Tracking the Transcendental: Kore'eda Hirokazu'sMaboroshi

Abstract

In considering the minimalist mode of filmmaking in Maboroshi (1995), directed by Kore'eda Hirokazu, critics find it hard to resist comparison with Ozu Yasujiro.1 Kore'eda's frames empty of human figures and unrelated directly to the narrative might be compared to Ozu's 'pillow shot', which is not motivated by diegesis and exists as an inserted 'still life'. His constructions of space nearly absent of living beings are certainly reminiscent of Ozu. Kurosawa Akira has also proved a common gauge for interpreting the artistic success of Japanese-born directors despite the fact that the film industry has always been highly internationalised, perhaps more than any other field of art or literature. Ozu in many ways was a product of the international film industry. He saw countless American silent comedies in Japan and regularly watched American films while overseas in Singapore that had been confiscated by the resident Japanese military.2 Kurosawa has been instrumental in integrating an international film community since the debut of his Rashomon, which won the Cannes Film Festival Prize in 1953. Yet, despite the crosscultural aspect of film and film production, national boundaries inform marketing and criticism of film. For examwas given to Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) best foreign language film? Film categories do not reflect the transnational quality of the film industry. Ang Lee has been making American-funded films for years. His cinematographer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Peter Pau was born in Hong Kong, spent his teens in mainland China, and studied film production and photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. Ang Lee's 'thank yous' at the Academy Awards ceremony alone revealed the transnational nature of film production. There is a need to reframe film categories beyond a nationalist model. Hasumi Shigehiko, known for his film criticism influenced by continental philosophy, has written one of the most insightful essays on the 'Japanification' of Ozu called 'Sunny Skies'3. Ozu's films, he points out, have nothing but blue skies. Despite the fact that it rains two out of three days a year in Japan, Ozu's skies are never overcast. 'Existence', he writes, 'in an Ozu film means that everyone inhales the air of a clear, sunny day'.4 Thus laundry hanging on the line emphasises the clear day in the same way that the sky looms brightly in a very different scene in Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari, 1953) on the morning that the elderly hero's wife has just breathed her last. A widower (Ryu Chishu) stands at the edge of a wideopen garden looking out at the sea over the rooftops of clustered houses. What could the widower be