He's a Fake!
The Ecstasy of
Angels was made in the midst of the
radical Sixties. Its last scene, a
classic, is of a blind man walking through the streets of Tokyo with a bomb in
his bag. He is going to commit a
meaningless, literally directionless, act of terrorism that has no purpose
beyond itself. Even now, months
after watching it, I am unsure if that last scene is the director’s judgement on
his characters, or if it arose naturally out of the action; this final
craziness an organic growth, arising from the obsessions and intense group
interplay that dominate just about every moment in the film. A film that is about a particular kind
of power: one that operates inside tiny fissiparous sects, with their constant
struggle to maintain loyalty under the ever-present threat of factional splits
and ideological condemnation.
This film
covers the same period, and much of the same territory: both even include a
raid on a military barracks for weapons. But My Back Pages
has a much broader scope: the action is not shunted into a few weeks, it covers
about four years; while most of our time is spent in mainstream society, not
inside the small rooms and around the intense conflicts of the student
radicals. In this film it is the
corporate press that is our home, and its employees who are our
companions. This gives the period
a very different feel, which we witness through a familiar though odd
perspective: the radical Sixties seen through the photojournalism of the new
media of that colourful decade.
The film, unlike Ecstasy of Angels, is not about power, although there are references
to the internal battles within the corporate offices; which may be caused by
politics or business. It has
another concern: image. It is a
film about how reality is shaped, sometimes even created, to accommodate modern
myth and contemporary legend. But
the director does not employ the usual lenses; of nefarious newspapers with
their ideological and cynical manipulations of the public realm to sell
products and policies. This is
work subtler, and more interesting.
It is about the novel phenomenon of the time: the new media world of the
1960s, and how it influenced the radical culture, which had emerged earlier in
the decade.
My Back Pages is a
film about how the idea of image and celebrity had by the late Sixties infected
the intellectual and youth cultures; their combination giving rise to the
student rebellions across the developed world. In a small way the movie shows how the avant-garde was in
the process of being transformed into just another commercial product; a
sophisticated and “edgy” label for “cool” and “hot”; the academic end of the
international catwalk. For at some
point in the 1960s one of the fashions was to be a radical, which required both
revolutionary rhetoric and at least some intellectual camouflage; picking up
the latest theoretical innovations, particularly from Paris; the home of
revolutionary mythology.i This is a film about how some people
came to believe totally in the image, and were unable to act beyond it.
It is a fascinating movie for this reason alone. Although there are other reasons for
watching it! One of its strengths
is that it shows both kinds of student radical: the committed and charismatic
activist Yoshiro Karatani, who is interested in power and in changing society,
and the poseur and fashion victim Umeyama. Interestingly, and tellingly, the film focuses on the
latter, whose posing, and moral and intellectual vacuity, is hidden from the
inexperienced and naïve journalist Sawada, who having once met Karatani wants
Umeyama to be like him. He almost
wills it to happen, constructing his own fantasy, into which he traps himself.
Sawada’s motivations are difficult to gauge. Mostly, we think, they arise from
sympathy – he identifies with his student colleagues, particularly those who
were wounded at the siege of the Yasuda Auditorium,
whose aims and methods he shares and supports. He also has a strong desire to act. He feels guilty for being merely a
spectator and journalist; a feeling accentuated by his current project for his
commercial paper, where he pretends to be a poor man wandering around Tokyo,
writing a regular column about his experiences. Umeyama offers him, in an indirect way, an opportunity to
participate in current events. And
he knows this is possible.
Nakahira, his more experienced colleague, has shown that a
journalist doesn’t have to be an “objective” bystander, but can be an active supporter
of the revolutionary students, helping free Karatani when he was temporarily
detained by the police.
There are also other more materially pressing reasons: he
wants a story, of course, to make a name for himself as a serious
journalist. Of even greater
importance is Sawada’s need to believe in Umeyama as a real radical; and for
much of the film he does appear to accept his hero’s claims. Although there are times of doubt, when
he questions the real nature of this good-looking, and seemingly incongruous,
radical, who sings pop songs and reads popular literature. Doubt, of course, doesn’t inevitably
lead to scepticism. Not at
all! It can concentrate and deepen
the faith; and this is the case here, with Sawada prepared to face prison
rather than betray his sources, when the results of his infatuation are
exposed.
