DIRECTORS' INTERVIEW:
DANKAN |
THE INNOCENT SEVEN is neither a common tale of malice nor an ordinary tale of benevolence. In that respect, Dankan's talent as a writer is remarkable. It is no easy task to use contemporary social problems as themes for stories. It is because, when examining contemporary social problems, most people tend to allow their emotions to influence their evaluations, which often result in simple good or bad . When a problem is to be defined 2-dimentionally, the problem becomes engulfed in the answer subjectivity calls for, then autistic.
We all know child abuse is evil and must not be practiced. The role of a film is not to stipulate such a problem as “something that should not be done.” A person with true power of expression must always know there are other methods.
How director Dankan captured this contemporary problem in THE INNOCENT SEVEN is proof that he possesses the power and good judgment for the task.
“It's nothing that great. (laugh) I wasn't really aware that it was a contemporary issue. It just happened that way. Like: ‘come to think of it, there is much child abuse going on.' Once I began writing the screenplay, I realized the press took up child abuse almost daily. Because the baby didn't stop crying after being fed, the mother beat it to death. This is absolutely abnormal. It's natural for babies to cry. Such cases were steadily increasing.”
“I decided on the title (Japanese original title: SHICHININ NO TOMURAI), and then began writing,” Dankan stresses. Needless to say, the title is a take-off on Akira Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI (SHICHININ NO SAMURAI).
“This means there has to be seven characters. If they are grown-ups, the ‘color' may be questionable (laugh), so I thought they could be children. Seven children and ‘tomurai' (burial or funeral)...what do I need to link them with? Then, I thought: parent-child relationships aren't what they are supposed to be according to the rules of nature. Yes, I could work on that.”
How did Dankan come about choosing ‘tomurai'? For the screenwriter of IKINAI, isn't man's life and death the main theme of the film?
“We can all be most serious when it concerns life. An ordinary person acts normally under extraordinary conditions. I wanted to point out that this person isn't normal at all when seen from the outside. Many people cope with their life pretty seriously, don't they? Even though they believe everything they do is right...that justice is on their side. Still, they may come across a person walking around with an outrageous hairstyle. (laugh) That person certainly does not think his/her hairstyle is terrible, because he/she is right. I wanted to depict such a situation. Each person thinks he/she is right, but viewing this person from a different angle, there is a discrepancy. And this discrepancy enlarges until it becomes a big gap, doesn't it?”
Could this be called the ‘close view' and ‘far view' of human portrayal? While viewing the ‘justice' of a parent abusing his/her child, Dankan does not forget to view him/her from a distance. In other words, he could stoop down to life-size level, yet also view him/her from high up above. This balance is the heart of Dankan's directing.
“By just reading the newspaper, we can easily condemn the person (perpetrator) as a crook. But suppose there is a lengthy sub-drama behind what we only read in the newspapers. He could have been a nice person, but just happened to end up in that situation. Who can say such a drama is nonexistent. So I stoop down to that level, and chose a different angle to see what could really have happened. Basically, when I create things, images of my elementary school classmates often play a major role. You know those kids...Hopeless with school work, but never lost a fistfight. A crybaby with a strong sense of justice. An A+-average girl, who is also the class officer, but is such a nag that nobody really likes her. If there are 50 kids in a class, when they grow up a certain percentage of them could end up doing bad things. There are characters like that, right? If they are so far fetched from reality, they won't be believable, so I tend to tone done whenever it's necessary. But I make it a rule to make my characters believable so that people would think ‘I knew a guy like that in high school.'”
Dankan's method is not to interpret the events as being unusual, but takes the point of view that it is contiguous with daily life.
“There are quite a lot of group suicides recently where they cuddle together in a car, and burn briquette to release carbon monoxide. I think they're the same type situations. There could be some trifle exchanges until they die. Like: 'Mr. X, you're sitting next to a woman. I envy you. If you say so, we can change places every 30 minutes. We're facing our end. Please. No trouble now.' (laugh) Who knows? They could be saying things like this.”
