KT 087: Profound Desires of the Gods (Japanese FF)

Austin delves into Shohei Imamura's 1968 island fresco

Oct 24, 2024

Profound Desires of the Gods
Shōhei Imamura, 1968
DCP Courtesy: NIkkatsu
Classification: CTC

Starting next Thursday, The Japanese Film Festival will present a seven film restrospective of Shōhei Imamura's work, hosted at ACMI.

Words by Austin Lancaster

At the opening of Profound Desires of the Gods (1968), we are treated to a suggestive montage of sea creatures writhing, crawling, and undulating on a southern Japanese island shore. Among them, the gasping fugu (puffer fish), famed as a symbol of risk-reward: dangerous for its toxic inner organs, it also offers up a delicious meat if prepared by skillful hands. Such is the approach of Shohei Imamura — the subject of The Japanese Film Festival's retrospective "Everyday Desire" — who charted in his oeuvre the slippery, irrational tendencies that surface from within the human soul. The retrospective treatment is welcome: despite the fact that Imamaura won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in both 1983 and 1997, his vital works remain relatively cult objects outside of his home country. The carnal, squalid, and violent lives led by his characters are met with attraction and repulsion in equal measure — a tension that underpins the films' allure.

Profound Desires of the Gods centres on the Futoris, an inbred family of pariahs living on the margins of a fictitious island culture, itself located on the periphery of modern Japan. The tangle is not easy to unpick. For 20 years, the family's patriarch Yamamori (Kanjūrō Arashi) has chained his son Nekichi (Rentarō Mikuni), forcing him to dig a hole that will encase an immense boulder tossed ashore the size of a small building. The punishment is for breaking the taboo of incest: Nekichi has long pined after his sister Uma (Yasuko Matsui), and is thought to have sired their mentally disabled daughter Toriko (Hideko Okiyama), bringing about a curse. It is hard to be certain however, since Yamamori hypocritically admits to having been sexually attached to Umu at an earlier time — it is nonetheless hoped that the Sisyphean penance, once completed, will suffice to appease the gods.

When a serious engineer named Kariya (Kazuo Kitamura) arrives from Tokyo to develop an irrigation system, a farcical game of contrasts ensues. Early on, Imamura sets up a contrast of opposites: between modernity and superstition, order and passion, masculine and feminine — but the lines are drawn only to be muddied. The situation somewhat preempts The Wicker Man (1973) five years early: the uninhibited Toriko makes various attempts to seduce Kariya, frustrating his project, the outsider’s bewilderment mounting as coquettish ambushes and unfamiliar rites appear out of nowhere as in a dream. The married Kariya is no virgin, however, and through the willful efforts of Toriko eventually submits; assimilating to the island's customs, he blissfully finds himself under her sway in a temporary lover's paradise.

Imamura thought of location shooting as a way of courting creative chaos, a proclivity which reaches new heights in Profound Desires of the Gods. Extremes of weather abound: the actors sweat and bake palpably under the tropical sun, and later, a hut's roof is lifted off by an offscreen crane, amplifying a real storm to cartoonish effect. Cinematographer Masao Tochizawa allows the bright natural light to be well-exposed on the film, lending a fresco-like quality to the image; in his deep focus photography, figures are captured in layered planes of scenery and choreographed movement that have a flat, collage-like quality. Imamura also sprinkles in various "found" animal motifs, which resonate multivalently; when Toriko feeds her new Tokyo boyfriend a raw yadokari (hermit crab), we might think of Kariya and the film's crew both: vulnerable, forced out of their comfortable sanctuaries.

Imamura was once an apprentice to Yasujirō Ozu, and his cinematic style was developed in opposition to that of his former shishō. His taste for grotesquery and wild use of actors make for a sharp contrast with Ozu's social conservatism and disciplined handling — one guesses that the variety of shot selections alone might have sufficed to make the old master blush. Imamura's long takes are animated by the frenzied, full-bodied performances unleashed upon them: in one scene, Nekichi hurls himself into a body of water like a stone; in another, Toriko jerks around intensely in an Adjani-esque state of possession. The film bursts with a variety of erotic material: including a two-handed twist of sadism, a watery bird-like kiss, and a languid shot gazing over a bronzed, hirsute physique.

