An Interview With Miguel Patrício

• Tweet
• 

An interview with Miguel Patrício, writer of the portugese blog Retroprojeccao…

Table of contents

1 – How/When did you discover the Japanese Cinema?
2 – For you, what’s the Japanese Cinema?
3 – What are your favorites japanese movies?
4 – About Japanese Cinema In Portugal…
5 – For you, is there anything to do to improve this situation?

***

How/When did you discover the Japanese Cinema?

It was in 2000 (maybe 2001 ?) when I first fell in love with Japanese cinema. The Portuguese TV channel RTP2 made a full retrospective of the work of Master Takeshi Kitano. I will never forget the experience of watching such movies: the abrupt sadism of Violent Cop or the satiric stillness of Boiling Point or even the poetic melancholic silence of Sonatine totally blew me away. I think Kitano reinvented the editing process, and because of that, in his films, he creates a very bizarre, yet enchanting, magic pace. The way he films the world, his very particular world, seems not only spontaneous (in the sense that there is a very exquisite taste in exploring the realms of silence and autism) but also poetic, because in a Kitano film flower (harmony) and fire (chaos) are the same thing.

This first contact was vital for me (though I already knew anime and few Japanese films such as Seven Samurai or Tales of Ugetsu): it opened my mind and made me searching for more. It was in this sense that I gradually discover more and more Japanese masterpieces: great lessons of story-telling as luxurious exercises of aesthetics.

Up

For you, what’s the Japanese Cinema?

That’s a difficult question to answer. I think Japanese culture has some kind of a metaphysical in it. I don’t want to get too cliché in portraying this sort of emotions, but, for example, when I hear the peasants singing folk songs in a Chambara or when I contemplate the landscapes filmed by an Ozu or others I feel something so inexplicably deep. Just like those foreign places represented my home-land, after all.

Maybe I’m getting to subjective with this, but nonetheless, Japanese Cinema in a general approach, achieves to unite the concepts of cinema of genre and cinema of author in a way never seen before in any other cinema, I think. This formulation gives Japanese Cinema a great advantage: we can see it all in a Japanese movie in a clever, special way.

Up

What are your favorites japanese movies?

This is a hard task because I must forget movies that I love too, but maybe the most important to me are:

.A Page of Madness (Kurutta Ipeji, 1926, Teinosuke Kinugasa) – Expressionist and Impressionist at the same time, Kinugasa’s experimental film show us that Japanese cinema in the 20′s was as developed as Russian or German cinema.

.Late Spring (Banshun, 1949, Yasujiro Ozu) – It’s the revelation of Ozu as a deep humanist that understands the problem of death, yet portrays it with stoic sereneness. The scene where Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara are watching the Noh Play is an unforgettable experience.

.Harakiri (Seppuku, 1962, Masaki Kobayashi) – Formally perfect and with an amazing narrative, Kobayashi’s directing (along with Tatsuya Nakadai flawless acting) gives us the best chambara ever.

.Branded to Kill (Koroshi no Rakuin, 1966, Seijun Suzuki) – Surrealistic and absurd Nikkatsu Eiga? Perfect in every sense of the word and Joe Shishido is cool as ever.

.Nanami: The Inferno of First Love (Hatsukoi: Jigoku-hen, 1968, Susumu Hani) – Susumu Hani is a director who deserves more respect and attention. This is probably the bleakest film I ever seen. Script by the great Shuji Terayama.

.Eros Plus Massacre (Erosu Purasu Gyakusatsu, 1969, Kijû Yoshida) – Kijû Yoshida proves to be the master of aesthetics and speculation in this Eros Plus Massacre. Reflecting upon the place of Being in Time, Yoshida delivers a complex and fascinating exercise of History and Truth.

.Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no Soretsu, 1969, Toshio Matsumoto) – Matsumoto’s cinematic experiences are so avant-garde and ahead of its time that I will never forget the first time I saw this.

.Go, Go, Second Time Virgin (Yuke, Yuke, Nidome no Shojo, 1969, Koji Wakamatsu) – Wakamatsu’s nihilistic pink movie focus more on the loss of innocence than sex in itself. That is why he’s so sublime.

.Double Suicide (Shinjû: Ten no Amijima, 1969, Masahiro Shinoda) – The last scene, with the hypnotizing music by Toru Takemitsu, proves this to be not only a great formal achievement but also a compelling erotic tragedy.

