'A
CLOSED DOOR THAT LEAVES US GUESSING'
By Pedro Costa
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full article) ...
"
I knew the Japan of films, above all of the
three directors most well known in Europe
- namely, Mizoguchi, Ozu and Naruse. I knew
Japan through them, these who are dead, who
are of another time, but I loved it already,
at a distance - and that also is very important
in the cinema, to love at a distance. There
were things in Japan that I'd never seen in
the films of Ozu or Mizoguchi or Naruse, and
that I continue not to see in Japan. Here,
I launch into a rather complicated subject,
for there are things that these directors,
or the other great directors I don't know,
hid from me, aspects of Japan that they didn't
show me. Today I'm in Japan and I still don't
see them. That is to say, sometimes in the
cinema, it's just as important not to see,
to hide, as it is to show. The cinema is perhaps
more a question of concentrating our gaze,
our vision of things. That's what great directors,
like these three Japanese, are doing. They
are not showing Japan - they're condensing
something. Instead of scattering your mind,
your heart and your senses, they're concentrating
your vision. That's what I'm always saying:
the cinema is made for concentrating our vision.
To concentrate means also to hide. It's a
cliché to say that Japan is like the
films of Ozu, and the history of Japan is
the same as in the historical films of Mizoguchi.
Now I understand and I sense Japan better
(it's the same thing: to understand is to
feel and to feel is to understand). For example
(and you must not laugh now), I have the impression
that I don't see pregnant women on the streets
in Japan, and I understand that after having
seen the films of Ozu. I know what it means
not to see a pregnant woman on the streets
of Tokyo. In Ozu's films, he gives us cues
to understand that it's hidden. That is to
say, Ozu prepared me to see this absence of
pregnant women. So, sometimes a director who
is very much a realist, working almost in
a documentary mode like Ozu, sometimes he
makes films also to hide something. There's
a secret somewhere in his films, and to assert
certain things he must hide others. Maybe
it's necessary to step a bit outside of Japan,
because what I'm about to say could make you
uncomfortable, I don't know ... but for me,
the true Japanese documentaries are by Ozu.
All the people I know in Japan, all my Japanese
friends, I knew before, through the films
of Ozu. What I've just said, Ozu has written
in his journal. He says: 'I've never made
up a character. In my films, I make copies
of my friends. '"
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