For Imamura, the film's milieu — inspired by loose observations of isolated Southern islands — provides for a stick with which to beat the work-obsessed ethos of industrial Japan, as he delights in confusing the rigid Confucian certainties of his own culture. This culture is not the noble savages of Rousseau, but the homo ludens of Johan Huizinga — ludens (playful) in the sense of a paradoxical mixture of mirth and maddening tension. When Toriko dances for a gang of lusty suitors, the group's ecstasy is tinged with danger, ridicule and jealousy, and yet there's something sweetly shameless in the way she lifts her sack dress; Yamamori — simultaneously her grandfather, father and sometimes lover — affectionately provides the jaunty accompaniment on shamisen.

When Ritsugen (Yoshi Katō), the island leader and sugar mill manager, parades Kariya in front of a resting group of islanders to urge on their unpaid labour, we get the sense that he's exploiting something spectral, yet very real. Everything on the island contains gods, including a lone sacred tree that stands in the way of the irrigation project, the removal of which Nekichi attempts to obstruct. But the colonial machinations that deliver the islanders into the jaws of modernity go on regardless, with a callousness that recalls an old custom we have heard described in an earlier scene: an old Malthusian ceremony of population control, which Yoshi cheerfully explains involved throwing pregnant women into the ocean.

Things don't turn out well for the Futoris, and the film's coda, set five years into the future, gives us little assurance that they will for the rest of the population. The island is now a nascent tourist destination, sporting a miniature railway train making its maiden voyage. Inside, Karya, his company boss and their two wives listen to Ritsugen speak of quaint folklore; the Futoris' messy fates now transmuted into easy-to-digest tales of a ‘pure’, ‘untouched’ people for foreign consumption. Imamura’s unsettling suggestion, however, is that the spirits of the past are no mere apparitions. Movement on the tracks of progress chugs along, and yet we act, per Nietzsche, as we have always acted: mythologically.

WEEKLY FILM LISTINGS

24 Oct - 31 Oct

Notable Screenings & Events

Akira Kurosawa Restorations are screening at the below cinemas:
Cinema Nova, Palace, Astor, Moving Story Cinema (Lido, Classic)

Japanese Film Festival (21 October – 3 November 2024)
The Kino + ACMI

29th Greek Film Festival (15 October - 27 October 2024)
The Astor Theatre, Palace Cinemas Como, Palace Balwyn, Palace Pentridge

New Releases

Lee
Ellen Kuras, 2023
Screening almost everywhere

A Different Man
Aaron Schimberg, 2024
Screening almost everywhere

ACMI

Focus on Mohammad Rasoulof

The White Meadows (کشتزارهای سپید)
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2009
Screening Thu 24 Oct

A Man of Integrity (لِرد)
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2017
Screening Fri 25 Oct

Head Wind (باد دبور)
Mohammad Rasoulof , 2008
Screening Sat 26 Oct

There is No Evil
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2020
Screening Sat 26 Oct

Iron Island
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2005
Screening Sun 27 Oct

Goodbye
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2011
Screening Mon 28 Oct

Matinee

Thelma
Josh Margolin, 2024
Screening Fri, Sat and Sun

ACMI + AIDC

War Game + Q and A
Tony Gerber & Jesse Moss, 2024
Screening Sun 27 Oct

Jazz on Film

Luther: Never Too Much
Dawn Porter, 2024
Screening Sun 27 Oct

Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes
Sam Pollard & Ben Shapiro, 2023
Screening Sat 26 Oct

ASIAN CINEMA COLLECTIVE

COMING SOON:

My Sassy Girl
Kwak Jae-yong, 2001
Screening Wednesday November 13 @ 7:30pm

ARTIST FILM WORKSHOP

KT RECCOMENDS:

AFW + NFSA #68: ANIMEIGHTIES
8pm Tuesday 29 October
The Brunswick Green, 313/315 Sydney Road, Brunswick.
16mm projection. $10 on the door.