.The Man Who Left his Will on Film (Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa, 1970, Nagisa Oshima) – The chaotic construction of the film hides a deeper meaning. Nagisa Oshima builds the ultimate film-problem, reworking the famous Theory of Landscape: is what we film real?

.This Transient Life (Mujo, 1970, Akio Jissoji) – Jissoji refreshes the incest theme (trade-mark of the early ATG productions) giving a fabulous movie about desire and destruction.

.Pastoral: To Die in the Country (Den’en ni shisu, 1974, Shuji Terayama) – This is one of my personal favorites (as a matter of fact, all the work of Terayama is). By doing a thought-provoking meta-film, Shuji Terayama intent is to reconsider him-self in a bizarre quest and reconstruction of his identity and sexuality.

.Sonatine (Sonachine, 1993, Takeshi Kitano) – My first Japanese favorite movie. Even when I see Sonatine today, I don’t know how such beauty is possible. The Kitano blue, the beach and games, and of course, the mesmerizing score by Joe Hisaishi.

.Tokyo Fist (1995, Shinya Tsukamoto) – Shinya Tsukamoto’s city schizophrenia is as furious as never. This movie gives sadism another meaning as the search for returning to life.

.Maboroshi (Maboroshi no Hikari, 1995, Hirokazu Kore-eda) – Because of its sui-generis sense of pace, Maboroshi is a melancholic existencial search for meaning before the trauma. The Funeral Parade Scene is bouleversant.

.Eureka (Yureka, 2001, Shinji Aoyama) – Silently epic, Shinji Aoyama’s Eureka is still by far the great revelation of this decade.

Is it too obvious that the ATG era is my favorite?

Up

How the Japanese Cinema (old or new) is considered in Portugal? What about the critics? The movie-goers?

In Portugal, there is absolutely no interest in discovering the possibilities of Japanese cinema (old or new). In my opinion, our critics and specialists seem only to give importance the more known names (such as Mizoguchi, Ozu and Kurosawa) the rest is totally forgotten or unknown, mostly because of this over-ratted presence. Even a major institution such as the Cinemateca Portuguesa (The Portuguese Cinemateque) only cares about the “three masters”. For example, in September the past year, they organized a retrospective of Japanese Cinema and in 20 films, 10 of them were by Kurosawa and Mizoguchi! There is no space for renovation or discovery in these circles. Even the masters of the New-Wave, such as Oshima and Imamura, are known for the wrong reasons. Example when they talk about Oshima they only talk about Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence or The Empire of Senses.

As for our critics, I must say that they aren’t very serious. Our critic isn’t independent. This means that, in a general way of speaking, they think what the French critic and the English critic thought back in the 50′s and 60′s. Portugal never cared much for its cinema or the others. We never had a tradition of proposing new approaches to cinema as the French, for example, had (and still have, as I can confirm seeing the recent Oshima and Yoshida retrospectives etc.) It’s because of that mainly that no one is willing to risk the adventure of presenting older forgotten gems (Yamanaka, Naruse, The Japanese New Wave) or newer tendencies (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, Shinya Tsukamoto and so on).

Up

For you, is there anything to do to improve this situation?

I think one way is to try, bit by bit, informing our cineastes what the French and the English are doing right now. Maybe we can get something good out of our cultural dependency on these countries.

As far as I’m concerned, creating the Eigagogo youtube account (a sincere tribute to one of the greatest sites of Japanese Cinema) was another way of promoting Japanese rarities not only in Portugal but also around the world. Another friend of mine (by the way, we have a forum focusing on asian-cinema named www.asian-virus.net) created one too (Cineandstuff).

Nevertheless, I was informed recently that some independent festival was going to show some Japanese Films (among them are Eros Plus Massacre by Yoshida, Godspeed You Black Emperor by Yanagimachi and Prisoner Terrorist by Masao Adachi) in Barcelos, a city located in the north of Portugal. Maybe this situation is going to change in the future. Who knows…

Thanks Miguel Patrício!

---

• Paprika: Welcome to the real world?
• Eiga Geijutsu's Annual Top 10 (1972-1982)
• Alternative Japanese Animation
• Have you heard of this Bakumatsu film?
• Hail to Sushi Typhoon?