Why doesn’t he pull back when it becomes clear what has
happened: a senseless death and the revelation of Umeyama’s empty
posturing? Because he cannot admit
that he has been duped? This
is too simple a reason, for he was warned early on by Nakahira that Umeyama is a
fake. No. This is not the reason. Sawada wants a hero, and he wants to be
part of something; and so he identifies with a person who appears to offer the
possibilities of both. It is the
attraction of power and commitment to a person who is incapable of either. This attraction reinforced by the
similarity of their characters.
Fakery is something they both have in common – neither are quite
authentic. Here is the secret of
the attachment between them.
Sawada identifies himself with Umeyama, who will confirm his own
commitment if he is indeed a real radical. Sawada needs the fake to be genuine. It is the only way he can square the
contradictions in his own character between his desire to act and his inability
to do so. Naturally, it doesn’t
take much for wanting to turn into believing, and for the image to replace real actions and concrete facts.
There is a moment when Umeyama says to Sawada that his
exploits will become real only when they appear in his newspaper – an action
need only take place amongst a journalist’s columns for it to become
reality. It is a fascinating
scene, and is the culmination of a series of incidents (mostly within his own
tiny group), which expose the eccentric nature of his student politics. Umeyama
doesn’t want to act, or change the society. He only wants (some) people (his own group) to believe he is
acting. Image is reality, in the self-contained and isolated world
of these political extremists. The
spectacle itself is the only reality the leader requires. The film explains why, in fascinating
detail: Umeyama's only desire is for his followers to believe in
himself. If he can create and
maintain this faith he can control them.
His words alone serve his purpose, while stage-managed illusions give
substance to his pronouncements.
Thus in another great scene this illusory performance is given concrete
reality when one of the group is theatrically killed to scare an outsider. Although this fake death propels them
to committing a real murder later on; as it sets in motion a series of events
that entrap all the participants – once they have acquired the uniforms,
enabling them to gain entry into the army base, they, and Umeyama especially,
cannot pretend anymore. The deed
must be done, or the group will disintegrate, for a failure to act would expose
the leader’s posturing. The
decision to move from image into reality is the hardest one Umeyama makes, and
it goes against his character; he is pushed into it by events, propelled by the
logic of the situation he himself has created. How close he is to pulling out! And nearly all the group are made ill with its implications
– they were not made to be warriors.
These are observers forced into becoming participants by a fate they
themselves have constructed, and which they no longer control.
In an early scene Katagiri (Umeyama’s real name) is in a classroom arguing with a
fellow member of a left wing study circle. At one point he says that all actions, even the most
revolutionary, will only reinforce the oppression of the existing capitalist system. So what does he want? says his opponent. The question flummoxes him. He turns on his interlocutor and calls
him an enemy, who is trying to undermine the group. He then he says another extraordinary thing: this is my
study group! I created it! It is a terrible admission of defeat
and intellectual weakness; and he loses his power, and the majority of the
students walk out. The few who
remain become his sect. Later
Sawada asks him why is he a radical.
Again he cannot answer and again he attacks the questioner, again
calling him an enemy. For Katagiri
doesn’t know the reason for his rebellion – there is no purpose to what he is
doing, beyond the doing of it. In
the classroom he could give no reason for forming a sect. It was enough to create one and he be
its leader. In a newspaper article
after Umeyama is arrested Sawada’s colleague Nakahira, who has had close
connections with the left wing movements, calls him a fake revolutionary;
putting into print his initial assessment. This is true, but it is unsubtle:
Umeyama is a real fake. He thinks revolutions can exist in
words; and that the idea is enough if the idea itself can be realised in the
public realm – by people writing or talking about it. The signs of revolution replace the acts of revolution; and
to appear to be a revolutionary is the sole aim. The dissimulation, the phoney shots, the lies and general
artifice, are all real, because they produce effects, and engender belief; the
only goal that Umeyama has. The
fake is reality, for a particular
kind of mind.ii But there is more to it than this…
One of the main Tokyo papers ran a weekend journal that was
highly supportive of the student rebellions of the 1960s.iii In a throwaway comment after it closes
an editor says that the fashion is over: the student rebellions have run their
course, and the demand for their coverage no longer exists. It is the idea of a newspaper as a
reactive rather than a productive agent; merely responding to events it does
not create them.iv Although this view is questionable it
does appear to explain Katagiri: he has been absorbed into the fashionable
world of radical student politics.
