Cochons et Cuirassés

Shohei Imamura films continue to be showcased in the Japanese Film Festival, and Hogs and Warships is a tale of pimps, gangsters and prostitutes put together in a melting pot that is the streets of Yokosuka, a port town where US Navy personnel spend their R&R in postwar Japan. And I suppose you know that means painting the town red with drink and women, with the Japanese folk all eager to make a quick buck through the provision of services.

I think there is no love shown here in painting, through the course of the film, how the pigs can refer to both the American soldiers - where the rowdy rank and file chasing skirts to bed, and the officers portrayed as more than willing to keep mistresses - and the Japanese men themselves who are pimping their town/city/country, where everyone's thinking of making good money in the shortest possible time. As an outcome, there's a whole load of black comedy that Imamura crafts in the film, where gangsters are constantly scheming and looking to outwit rivals, and the women well, relegated to either the backlanes waiting for pimps to bring in business, or pandering to the notion of being a kept woman for a better life overseas.

Hogs and Warships, or Pigs and Battleships, begins with showing the bleak picture of the impoverished in Yokosuka out to make a living through all means possible, despite the clamp down on bars and establishments by the Shore Patrol, that seems more symbolic and hence hypocritical in nature even, where a prostitute lashes out at a SP personnel for visiting her brothel just before the closure. After a quick introduction we're introduced to the protagonists in the lovebird couple Kinta (Hiroyuki Nagato) and Haruko (Jitsuko Yoshimura, who followed up this film with Onibaba, also featured in last year's JFF), one on each side of the sexes to touch on their respective strategies to better their lives.

Kinta's the quintessential easy-going, happy go lucky and unlikely gangster, where he thinks the money is with running with the gangsters, although he soon finds out his recruitment besides helping to operate the black market hog business, is to become the fall guy for practically everything that goes wrong for the gang, from the comical disposal of a corpse, to taking the rap for the gangster chief should it come down to that. With that comes the promise of riches beyond his imagination, with which he can pursue his dream of becoming a band manager.

Haruko is that steely lady that we've come accustomed to with Imamura's characterization of the fairer sex. Like the other romantic leading ladies in films like A Flame at the Pier and Good for Nothing, they possess this inexplicable hope that they are able to change their man through love. Here, Haruko persuades quite unsuccessfully for Kinta to give up his life of crime, wanting him to work in a factory, which to Kinta is a dead end job. The story of Haruko serves to be more interesting than the rest, especially through Jitsuko Yoshimura's performance where in the finale you can feel her resolve jumping right out of the screen in her determination to create a new life away from the old one where mistakes have been made and old hopes shattered.

It's the life and times of the working class during the era, and comes with a scene that's much talked about when all hell breaks loose on the streets of Yokosuka, where everything, including hundreds of pigs, comes together for that literal big bang finale complete with action, comedy and that tinge of poignancy even. With cinematography at its inventive best (the continuous spin from an eye in the sky angle when Haruko finds herself trapped in trouble was totally unexpected and made quite an impact on the passage of time), I found myself more interested with how the pachinko machine was manually operated at the backend by a number of hostesses working to feed those ball bearings into the player's machines!

This movie takes place in post-war Japan which is under American occupation and essentially focuses on a young man named "Kinta" (Hiroyuki Nagato) who basically does what he can to make ends meet. One day he decides to join an extortion racket and is put in charge of feeding hogs that belong to the local gang. Although she truly loves him, his girlfriend "Haruko" (Jitsuko Yoshimura) not only disapproves of his decision but is also one month pregnant by him as well. Knowing that Kinta isn't quite ready to settle down and support a family she decides to have an abortion which Kinta helps pay for. Meanwhile, the gang Kinta has joined gets involved in murder and soon things become quite complicated for all involved. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a complex film for which I may have missed a few nuances here and there. For example, the manner in which the American military was depicted certainly wasn't favorable--but then the depiction of the Japanese gangsters wasn't that favorable either. That said, it seemed to me that the overall message of the story pertained equally to deplorable members from both Japanese and American society and subsequently upon their negative effect on the culture of Japan as a whole. At least, that is how it seemed to me. In any case, I found this to be an interesting film and I have rated it accordingly. Above average.

Typical high school relationship turmoil pales in comparison to this. A young couple are looking for a more prosperous life in early 60s Japan, however, the young man thinks that running with a gang will help him clear some financial debts quick along with selling swine on the black market in the grittier parts of Japan. His girlfriend wants him out of that stupid gang while her parents are far from model parents as they try to steer her into prostitution. The story follows Kinta as he wrestles with becoming a man and trying to find a way out of the gang world as his girlfriend would be happy if he had a traditional factory job; something he bristles at. Will they be able to detach themselves from bad influences or will they collapse under the pressures? This film had really nice shot framing and a few really innovative transitions, especially for the era. The acting was solid and the drama slowly increased built upon well-crafted characters. One key scene has similarities to Scarface but swap cocaine with pigs. Ha Ha.