Feeling of daily life put to the limit. What clearly brings that out is the presence of humor.
“The part where an individual character's serious action goes wrong and the whole picture, which can be seen in an instant...I thought of balancing those two. I wanted to avoid the episodes to be presented abruptly as comic skits. The burglar episode...I really couldn't decide whether to keep it in or cut it out. I don't know, if it worked or not. I'm not the one to decide that.”
Dankan talks modestly, but to thrust through the relationships between close view and far view and that of individual and group, is definitely the objectivity that he experiences, when performing as an actor. He appears as a gamekeeper, who is a victim and a wrongdoer at the same time. At the end, he transforms into a transparent and completely passive existence, which is neither the victim nor the wrongdoer.
“For the continuity of the drama, if the parents and children are left to themselves things could possibly go berserk, unless there is a character in a different position. Only, since I was writing the screenplay, I tried to cut out considerable amount of dialogue, but I couldn't. (laugh) I was too busy (as the director) and had no time to cut them out. Anyway, playing the character, I thought of being as objective as I could. All the more since I had already decided in my head what was to be shot. I'm not a genius like Takeshi-san (Kitano), who can change the direction or content of the film (even during the shooting) and continue on. I probably am not equipped with such ability. It was fortunate that the character I played was a person who had to be objective. Because that character was there, a certain distance was created in the film, and I was able to see things objectivity.
In other words, Dankan was able to shoot the film objectively as both the director and actor. Though Dankan is not a verbose actor, during the shooting of BOILING POINT, director Kitano, or rather actor Beat Takeshi, envied him for his undeniable presence. Seeing how he keeps his eyes immovable, Dankan's character sides neither with the children nor the grown-ups, thus placing himself as the vertebrae of the film.
“That gaze is not necessarily that of a director, but rather owes much to being part of comic skits for a long time, I think. In comedy, even if there are 10 people on stage, if it is decided that a certain person is to present the final punch-line. Despite the fact that there are others who can be funnier, they deliberately won't cut in. This often happens. All on stage work together for the punch-line to be presented at the designated time. Not every moment of a skit is funny. If the level of humor is the same through out, the audience will be bored and won't laugh even when it is funny. I feel that I may have somehow achieved the internal objectivity as a writer for such comic skits.”
Blessed by the cast fully comprehensible of his goal, Dankan confesses, “I was saved by that more than anything else.” Then, what are the characters he pursues?
“I don't want them to be abnormal because they sell their children. Imagine a large-scale supermarket on Sunday. I want them to be kind of characters you can find in such places. For example, they are those who cannot afford expensive designer goods, but can be happy buying well made knock-offs. (laugh) I'm pretty sure are married couples like that. And perhaps there's a person who has a great family and works very, very hard, but can't make ends meet. I bring in characters who are normal people for the basis of my stories.”
Dankan explores the depth of “normal.” And as the destination, the “expression” presented at the very end of the film is again not common despair or mediocre hope. This director's exceptional quality lies in the fact that he takes the audience to an area, which is neither that of despair nor hope.
“I think it's a question of personality. I think I'm a bad person, too. In IKINAI, the characters regain hope, but I reverse that at the end. (laugh) Well, I myself think it ended with hope, since they had hope that they were going to live. The ending of THE INNOCENT SEVEN, whether the characters feel happy or grim--I'll leave the verdict to the audience. It's not anything exaggerated like ‘ideas of life and death,' but since you are born, you participate in a marathon race with death as its goal, right? If you're alive, you might as well have a better time. And with this idea projected, this is how the film ended up. It's so difficult to express it in words isn't it?”
A truly great film does not send any messages to the audience. One, triggers messages to emerge from the audience, is a great film. What can we, as part of the audience, give birth to from THE INNOCENT SEVEN? That is now to be tested. |
