Sorglose Nacht

Hirokazu Koreeda’s Dare mo shiranai, released in the US as Nobody Knows is, as many of its critics have noted, long, and slow. Ella Taylor at LA Weekly writes that it, “unfolds with such leisurely, terrible beauty, it takes a while to realize that what we are witnessing is the children’s long slide into beggary, exacerbated by the slow torture of faint hope.” True true. And it is quite a powerful film.
As I watched, however, what I felt most often was a sort of displaced nostalgia for a certain patience, a certain forbearance. The film takes place in modern Japan, set amongst the video arcades etc. that form the caricature of Japan so familiar from Lost in Translation, et. al. but lost is the frantic pacing that is so often devicive in visualizing the westernization of Japan. What we are left with, instead, is a slow picture of life set against the obvious technologization/occidentalization of Japan in a small city. The story on which the film is based took place in Tokyo; the choice for suburbanization was clearly Koreeda’s. The apartment itself is a western-style stucco job. Why? And what is the occidental?

… “The West” is precisely what designates itself as limit, as demarcation, even when it ceaselessly pushes back the frontiers of its imperium. By the turn of a singular paradox, the West appears as what has as its planetary, galactic, universal vocation limitlessly to extend its own delimitation. It opens the world to the closure that it is. [my italics]

This closure is named in many ways (appropriation, fulfillment, signification, destination, etc.); in particular, it is named “representation.” Representation is what determines itself by its own limit. It is the delimitation for a subject, and by this subject, of what “in itself” would be neither represented or representable.

But the irrepresentable, pure presence or pure absence, is also an effect of representation (just as “The East,” or “The Other World,” are effects of “The West”).

That was written by Jean-Luc Nancy, and this was written by Elvis Costello: “We were waiting for the end of the world / waiting for the end of the world. Dear Lord I sincerely hope you’re coming / ’cause you really started something.”

The alternative here, in the East-West representation schema, is the incessant deferral of closure: Khanti.

Khanti is the sixth of the Ten Pre-requisite for Buddha-hood. “Khanti” literally means “patience”. This patience is not the patience of the weak or that prompted by weakness. It is the perfect control of temper by proper cultivation of mind based on great kind compassion on all living beings … All Buddhas, Pacceka Buddhas and Arahats practiced this Khanti as a pre-requisite for the attainment of their end - the freedom of Nibbana. They have all spoken in a very high praise of it as an essential acquirement for the attainment of each man’s freedom … So the Lord has said “Avera naca sammanti” or patience will overcome all difficulties, and bring eternal happiness.

So, perhaps, when Andy Klein of Los Angeles Citybeat (and others) suggest that “…it’s arguable whether the experience is worth it,” we are at the threshold of a repeating representation. The children in the film, the audience, the West - it takes a decidedly Eastern patience; a patience in the name of pure presentation, a patience in the absence of conceptualization, of “thought” as we know it in the West.

No doubt, you will have at least heard of the Three Gorges Dam project. Initially conceived by Sun Yat-Sen in 1919, it is now scheduled for completion in 2009. If built (and it is already under construction), it will be the largest hydroelectric project the world has ever seen - 60 miles longer than Lake Nasser behind Egypt’s Aswan Dam. Thirteen cities, 140 towns, more than 300 villages, and 1,600 factories will be submerged - leaving 1.5 million people to be relocated, and destroying evidence of human habitation that extends back to the Paleolithic era.

From an historical/archaeological perspective, the list of what will be lost is too long to even begin. One small town, Dachang, well-preserved from the Ming and Qing period (AD 1368 - 1912) will be moved to higher ground - a recovery of sorts, but it’s not even the one tenth of the tip of the iceberg, I’m sure. Beyond archaeology, there’s the tremendous environmental concerns. An article in Foreign Affairs says, “The environmental effects will be comparable to those of damming the Grand Canyon or diverting Niagara Falls.” Some suggest that the Chinese alligator, the finless porpoise, the river dolphin, and the Chinese sturgeon, which exists only in the Yangzte and dates back to the age of the dinosaurs, will all be endangered or wiped out. Seismologists are worried about the effects of a body of water this big, and thus heavy, on a region that is earthquake prone.

Naturally, a series of smaller dams would be equally efficient. But world governments, and particularly communist ones, always want to go large.

From Mr. Anderson

I just finished watching Samaritan Girl, the latest offering from my local video store by director/writer Ki-duk Kim, who was made known to me last year by Spring, Summer, Fall Winter … and Spring. Watching this film actually ended up giving me a depth of appreciation for SSFWS that was unexpected. I had enjoyed SSFWS when I first saw it, but as I was able to experience a second film in this body of work, I really began to feel like Ki-duk Kim is probably a voice to be reckoned with. [Upon further inspection, this seems true: the so-called “validity” of his work is apparently hotly debated, and Samaritan Girl itself is referred to by at least one professional film critic as “sexual terrorism.” For the record, I think that the same critic’s assessment that anyone who enjoys Kim’s films is caught in “the blind spot that some Westerners have for East Asian films,” or, in an even more atrocious condesention that their (our) “bullshit detectors stop working,” is plainly ridiculous. Eh, caveat lector.] Specific content details aside, I personally found the diversity of the shooting and editing styles of the two films is not only highly appropriate and sensitive to their diverse subjects, but also to accentuate the profound cohesion Kim brings forth to the wildly different worlds simultaneously occupying his seemingly timeless (yet obviously contemporary) Korea. [Re: this cohesion, cf. Deleuze & Guattari’s desiring-machines.] I’ll spare you the exegesis, mostly because I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I would recommend both films highly. Particularly, I feel like a very satisfying experience might come of watching for comparison and contrast in each’s style of direction: hand-cam versus tracking shots, symmetry in frame composition, the way close-ups are handled, the way the landscape is represented, speed of cuts, etc. and the way each of these is clearly thought out in advance with regards their respective subject matter. I personally had to take pause in attempting to understand these two films as a unified (formal?) vision of the world. Even if nothing else, the staging of the films more than pays back the price of admission.