Japón, the 2002 first feature film by Carlos Reygadas (Battle in Heaven) goes on a very long time (126 minutes) and is opaque in the grand Antonioni manner (Mexican chapter, like A Thousand Clouds of Peace Fence the Sky and Broken Sky). Also, the print is not very good, one of the ways in which it brings unremastered DVDs of movies by Pier Paolo Pasonlini to mind (Porcile in particular).

The obvious question is why I persisted in watching it. One is that it seemed like a parable, about making a new start (Japan being the land of the rising sun). Another is that every once in a while there was an extraordinary visual composition (and a whole lot of 360-degree panning and other panning shots). Plus the ambient sound was punctuated with some striking choral music (including “Erbarme dich, mein Gott” from Bach's Saint Matthew's Passion, some from the final movement of Shostakovich's 15th symphony, and from Avro Part's "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten" and "Misere"). And the measure of redemption that is achieved by the never-named. limping, urban artist (Alejandro Ferretis) is generated by a very generous older woman named Ascencion (Madalena Flores). She makes a point of explaining that she was named for the ascension into heaven of Jesus Christ, who did not require angels to life him as the Virgin Mary did in the Assumption).


The man goes down into a valley to kill himself, but instead is nurtured outside the small town of Ayacatzintla, Hidalgo (in Mexico's Mexico's Central Plateau, the state in which the ruins of Tula are) by Ascension, even as she is mistreated by her nephew, an ex-con who masturbated on the picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe while in prison. (In contrast, Ascension has many pictures of Christ in her hut).

In some ways, their relationship is like of the "Woman in the Dunes." Reygadas has seen a lot of movies. In the lengthy bonus feature in which he animatedly expounds in very fluent English, he first mentions his admiration for Roberto Rosselini using nonactors in places that have a strong character, then Dreyer, and Bresson (both of whom also spurned actors), Tarkovsky, both Ozu and Kurosawa (though his preternaturally extended takes seem all Ozu, perhaps there is some influence of "Ikiru"). the recent Iranian cinema (not singling out ''A Taste of Cherry," to which there are obvious similarities) but not Pasolini or Godard (though I think there's some influence of "Weekend" and, while I'm at it, Schroeter's "Valley Obscured by Clouds").

Reygadas also says the movie was completely storyboarded in advance, which is almost as surprising as his animation is after the very slow-paced film. And he says that Magdalena Flores, the local woman who played Ascencion, never read the screenplay but learned what she was supposed to do scene-by-scene. Rather than playing a part, she was mostly being who she is, which is to say generous, open-hearted, devout, open to art though having had no previous exposure to it... and serene.

Some of her serenity spreads to the man, but even a parable of redemption is not going to produce a Hollywood happy ending, one can be sure.

I'd have preferred a less langorous unfolding and wouldn't have minded some backstory of the artist. And it would have been just fine with me to dispense with the opening dove-shooting sequence, too.

Reygadas appears to have very little interest in storytelling, a lot of interest in meditating on weathered buildings and rock. Not a crowd-pleaser, but intriguing in certain frames of mind (not necessarily drug-induced, but...)



© 2006, Stephen O. Murray


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age