater during a 2005 Japanese-film week – along with Akira Kurosawa's minor SCANDAL (1950). By the way, the lead actor here is also called Ichikawa – and, funnily enough, he plays a character named Mizoguchi (one wonders whether it was a deliberate nod to famed Japanese film-maker Kenji Mizoguchi, who had died two years before and also happens to be the Asian exponent I admire above all myself!); Tatsuya Nakadai, then, provides solid support as an opportunistic cripple – he was a star in the making at this point.

While the subject matter (based on a story by the celebrated but controversial Yukio Mishima) – involving a meek and stuttering monk's schooling and who has an unlimited devotion to a Japanese temple, may not be exactly enticing – there's no denying the emotional power inherent in the unfolding drama, or the beauty of the images themselves (the film was shot in monochrome and widescreen). Besides, the director utilizes a simple and seamless transition between present and past events in the boy's life; incidentally, the story is told in flashback as the young monk is being interrogated by the baffled and angry police for having willfully destroyed a national shrine (he eventually burns down his beloved temple in a symbolic gesture when subjected to the hypocrisies of the world).

Aside from the exploits of rebellious buddy Nakadai, the hero's religious doubt is triggered by the fact that his otherwise firm superior turns out to be a womanizer, and that his outwardly submissive yet overbearing mother is also an adulteress…while in his own eagerness not to have the temple defiled by 'unworthy subjects', he mistreats a local girl who wants to take refuge inside – thus effectively solving her dilemma, since she miscarries the baby due from an illicit affair with a American G.I. (the time in which the narrative is set, presumably, being the immediate post-war era).