Introduction to SUNSET SONG and Terence Davies

Terence Davies is one of those masters of cinema who is still struggling to find the audience he deserves. Even such a beautiful literary adaptation like SUNSET SONG (2015) did not make it to cinemas or even blu ray around here (Switzerland, Germany...).

However, it is available with English (for those who are put off by the Scottish accents) or French subtitles. Since SUNSET SONG is relatively conventional compared to Davies's autobiographical masterpieces DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES (1988) and THE LONG DAY CLOSES (1992), this more easily accessible narrative serves as an ideal introduction to the cinematic universe of a highly idiosyncratic film maker every cinephile has to know.

This video essay was originally made for filmbulletin.ch where you can find a version with German voice over narration.


An Introduction to Terence Davies's SUNSET SONG from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

Note: Last year, for the first time (ever?) Terence Davies was able to release two feature films within two consecutive years which means that A QUIET PASSION (2016), his highly acclaimed portrait of poet Emily Dickinson is already available in some territories. Unfortunately, due to the circumstances described above, I have not seen it yet.

Planimetric Shots
If you have ever seen a Terence Davies film you might probably remember his "planimetric" compositions (which is a term that David Bordwell had originally borrowed from Heinrich Wölfflin), i.e. the more or less flat staging of characters in parallel layers with the camera often perpendicular to the back wall of a room. Although this type of shot has become much more common in mainstream movies and especially period pieces, most people associate it with Wes Anderson who has been excessively using it ever since THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001).

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (Wes Anderson, 2014)

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (Wes Anderson, 2001)

You couldn't mistake Davies's compositions for Anderon's, however. While Anderson's candy color fantasies often look as if they were freshly painted or arranged by a doll house manufacturer, Davies's rooms and costumes are carefully selected to look lived-in and well-worn.

Green Scottish Life
Although he seems to prefer washed out colors (not the digitally desaturated DC kind, of course) in SUNSET SONG his director of photography Michael McDonough captured with his 65mm (exteriors) and large format digital (interiors) cameras a wide range of subtle shades of green...

...that in the second half are often balanced with red garments:

MILLENNIUM ACTRESS: How To Open A Movie

Chiyoko Fujiwara and Genya Tachibana, the protagonists of MILLENIUM ACTRESS.

It seems that I have never written about Satoshi KON or any of his mind-boggling films. Kon (1963-2010) was one of the great visual storytellers and a true visionary whose parallel editing and overlaying of several levels of reality influenced film makers like Aronofsky or Nolan. Today, I will focus on the first scene of MILLENNIUM ACTRESS (2001) which is practically a master-class in how to open a movie.

[SPOILER ALERT] This analysis naturally reveals a lot about the storylines of the works discussed.

The first page
Novelists usually introduce us to characters, settings, conflicts and tone of a novel in the first few paragraphs, quite often on the very first page. Most of the time we do not consciously take in all of this information. It nevertheless shapes our expectations and influences our decision to read on. Sometimes a narrator even foreshadows the outcome or parts of the narrative arc as can be seen on the first page of two of my favorite novels:

Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird the first three paragraphs tell us that the narrator is relating events that happened some time ago in her childhood. The first sentence belongs to her older brother who used to be a primary source of knowledge to her at the time and whose broken elbow marked the end of a chain of "events leading to his accident" - in fact, the events that make up most of the novel's storyline.

Already in the second sentences she addresses the recurring motif of fears that are finally assuaged but define much of the atmosphere, especially in connection with the Ewell family as well as the children's interest for their reclusive neighbor Boo Radley. By the end of the third paragraph, the narrator's father Atticus - the novel's most beloved character - is introduced as a wise but unconventional consultant on what is right or wrong

Only then the narrator delves into the quasi-prologue of the family history and the Southern sense of ancestral roots. But now the reader is already hooked and at least wants to know why Jem broke his arm and why both Jem and the narrator can be right about who started what.

Many of the same narrative devices can be found in a much more recent and experimental novel like Paul Auster's City of Glass:

Paul Auster: City of Glass

The narrator is again concerned with how "it" all began and how much time has passed since then. In fact, the key to the whole book is right there at the end of the first paragraph: "The question is the story itself, and whether or not it means something is not for the story to tell." Even though the second paragraph begins with "As for Quinn, there is little that need detain us. Who he was, where he came from, and what he did are of no great importance.", the reader is provided with information about Quinn's age, relationships, work, personal interest and that "what he liked to do was walk". 