But he has no feeling for it, and has no idea as to its ultimate
purpose. He can talk and think,
but he cannot act; a typical intellectual. He is like a technician or a simple clerical officer who
works on a project or is employed in a firm and who has no wider interest
beyond the job itself - they are not interested in the company’s structure or
strategy, or its relationship to the wider society. Mostly they have to be told what to do, and be directed from
above. Katagiri is not a deep
thinker, he has no profound morality, and he is not a man of action. He is an ordinary intellectual who
cannot create his own world out of his own ideas, but must manipulate existing
ones, thought out and developed by others. Like so many academics and intellectuals he is a victim of
conventional opinion.v And like his academic cohorts words and
ideas take on a life of their own, until they replace the outside world entirely.vi Sophisticated, but shallow, and highly
tuned to what is “cool” and “hot”, he becomes a revolutionary; but it is purely
an imaginary pose; until the raid on the army base makes it too painfully real.
This transformation into the real world of action is
interesting in itself. It takes a
long time because he doesn’t want to act; pushed into it against his will by
the increasing discontent of the group that he dominates, who are beginning to
discern his lack of purpose and his inability to do anything but talk. They are beginning to recognise that
they are living in a simulacrum of a revolution, which he is creating for
them. For words are not enough,
even in this miniscule environment.
So Umeyama’s actions are forced upon him from inside the group, and have
no reason apart from maintaining his control. At one level this is not so different from the sects
depicted in the Ecstasy of Angels; but
they lacked his self-consciousness; his own awareness that his is only a
(verbal) game. For them ideas and
action were fused; and they were not aware that their schemes were only
instruments to heighten or resolve their own psychological tensions; that their
ideas and actions were a means of maintaining authority and control within
their totalitarian cells. Like
Yukio Mishima, Umeyama is too clearly cognisant of what he does, so that his
actions become a self-conscious performance. He is an actor.
But unlike the celebrated novelist he cannot realise his ideas into
actuality; so that his performances becomes pure illusion. Merely wordplay. Nakahira can see this. Sawada, caught up in his own
journalistic and moral dilemmas, cannot.
Sawada writes a life style series for the conservative
paper: it is about his experiences of living on 500 yen in Tokyo. Although talented he feels guilty about
what he does: befriending people while pretending to be poor. He is inauthentic, and there something
shameful about his job, symbolised by some rabbits he accidentally kills, where
his (temporary) friend Tomotsu takes the blame and is punished in his
place. He would like to be
employed on the weekend journal, and like its journalists be embedded within
the Zenkyoto Movement. After meeting Karatani his ideas and
feelings crystallise, and he becomes an idealist and a sort of activist – he
will change society through Umeyama.
The journal stops supporting the student rebellions, and
Sawada, never one of the paper’s group of committed journalists, tries to find his
own radical sect to follow and write about. It is his chance to be a serious writer and a radical. Umeyama is too good an opportunity to
miss; especially as he is such an odd revolutionary, too close to Sawada’s own
character not for him to be attracted and misled by his personality. As the relationship develops we realise
that the roles are being reversed, at least to an extent (there are few clear
cut boundaries in this film, characters tend to have a range of emotions and
positions; and are not simply good and evil), so that it is Sawada who becomes
the committed idealist, prepared to risk even imprisonment for his ideas – in
this case his commitment to the illusion that Umeyama’s group is a serious
one. It is Umeyama, we discover,
who is the cynical manipulator of words and ideas; and who will betray everyone
to save his own life. It is the
revolutionary, not the newspaperman, who is the opportunist! As the illusion breaks down, and it
becomes increasing apparent that this radical leader is a fake, Sawada becomes
more wedded to his hero. In a
difficult conversation with Mako Kurata, where she says that the actions of the
group just didn’t feel right – it was a senseless killing of an innocent man -,
Sawada almost breaks down under the strain. Like Umeyama, at a crucial moment when he had to explain
himself, Sawada cannot. His faith
and his doubts are too deep to articulate; and, we guess, they have a shameful
basis: his belief tied not to some social purpose, to progressive or radical
reform, but to the needs of his own ego.
