tonosov-51238
Don't you just love movies where a personification of the director or writer monologues with no opposition for twenty minutes and people for some reason call it "controversial debate"? I sure do. But more than that I like when the plot bends in favor of that borderline self-insert, at the expense of making every single character in the movie seem completely unrealistic, because when everyone around you is an immoral pathetic pervert or a doormat, who only exist to satisfy basic desires your words will sure have more weight, even if the gist of these words is "dude there is no heaven and that means no hell because I said so, that means no one's life but mine matters, if I want something I'll just do it, it's my desire and nothing else matters, since there is no one to judge me in the end, that's why I will bring Sodom wherever I go and this script will in fact let me do just that and that's why I'm right". And that's a good take away from this film.As you probably have guessed I completely disagree with the nihilistic masturbation presented in this movie, and especially this type of storytelling where the only thing that can respond to a preacher is his echo, not because he's right but because the opposing side of this pseudo-debate just spills spaghetti and in literal terror backs away from him. Other than that, you should in fact watch this film and make your own judgment. The movie has a very good shot composition and it's very interesting to watch. Despite the fact that not much happens if you consider the run time. Although, if you hate the sound of someone raping the violin like I am, lower the volume, there is lot of this in the This Transient Life.
allyclow
This Transient Life (Mujo) is, on the surface, a sordid tale about the interaction between incest, immorality and Buddhism. Dig a little deeper and that's exactly what it continues to turn out to be. The lead character is Masao, a young man who shuns the path laid down by his rich father to take over his trading business, instead we see him idolise Buddhist sculpture and spend his days laconically with prostitutes and reading books. His sister Yuri similarly lives how she chooses having turned down two marriage proposals preferring to be close to home and the local monastery. When a playful scene between Yuri and Masao turns into a lustful embrace, the siblings' bond becomes sexual rather than familial and this sets the tone for the rest of the film. When the monk Ogino discovers their secret, he urges Masao to leave the village and he does so to become the apprentice of a master sculpture of icons of the Buddha. Throughout the film, Buddhism shows us that life fades quickly and existential questions of how to live ones life are asked. Should one be pure and live by the codes set by religion, or should those very teachings, of the impermanence of life and its swift passing, be a reason to create ones own morality and fear no hell and covet no afterlife? Director Jissoji Akio develops these stories masterfully with constantly shifting camera movements (Ozu he is not) and angles that would make Orson Welles brim with admiration. The expressive film language ranges from pendulum-like tracking shots to extreme close- ups reminding us of the film's arts roots. The film is stunningly crisp and beautifully shot and it is this style that carries the viewer into the heart of the story's conclusion. At times surreal, always spellbinding, this film deserves to be among the pantheon of the greats of 60's and 70's Japanese cinema.
chaos-rampant
The Midnight Eye reviews of Jissoji's films, ostensibly a very well written piece that is almost the only critical source readily available, reads a spiritual importance that should place Jissoji next to Dreyer and Bresson, it considers them successful films on Buddhist thought. Stylistically they couldn't be more different but what about the content, does Midnight Eye horribly misrepresent their intention?"life and death are a great matter, transient and changing fast" This is a mantra to the films. In all three of them, Mujo, Mandala, and Uta, Jissoji grapples with basic tenets of Buddist thought. Impermanence, emptiness, the practice and ethos of the faith, he calls these into question. For Bergman that question was posed and declined, it was the spiritual self doubt, the existential cry in an indifferent universe that mattered. The important thing to note as we enter into a dialectic with these films is that Jissoji, who like Bergman was brought up in a religious family, made films for the Art Theater Guild. Like his mentor Nagisa Oshima and like Oshima's mentor Yasuzo Masumura before him, he seeks out the individuality of his protagonists in a madness that defies society and liberates from it, in a youthful rejection of the old and stale. Jissoji's films then are not profound examinations of faith but radical portraits of rebellion.Mandalas are diagram symbols used as objects for meditation by esoteric Vajrayna traditions, they represent a sacred space for the concentration of the mind. So what is revealed to take place inside this sacred space, how is our concentration challenged or rewarded? First, Jissoji's thesis.The moral code and the transience of life.Masao's confrontation of the Buddhist monk in Mujo where he expounds on his personal realization on the nature and absence of good and evil, heaven or hell, and the nothingness of nirvana is an insurmountable attack that advocates liberation by smashing of moral boundaries, it promotes the pleasing of the will and the senses. The path of pain and misery Masao's choices leave behind him are excused because he wasn't alone in doing them. If he can pervert another, isn't that equally the other's fault for allowing it to happen, the movie asks. And if life is transient, as the title says, why shouldn't we give in to our pleasure, devote ourselves to it at the cost of everything else? I love how in all three films the crucial turning point is consumated from behind masks, with something of a bestial or mystical nature. These moments are an apotheosis for Jissoji's cinema.The game of seduction between brother and sister in Mujo is enacted with masks, the camera losing and finding them again behind a labyrinth of walls and panel doors before the incestuous ravishing can be consumated. This ritual dissolution of the self permits the forbidden, the taboo can be brought down by the adoption of another face.Beyond the thematic reaction, thought has been truly paid here. The masquerade is one, Buddhist tenets turned into visual clues is another. In Mujo, life was transient and so was the camera, life is in constant flux and so the placement of the actors often varies tremendously from shot to shot. In Mandala, Jissoji distorts space with widescreen lenses, literally creating the sacred space of a mandala. When Shinichi begins to live outside time, the movie turns black and white. In Uta, the total awareness of the present moment is rendered with the ticking sounds of a clock, and when the houseboy sits down to eat his tasteless grub, we get close shots of his throat swallowing. The boy maintains an unruptured state of concentration, and the camera follows that state.I've tried to paint a vivid picture without many specifics (the films are rich in material to discuss) that hopefully places the films in a context. Jissoji's New Wave calls moral codes into question, considers meditation a practice of death, and the spiritual pursuit of liberation a terrible folly. Buddhism is the recipient of his scathing New Wave and Buddhist thought is formulated only to be rejected, to receive scathing contempt or bitter irony.From a spiritual standpoint I disagree, for one the "nothingness" of nirvana is not a rejection of consciousness as Mujo posits, but rather a supreme consciousness, a true perception of the world as impermanent and everchanging. If life is like playing the piano, the enlightened doesn't stop playing it to become absorbed with the self, but, having tuned it to perfection, plays every note in harmony. And the moral code of good and evil, the "sila" of the Buddhists, is not a restriction of laws but rather a realization that certain acts further our misery, others free us from it.But as New Wave I can't deny the power of these films, and more, opposed to Godard's contemptuous attacks on the bourgeoisie or Wakamatsu's liberation from society through nihilism, this is thoughtful cinema that raises valid points, New Wave expression that feels vibrant and alive.To return to the opening statement found in the Midnight Eye review, there's room enough to discuss Jissoji in the context of Dreyer. A more apt comparison, is to discuss him in the context of his peers. That he remains, along with Kazuo Kuroki, probably the most esoteric of the Nuberu Bagu is telling. Cinema is not a casually irreverent affair with the fashionable in films like Uta, it's difficult and demands we rise to the occasion, to join the discourse and maintain our own state of concentration.
