Docteur Akagi

Imamura Shohei has come in to his prime at a point when most directors of his age begin their downward spiral. Along with his completely different although equally impressive film, "Unagi (the eel)" (1997) Imamura has made two of the greatest films of the 1990s. This particular entry into the Imamura canon deals with a Kyushu doctor during WWII. Of course, the film goes way beyond just that; it's a film that cannot be summed up in words, it's the kind of movie that you sit back and enjoy and you come out of smiling, for you've been entertained in a way most films cannot. "Kanzo Sensei" affects like a truly satisfying book does, something most films cannot come close to copying. If you dig it, rent "the eel" and look out for his next work coming soon to a theatre far from you and me--Japan. Let's hope his next one is as good as his last two, and that it is released in theatrically in the US. Highly recommended.

Interesting if typically overlong multi-character drama with a wartime setting, about the exploits of an ageing and old-fashioned doctor (whose diagnosis for all his patients is always the same: hepatitis!) in a fishing community. Several enjoyable vignettes along the way: the young prostitute who becomes the doctor's aide but continues in her clandestine profession against his better judgment; the doctor's appearance at a Tokyo medical conference, in which he is moved to tears by the reception given him by the more illustrious colleagues present; the girl hiding an injured soldier who has escaped from a P.O.W. camp, involving the doctor and several other people from the village (who are later tortured by the authorities); the girl hunting a blue whale, in emulation of her legendary fisherman father, at the film's surprising and strangely beautiful climax - after which she and the doctor witness the historic blast of the atom bomb (which, to the latter appears in the form of an enlarged liver, a common trait of the dreaded hepatitis!).

This movie is outstanding both as art and as philosophy. Artistically, Imamura has great range and is able to make quick switches of tone and style without losing the thread, or the audience. There is a similar yoking of divergent feelings in the relationship that develops between the two main characters. They are wildly incompatible to the end, yet together they form something that we know is right. Philosophically, Imamura does what no one in Hollywood would dare attempt. In the atmosphere of moral relativism that American films have promoted since the 60s, nothing is more preposterous than to hunger and thirst after justice. But Imamura's final film vindicates that hunger and makes us want to share it. The story's surprises are so intricately prepared that I can't say much more without ruining it, but I left the theater profoundly exhilarated.

This film gives a fascinating look at life in Japan in the last months of WWII. Dr. Akagi brings a sense of humanity and compassion in an otherwise tired and spiritually bankrupt country. So, while the people are either giving up or shouting jingoistic sayings and insisting the war is NOT lost, he just goes about his job saving lives and crusading within the government for more attention and funding for the Hepatitis outbreak. Throughout the film he is tireless and decent. However, along the way, there are a lot of detours and other characters--some that work and some that tend to distract (such as the scene involving the prostitute and the whale)--taking this movie from a score of 8 or 9 and dropping it to 7. Nevertheless, it's still an excellent film and well worth your time--giving unusual historical insights.

PS--an excellent companion film to this would be FIRES ON THE PLAIN (1959). This film shows Japanese soldiers in the Phillipines just before the country falls to the Americans. It shows the end of the war through the viewpoint of very tired, hungry and broken soldiers.

Imamura Sohei's Kanzo Sensei (Dr Akagi) is reminiscent of Kurosawa Akira's Drunken Angel (Yoidore tenshi). In Kanzo Sensei, Dr. Akagi struggles with the disease that exacts heavy tolls on the Japanese during wartime. There is the sense that the onset of the disease is almost karmatic; people should know to eat well and sleep well, but—because of the country's involvement in the war—are only allowed to do so when they are diagnosed with hepatitis. The patients make the "best of it," getting their basic human psychological and physical needs met. Relaxation and rest brings people back to their human essence and reclaims their health. The sickness is likened to a psychological sickness—"hepatitis of the mind." We see this in Masumura Yasuzo's Kyojin to gangu (Giants and Toys) where the Japanese have been taken over by the Western principles of capitalism and consumerism. In Yoidore tenshi, the benevolent doctor is somewhat over concerned for his patient, who suffers dually from hepatitis and also—as a yakuza—from the cesspool that Japan has become after the occupation. In both Kanzo Sensei and Yoidore tenshi, the doctor is more of a symbol of the medicinal power of compassion; deeply concerned for their patients, the doctors provide not surgery but the common-sense advice to sleep well and maintain a good diet—to understand how society is plagued.