There is no moral core to his faith. He is someone who needs to believe in something and someone,
and its content doesn’t necessarily matter – it will be decided by contingency;
by the time and place where he lives.
This scene with Mako, which verges on the sentimental, is a
good one. Earlier they had seen Five
Easy Pieces together, which she liked and
he didn’t (his reaction is a jolting, and refreshing, surprise). She likes a man that cries, she says,
and that is why she loves this film and Midnight Cowboy. Here
is an opportunity to get into her bed…
However, Sawada cannot let his feelings show; his life has become too
much of a performance, a self-conscious act, to take such a risk. In this scene, primed by this earlier
conversation, we are expecting him to breakdown, but interestingly he does not:
the talk generally too close to his own thinking and ideology, and thus
reinforcing the role he must continue to perform.vii It is only at the end of the film that
his tear ducts disgorge their waterfalls.viii He breaks down when he meets Tomotsu
again; who still takes him for the poor kid, and is innocent of all his
pretence and playacting.
Confronted with such unconscious reality he collapses into tears… Although the illusion remains – he
doesn’t inform his old friend of the truth.
For a film whose theme is image and role-play a surprising
amount of its time is spent depicting the world as accurately as possible. That last scene is a good example; as
is the pivot of the film: the killing of the soldier inside the army base.
A comparison with Ecstasy of Angels is instructive. In My Back Pages
the incident is self-consciously framed to attract publicity: the soldier’s
body is scattered with the group’s (hand painted) army helmets and propaganda
sheets. The death serving only as
an advert for the group’s existence; yet another example of the pointlessness
of its actions – even an act of the most egregious kind is turned into an image
and a piece of verbal trickery.
Yet the actual murder is realistically described. In the Ecstasy of Angels the base is American.ix And the American soldiers are killed
with typical cinematic insouciance, and we hear little of them for the rest of
the film. The deaths are
unimportant; they are simply a means to move the action along. In contrast this film concentrates a
remarkable amount of time on the way the soldier is killed. Thus we see how long it takes for an
amateur to kill a man. Unskilfully
stabbing his victim he leaves him behind, thinking he’s dead, unaware that the
soldier has enough life left to crawl away, where he dies; the blood slowly
flowing around his face and shoulders like the incoming sea around a
headland. It is a long and messy
sequence. The hard facts of
reality against the glossy effectless image, fostered both by ideology and the
corporate media.
The rest of the film is suffused with the consequences of
this murder. The soldier is given
a name, he is Japanese and we read about it in the newspapers, and is thus made
human to these abstractionists; his death seeping into the cracks and crevices
of many of these characters’ consciences.
To murder someone, this film seems to say, is an enormous event, and is
a very hard thing to do; unless you are highly emotional, and thus taken over
by the moment, or infatuated with some extreme idea, which replaces the
humanity of the victims with their ideological caricatures – it is easier to
kill abstractions. This death thus
becomes both a symbol and a concrete act that represents the paucity of thought
and feeling inside Umeyama; who is too weak to raid the base himself, leaving
it to his underlings.
Tony Judt once wrote about the Parisian uprising in 1968:
The radicals of 1968 mimicked
to the point of caricature the style and the props of past revolutions – they
were, after all, performing on the same stage. But they foreswore to repeat their violence. As a consequence, the French
‘psychodrama’ (Aron) of 1968 entered the popular mythology almost immediately
as an object of nostalgia, a stylized struggle in which the forces of Life and
Energy and Freedom were ranged against the numbing, gray dullness of the men of
the past…
But is symptomatic of the
fundamentally apolitical mood of the May 1968 that the best-selling French
books on the subject a generation later are not serious works of historical
analysis, much less the earnest doctrinal tracts of the time, but collections
of graffiti and slogans. Culled
from the walls, notice-boards and streets of the city, these witty one-liners
encourage young people to make love, have fun, mock those in authority,
generally do what feels good – and change the world almost as a by-product…. They bespeak irritation and frustration, but
remarkably little anger. This was to be victimless revolution,
which in the end meant that it was no sort of revolution at all. (Post
War, A History of Europe Since 1945.