At the same time, the setting of New York City is introduced both as an defining part of the protagonist's life and as "a labyrinth of endless steps". Although we might not yet know what all this means, through the words of the narrator the author primes us for a story that revolves around a relationship with a stranger, a man who endlessly walks around the City and a protagonist who will eventually get lost. Having read this setup, we are hopefully eager to get answers to enough questions (who was on the phone, what did he say, what happened) so that we continue reading even if we as readers get lost in the narrative labyrinth Auster is drawing us into.

The opening scene of MILLENNIUM ACTRESS

A similar interplay of parallel realities and subjective perception is at work in Satoshi Kon's anime MILLENNIUM ACTRESS. When you see the film for the first time, you only gradually realize how great this opening scene was:

If we take into account all we know by the end of the movie, we see how well this completely mysterious scene prepares us for the following story: 

Synopsis: A beautiful girl named Chiyoko Fujiwara falls in love with a mysterious stranger she has only met briefly. Searching for her long lost love defines her adult life as a travelling actress. At least in her memories she practically acts out her own story in films set in different historical eras and genres. After 30 years of living in seclusion, Genya Tachibana – a former employee of her film company who she did not remember but who saved her life and has been secretly in love with her for decades – is granted one last interview and thereby learns that she is still driven by her yearning for the stranger.

The moon and beyond

The moon as a visual motif.

First the camera pans past planet earth to a slowly opening space base. Strangely the rocket that is about to launch seems to be stationed on the moon. Throughout MILLENNIUM ACTRESS the moon serves both as a metaphor and a visual motif for Chiyoko's hope that drives her search for the stranger she met on a night just before the moon was full.

Plant: Chiyoko meeting the stranger who links the moon to hope.

In a subjective flashback that mixes blurred memories, fever dreams and scraps of a movie plot Chiyoko even travels to the moon - only to find that her lover has already left.

The "lonely white landscape" later on changes between moon and snow.

A final farewell

In the best dramatic tradition, we enter the scene in the last possible moment when the astronauts say goodbye. Soon we realize that MILLENNIUM ACTRESS on the whole is about an actress' farewell. From the sparse dialogue we overhear, it becomes clear that the woman is looking for another man while the astronaut on the platform would like her to stay knowing that she may embark on her last journey. So we already know that Chiyoko is determined to sacrifice everything in order to be with her object of desire.

Doppelgänger and Alternate Realities

Then we get a closer shot /reverse shot situation when the young man on the platform tries to hold her back by confessing his true feelings. More importantly however, Kon cuts to an extreme close-up of an older man mimicking the young man's words we now hear coming from a video tape creating an audiovisual link between the two men while doubling the hint that this will be a story about longing for someone who will be out of reach forevermore.

In a film titled MILLENNIUM ACTRESS we most likely expect to see scenes of movies within the movie. So it only takes a few sounds, bluish color and fragments of VHS cassettes in the background for us to understand that he is watching a movie. Apparently this man has seen the scene many times before.

Much later, Chiyoko learns that Genya was a young assistant who once saved her life.

The following group of shots emphasizes the connection between the young astronaut and the old man in front of the tv screen. But then Kon creates an impossible shot - reverse shot juxtaposition of the old man in his room and the astronaut actress.

Top: reflection; middle and bottom: a shot/reverse shot across time and space.

Since lonely middle aged men gazing at beautiful movie actresses has become such a well-worn stereotype, we might not yet understand that Kon has just established not only the actual male protagonist (Genya) of MILLENNIUM ACTRESS but also the core relationship that motivates the whole movie. This setup emphasizes the fact, that - as we later find out - the relationship is basically one-sided with the man gazing at an inaccessible object of desire. 

Moreover, we are getting prepared for the movie's formal structure of seamlessly matching shots across time and reality levels in a rather unobtrusive, comprehensible way. When this farewell scene recurs in the last part of the film, Genya as a middle aged man will actually be there in the frame which by then we have learned to accept as Chiyoko's memory filtered through the interviewer's own perception and imagination.

Genya in the frame during an intense re-imagining of their shared memory.

And if you pay close attention you can see the reflection of the young man (above) observing the rocket launch. Reflections are fairly common in subjective films about self-reflexive characters. But as you can see in the pair of screenshots below (from later in the film) Kon draws parallels between Chiyoko's life and her movies by exchanging characters from her life (in this case her mother) with characters/actors from her movies (her senior rival Eiko). Although Chiyoko herself is in both scenes, first we see her real reflection and in the soundstage scene we see the ghostly reflection that haunts her.