Hiroyuki Nagato and Jitsuko Yoshimura (in her first onscreen appearance) are very much in love. She wants them to flee to another city; her family has just sold her to be a mistress. He wants to hang around. He's a low-level Yakuza member who's in charge of their new operation; they have a contract to get the scraps off an American destroyer, which will fatten pigs, and he's in charge of the pigs. Much better than moving to another town and being a salaryman! However his gang is in upheaval. Someone has run away with the money for the pigs, the boss thinks he's dying of stomach cancer, and the other gang members are plotting on how to split up the boodle, once they've eliminated the old leader.

It's an expert mixture of farce and drama in the midst of chaos from Shôhei Imamura. He had run with similar gangs during Japan's Black Market era. Then he had gone to work in the movies and his earliest known movies were as an uncredited assistant director of three of Ozu's comedies of life among the upper middle class. It's hard to say what Imamura learned from Ozu, except to do exactly the opposite. Ozu's people love each other and gently guide their family towards socially acceptable goals. Money is never mentioned. the set design is impeccable in that simple Japanese style that Ozu seems to have helped define, and the camera is placed humbly on a tatami mat adoringly to gaze up at the actors in long takes. Imamura sets his story in the docklands outside a US Naval base, where cheap and gaudy bars sit cheek-by-jowl with cheap and gaudy brothels. Everyone talks about money, They're deep in debt, they value other people solely for what they can be hustled into doing for them, and the camera occasionally spirals up in a crane shot to spin around during a gang rape.

The only way to make this a comedy is to despise the characters in the movie, and Imamura does so in the most heartless manner. He pauses occasionally to offer an anthropologist's view of the people of this Pandemonium for his audience. He can afford to; he got out. Are any of the people in this movie smart enough to?

Before I knew anything else about him, the first of Imamura Shohei's films I saw was 1989's 'Black rain,' a dour, tragic drama that lingers long after we finish watching. I think that first exposure spoiled me, because even if only subconsciously I keep expecting the man's other works to meet that same level of excellence. It's hardly that something like 'Pigs and battleships' is bad - far from it; this is solidly made, and worthwhile on its own merits. But even as the story grows more absorbing in the back end this doesn't make a particularly strong or lasting impression, and I don't expect I'll think on it hereafter. No, not every picture needs to be a revelation, but especially if some odds and ends bear discrete subjective faults, is it enough for a title to be broadly enjoyable?

Scribe Yamanouchi Hisashi penned a harsh but compelling story, with dark or wryly comedic elements, of a loose group of yakuza struggling with infighting, disloyalty, and finances; a low-ranking gangster, the troubled relationship with his girlfriend, her family, and the pig farm in which all of them have some interest. Imamura illustrates a keen eye as director, and likewise cinematographer Himeda Shinsaku. The cast give vibrant performances, and where stunts and effects are employed they're fantastic. The production design and art direction are as vivid and fetching as the filming locations, and all this comes together somewhat brilliantly in the last stretch as everyone's weak hopes for a better life, or at least to get ahead, are shredded. Mayuzumi Toshiro's original music is a fine complement all the while, and far more than not the sum total is engaging and engrossing as the plot progresses.

The problem I have is that the feature gets messy in the details, and all the less sure-footed facets feed into one another. Through both Imamura's direction and Tanji Mutsuo's editing the pacing tends to feel rushed and harried, too often disallowing some beats and ideas from carrying the full impact that they should. This amplifies, and is reinforced by, the sloppiness with which Yamanouchi's story is brought to bear in his screenplay. Taken each by themselves the characterizations are firm, but this isn't so good about elucidating who each of them are, let alone who they are to each other, or how it is that everyone seems to know each other. The ideas are there for the scene writing, but few are those moments that don't feel unfocused or inchoate even on paper. Or maybe I should be pinning more responsibility on Imamura after all; everything looks good, superficially, but the substance underpinning the sights and sounds to greet us gets mired in an execution that sometimes comes across as disjointed, overbearing or both.

Please understand, I do like 'Pigs and battleships.' I wonder if I'm not being too unkind in my assessment. But for as commendable as the production is at large, and the underlying narrative, there's nothing here that's specifically special or memorable, and other movies have played in a similar space. It's worthwhile on its own merits, but unless one has a special impetus to watch, I don't think it's so likely that this is going to stand out. Maybe it doesn't need to; maybe it's enough as it is. Why, I'll go so far as to say that maybe there's something about my viewing experience that was less than ideal, and if I were to try again I'd like it more than I do. I just know that its best aspects must be weighed against those that are more flawed or at least less impressive, and while I'm glad I took the time to watch, for my part I'll probably forget most everything about it in a matter of time. Do check out 'Pigs and battleships,' and have a good time with it as I did; just as much to the point, though, may you get more out of it than I did.