My emphasis.)
This perspective on the Paris uprising, and which, perhaps,
has rarely been articulated so clearly, is the focus of interest in My Back Pages.
However, Judt is only writing about Paris, he does not mention the other
more serious student rebellions in places like America, Mexico and Japan, where
the actions of the students and the reactions of authority were more extreme, and
sometimes lethal.x
This film is an attempt to capture the spirit that Judt describes, but one that existed in a radically different and more unstable context, where the Security Treaty between America and Japan, a symbol and fact of foreign occupation, was due for renewal in 1970; a major focal point, along with the Vietnam War, of unrest and radical action.xi And this at a time when the Japanese economy was taking off as a result of that war... A sense of injustice, together with its concrete manifestation, will often encourage (particularly young) people to take risks and resist what they regard as oppression; even to the point of injury and death.
This film is an attempt to capture the spirit that Judt describes, but one that existed in a radically different and more unstable context, where the Security Treaty between America and Japan, a symbol and fact of foreign occupation, was due for renewal in 1970; a major focal point, along with the Vietnam War, of unrest and radical action.xi And this at a time when the Japanese economy was taking off as a result of that war... A sense of injustice, together with its concrete manifestation, will often encourage (particularly young) people to take risks and resist what they regard as oppression; even to the point of injury and death.
Media stars and celebrity intellectuals rarely exhibit the
kinds of fanaticism of which young students are capable. That is why they prefer to talk and not
act. At his trial Umeyama blames
everyone else in his group for the murder, and tries to implicate just about
everyone he knows; so as to remove the responsibility from himself. Had he been French, and studied at
the Sorbonne, it would have worked out ok. Today he would be writing about
Julia Kristeva and Phillipe Sollers; with a comfortable pension, and TV
interviews about the glory days of his youth. Instead he lived in Japan, where the student rebellions had
a more radical edge; and where some people believed in action that went beyond
words. A liar and a coward, a
great pretender, he played his role too well, and it forced him to fulfil itself… Without moral and intellectual strength
he succumbed to his environment; he gave into the passing trends of the time;
submitting to the image he created; and in which he wanted others to
believe.
Desperate to maintain the illusion that he is a real
revolutionary he persuades his group to steal weapons from an army base; which
results in the death of a soldier.
But these actions and this death only reinforce the emptiness of
Umeyama’s aims, emphasising the fakery of his radicalism: the action has no
purpose other than advertising the “reality” of the group. Yet even the name he gives them, and
which adorns the helmets, is made up: it is not the name of their sect! The advert is for something that
doesn’t exist.
Judt’s description is interesting because it suggests that
for many of the Paris participants the self-conscious realisation that it was a
game was enough for them. They
were quite satisfied with the stylized imitation of a revolution. The problem for Umeyama is that his
followers and the corporate mediaxii are not so sophisticated, and they force him to act out his theories, which
only increases their in-authenticity: the soldier’s death confirms they are
only pretending at being rebels.
A fact (the murder) is turned into an image, which takes away its
meaning, and empties it of all purpose.
This is a remarkable film. It shows how one can be both authentic and inauthentic
at the same time, and how there are different kinds of fake – the genuine and
the… fake! And it also shows how
these characteristics are at odds with a serious, and morally engaged,
commitment to reforming the world.
To achieve such sophistication and nuance the film keeps a tight hold on
reality, and tries enormously hard to describe facts as they really are; in a
world where it is the newspaper journalists that are the idealists, and the
radicals who are the “hidden
persuaders”. This is not the
whole story, maybe not even a big part of it, but it is certainly one aspect of
the revolt of the 1960s; and one perhaps that could only be conceived today;
where individual lives are constantly mediated through an ironised and very
self-conscious press.xiii
[i] For more comment see my Dropout Boogie, Revolution and Inevitable. See
also Roger Scruton in the TLS (29/08/2012).