Pleasure Domes, 1988, Maggie Fooke. 8 min
Shadowland, 1988, Anthony Lucas. 6 min
Still Flying, 1989, Robert Stephenson. 8 min
Dance of Death, 1983, Dennis Tupicoff. 9 min
Suburban Windows, 1981, Robert Wyatt. 20 min
Rainbow Diary, 1984, Ivor Cantrill. 17 min

ASTOR CINEMA

The Thing
John Carpenter, 1982
Screening tonight
+
An American Werewolf in London
John Landis, 1981

The Terminator - 40th Anniversary
James Cameron, 1984
Screening Fri and Sat

Sanjuro
Akira Kurosawa, 1962
Screening Sat

Astor Spooktacular: A Nightmare on Elm Street Nightmare-a-thon
1984 - 2003
16 Hours

High and Low
Akira Kurosawa, 1963
Screening Sunday

The Blair Witch Project
Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez, 1999
Screening Monday 28 October

Nosferatu (1922)
F.W Murnau, 1922
Screening

Rashomon
Akira Kurosawa, 1950
Screening Tue 29 October

The Crow - 30th Anniversary Screening
Alex Proyas, 1994
Screening Wednesday 30 October

BBBC CINEMA (GALLERYGALLERY BRUNSWICK)

Closed until 2025

THE CAPITOL

100 Years of the Capitol

E.T
Steven Spielberg, 1982
Screening Sun 27 Oct

Superman: The Movie
Richard Donner, 1978
Screening Sun 27 Oct

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Stephan Elliott, 1994
Screening Sun 27 Oct

CHINATOWN CINEMA

Venom: The Last Dance
Kelly Marcel, 2024
Screening Daily

High Forces
Oxide Chun Pang & Chi-Leung Law
Screening Sat

Joker: Folie à Duex (Chinese Subs)
Todd Phillips, 2024
Screening Daily

Tiger Wolf Rabbit
Wu Bai, 2024
Screening Fri and Tue

CINÉ-CLUB (Carlton)

Coming back in some variety soon

CINEMANIACS (ASTOR)

No screening this week

CINEMA NOVA

Events

Check sites for rep titles

Release

Memoir of a Snail
Adam Elliot, 2024
Screening Daily

From Hilde, With Love
Andreas Dresen, 2024
Screening Daily

Like My Brother
Sal Balharrie, Danielle MacLean, 2024
Screening Daily

Cat Video Fest
Will Braden, 2024
Screening Daily

The Apprentice
Ali Abbasi, 2024
Screening Daily

Ghostlight
Alex Thompson, 2024
Screening Daily

The Critic
Craig Armstrong, 2024
Screening Daily

Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola, 2024
Screening Daily

The Substance
Coralie Fargeat, 2024
Screening Daily

Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe
Maurice Pialat, 2023
Screening Daily

Kneecap
Rich Peppiatt, 2023
Screening Daily

I Saw the TV Glow
Jane Schoenbrun, 2023
Screening Thurs

Strange Darling
Jacqueline Lentzou, 2024
Screening Daily

Longlegs
Graham Verchere, 2024
Screening Daily

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies
Liu Jia, 2024
Screening Daily

Kinds of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos, 2024
Screening Daily

La Chimera
Alice Rohrwacher, 2023
Screening Daily

DOGMILK DEGUSTATIONS: @ Miscellania

Coming back kinda soon

EXPERIMENTAL FILM CLUB

Listings coming soon

FRENCH FILM CLUB

Done for now, will return soon

GAY24 (Bar Flippy’s)

Devil Doctor Woman
Hajime Tabe, 1986
+
Ballads
Naoyuki Tomomatsu, 1993
Screening Wednesday 30 October from 7:30pm

HITLIST (9 Gertrude St, Fitzroy)

Shut for now

LIDO / CLASSIC / CAMEO

Events

Check sites for rep titles

General Release

Memoir of a Snail
Adam Elliot, 2024
Screening Daily

Like My Brother
Sal Balharrie, Danielle MacLean, 2024
Screening Daily

The Apprentice
Ali Abbasi, 2024
Screening Daily

A Different Man
Aaron Schimberg, 2024
Screening Daily

Joker: Folie à Duex
Todd Phillips, 2024
Screening Daily

The Critic
Craig Armstrong, 2024
Screening Daily

Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola, 2024
Screening Daily

The Substance
Coralie Fargeat, 2024
Screening Daily

My Old Ass
Megan Park, 2024
Screening Daily

OVA CLUB

No screening this week

THE MELBOURNE CINÉMATHÈQUE (ACMI)

Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary
Jeni Thornley, 2023
Screening Wednesday 30 October 7:00pm
+
Island Home Country
Jeni Thornley, 2008
Screening Wednesday 30 Oct 8:45pm

TOP OF THE HEAP (Tramway Hotel)