[ii] The film has a discussion of Mishima’s suicide, which
includes the grudging admiration of the left wing intellectuals for someone who
was prepared to act on his violent words.
However, Mishima himself was a consummate performer, his public life a
kind of acting, a self-conscious performance which he regarded as his real
self. For discussion see my Do You
Know Me?
[iii] In the film their interest appears as simply fashion,
but one wonders if there other more substantial reasons for their support: that
the owners of the paper, as well as members of the establishment, wanted to
encourage the student movement, because part of its aim was the termination of
the Japan-US
Security Treaty. In 1960, the
last time it was renewed, there were major disturbances, and many people,
including Mishima and the far right, thought that the 1970 renewal would lead
to even more violent and destabilizing demonstrations; and the possibility of the treaty's cancellation. The Arena
documentary The Strange Case
of Yukio Mishima has some
interesting comments on this period and the relationship of the military
authorities with the radical right, who were also anti-American and against the
post-war pacifism of the Liberal Democrat establishment.
[iv] But for a brilliant alternative view see Adam Curtis’ Everyday
is Like Sunday. Also concerned about the 1960s, but
this time in Britain.
His
comments on the Daily Mirror
editor Hugh Cudlipp are enlightening: Cudlipp’s view was that newspapers should
influence public opinion by being just a little ahead of it; in his case
encouraging liberal and progressive reform through the 1950s and 60s. If it tried to act independently a
newspaper would lose power, he believed.
Thus the fall of Cecil King, Chairman of the Board, was because he tried
to use the paper to bring down the Labour government; upsetting the
establishment by going beyond the bounds of respectable opinion into direct
advocacy of a cause. It was a
turning point in British media, and was to lead to a different kind of press,
where the balance of power shifted substantially… to Rupert Murdoch & Co.
[v] For further discussion see my Russian
Climate and Dropout
Boogie. A.N. Whitehead captures this mindset well, by elucidating a
completely different idea (the importance of contradiction in understanding a
reality that is too complex and fluctuating for the mind to grasp in its
totality):
“Every age produces people with clear
logical intellects, and with the most praiseworthy grasp of the importance of
some sphere of human experience, who have elaborated, or inherited, a scheme of
thought which exactly fits those experiences which claim their interest. Such people are apt resolutely to
ignore, or to explain away, all evidence which confuses their scheme with
contradictory instances. What they
cannot fit in is for them nonsense.” (Science
and the Modern World)
With
the rise of the university population, and the proliferation of reasonably well
educated minds, you would expect such tendencies to increase, especially given,
as Whitehead recognises in the book, the nature of modern education – to prefer
generalizations to an absorption in the particular fact. Its most obvious example was the vast
expansion of the social sciences during the last century, especially during the
1960s. One tendency would be for
the student to become more responsive towards relatively coherent and
internally consistent theoretical models – this may be the reason for the rise of Freudianism in the 1950s and Marxism
in the 1960s (in the universities of the developed countries). And with it, as Whitehead also notes,
comes increasing irrationality, as a small number of ideas are used to explain
the whole of a society or of nature – the class struggle, sexual repression,
the selfish gene, the free market…
Umeyama
has imbibed and elaborated some fashionable theories. However, he cannot put his notions into practice for he has
neither the power nor the will to do so (one of the attractions and dangers of
the charismatic ideologue is that they have the authority and means to impose
their limited beliefs on their followers and victims – the very narrowness and
irrationality of their ideas adds to their power. It is in the exercise of this power that we see the difference
between Umeyama and Karatani).
His
solution to the problem is to form a sect, which he can isolate from the world,
and so leave his theories untouched. The sect thus becomes an attempt to
reproduce the “perfection” (that is, the logical consistency) of his ideas in
the real world. It can work for so
long as the rest of the group believe in him, and do not act beyond themselves. However, as Whitehead notes, nature never stops still,
constantly changing it forces the modification of most of our ideas; a
relatively easy process in the study; but very hard when you have sold a
particular theory to a group of people who have sacrificed part of their lives
to believe in it. Their very
existence now depending on their faith in your “truth”; that is, they are
committed to a particular set of fixed ideas that you have given them. Ever-changing nature, though, is
constantly threatening to undermine the leader’s authority by challenging his
theories with new facts; so that always he must either deny reality or make
this ideas consistent with the ever renewed present. If he had remained in his study he could have refined his
ideas almost indefinitely, ignoring, for the most part, the world outside his
window, and we would have remained a third rate academic; to be quickly
forgotten when he retires. Out of
in the real world, his theories bump up against inconvenient facts and other people; and
eventually have to give way; at least to some degree – the group eventually
force him to act. His failure is
due to the weakness of a particular kind of intellect, which although
intelligent and very logical, tends to be all abstract reason, and lacks
creative capacity. The failure of
such a mind is well described by Whitehead (through describing its opposite):
“…traditional
[or conventional] ideas are never static.
They are either fading into meaningless formulae, or are gaining power
by the new lights thrown by a more delicate apprehension. They are transformed by the urge of
critical reason, by the vivid evidence of emotional experience, and by the cold
certainties of scientific perception.”
Umeyama
cannot escape from the (conventional) theories he has acquired, and which include their own
contradiction: to destroy the system we must act, but each act strengths
it. The solution is easy: do not
act at all (it is the defeatism of reason, and which has a long history: the
old scholastics thought science was impossible because rationally it could not be done; as
Whitehead notes, the 17th century scientific revolution was
essentially anti-intellectual and anti-rational – here is the secret of its
initial breakthrough success). As
a logical and intelligent man Umeyama follows his own advice, but he has
ignored some highly important evidence: other people will have a different,
more literal, interpretation of his words. Thus for him actions are simply media performances, an
illusion of acting; just an intellectual game. For others, and these include the people in his group, to
act has a quite definite meaning; it is to physically change the world outside
their flat door; it means to instigate a social revolution. It this tension, between image and
reality, fact and theory, and his need to keep his authority, that eventually
forces him sanction the raid on the army base.
A
more charismatic or creative thinker would have held the group together by
strength of personality; or he would have had more control over his ideas,
critically analysing them, and modifying them in light of changed
circumstances. Umeyama is trapped
inside someone else’s theories (this is the essence of conventional opinion –
we uncritically accept another’s point of view); and his high intelligence
prevents him from getting out of them.
[vi] See the Bertrand Russell quote in my All in the
Words?
[vii] Although it is a good scene, which exposes the
pressure inside him, it is a little too obvious, especially as Umeyama had
earlier confessed to liking Midnight Cowboy because Dustin Hoffman cries… We are being told what to think, by a
director that cannot trust our responses.
[viii] There is some well-observed acting in this scene, but
again it is sentimental, and because it has been too telegraphed we are too
conscious of it.
[ix] America appears only vicariously in this film, mostly
through other movies (including the moon landing); and a few speeches at a
student rally. The controversial
presence of the United States, important then as now to the country, is oddly
absent from this film.
[x] The United States, traditionally a politically very
violent country, was no exception in the 1960s, with violence against property
and person widespread. The shootings at Kent
State University were among the most notorious of the incidents of that
decade.
In
Mexico there was the
massacre of students at Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco. See Edwin Williamson for more general
comment (The
Penguin History of Latin America).
[xi] Although ideologically coloured the website International Communist
Current gives some good
background on the student uprisings in Japan.
[xii] Or should I say just Sawada, who comes to believe in
him? This raises an interesting
question: how much is the soldier’s death down to his influence? Another journalist seeing through his
games may have discouraged Umeyama, who needed the media to print his fantasies
in order to make them real. In a
sense Sawada is responsible for this murder, because without the promise of
media fame, of the actualisation of the group’s revolutionary potential amongst
the newspaper’s ink, there would have been no urge to raid the base – its only
purpose was to generate a story.
[xiii] It is also one of the weaknesses of the film: many of
its images are uninspiring, and sometimes one feels the camera is straining to
find those parts of Tokyo that have not changed since 1971… Perhaps it was necessary given the
content, but there were times I ached for a more complex cinematographic
performance; with jump cuts and collage, the overlaying of different images; and the inclusion of documentary material.
That is, I wanted it to be more like Ecstasy of Angels; which in many ways is a much poorer film.
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