Later in the film, reflections are not always what they appeared to be.

Earthquakes 

Then the take off does not only shake the frame within the video but metaphysically affects the viewing situation as well - or so it seems. Even the tapes and discs around Genya fall off the shelf as if he were close to the rocket.

But what could easily have been an expression of the emotionally agitated protagonist's subjective perception is finally revealed as an objective earthquake. Unfortunately, I do not know what the actual Japanese wording is but the English and German subtitles imply that earthquakes are quite common to these characters because when the lights go on again, Genya does not say "oh, an earthquake" but rather "That was a big one!"

It later becomes clear that earthquakes have been pivotal in both Chiyoko's life (e.g. being born during the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake) and in Genya's relationship with her.

Then we really see Genya's office for the first time and from the dialogue we learn that he is the long haired young man's boss and that they are about to leave for an assignment. As it turns out, they are about to interview Chiyoko, the very actress we have seen as an astronaut.

Non-Linear storytelling

There is one last formal information left, however: just before Genya leaves his office, he rewinds the VHS tape in play mode and primes us for the fact that MILLENNIUM ACTRESS will not only seamlessly alternate between reality and film but jump around in time.

As it later turns out, this space adventure was Chiyoko's very last film before her withdrawal into seclusion for 30 years. And the image below will be one of the last shots of MILLENNIUM ACTRESS as well. While it is not uncommon to begin a film full of flashbacks with an enigmatic scene the significance of which will be understood only after it is replayed at the end, here we are introduced to both Genya's story about interviewing Chiyoko (forward) as well as Chiyoko's trip down memory lane (backwards) in the same frame.

During the immediately following credits sequence everything around Genya triggers memories of Chiyoko's films which Kon juxtaposes based on visual connections.

Within less than two minutes, Kon has introduced the protagonists and their relationship as well as the setting, tone and narrative structure while planting bits of information that only pay off up to 70 minutes later.

 

Hold back the key!

However much is alluded to in the opening scene, the narration holds back one crucial piece of information until an excited Genya meets Chiyoko face to face: the literal key that triggers her memory, has guided her life for many years and is instrumental in revealing Genya's true feelings for her. 

First Shots: YOJIMBO (1961)

In a recent post about the first shots of Leone's "Dollar" films I have hinted at his great indebtitude to YOJIMBO. As an addendum (and advertisement), here is the first shot of Kurosawa's great samurai farce.

YOJIMBO is photographed by Japan's greatest cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa and it certainly ranks among Kurosawa's strongest widescreen efforts. Although mostly obscured by white title characters, the single two and a half minute shot that opens the film draws us into the world of the samurai with no name (he only adopts "Sanjuro (thirty) Kuwabatake (mulberry field)" when he sees a mulberry field outside the window) so memorably played by Toshiro Mifune.

The shot opens on a mountain landscape that is largely obscured when Mifune enters the frame from the right. One could say that he blocks the camera's view and we only see his back for much of the shot. His standing in our way is a nice way of preparing us for a story that is entirely told from his point of view.

It is no secret that Kurosawa was inspired by American westerns, especially those by John Ford and George Stevens. So it comes as no surprise that Mifune is entering the frame in a similar way to the protagonist of SHANE (1953):

At about 12 seconds in, the samurai's mannerisms are introduced: he often arranges his shoulders and scratches his stubbled chin and unkempt hair. And even from behind we can tell that he keeps his hands under his clothes.

When he starts to walk to the left at 21 seconds, the camera follows his every move, keeping him tightly framed within the scope frame which in this film emphasizes narrowness instead of opening up the screen. We do not really see Mifune's face yet because it is still turned towards the mountains.

We follow the silhouette of his head until the camera pans down at 1:40 until we only see his feet and the ground he walks on (passing a few stone idols). 20 seconds later, a camera pan up his body ends up in a horizontal composition not unlike the first one with Mifune still walking until he reaches the visual center and is visible from head to toe. He then throws up a stick to figure out which way to go.

The last minute up until he picks up the stick are paraphrased by Leone in the first shot of FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964). Moreover, his unexpected opening of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) could be traced to the opening of the shot. In both cases we first see a distant mountain landscape. In both cases a character moves into the frame at very close range. Leone, however, makes sure that Al Mulloch's face is imprinted on our minds while Kurosawa draws the attention towards the character's behavioral pattern.

Screening Advertisement
On the 23rd of September I am introducing trigon-film's digitally restored print of YOJIMBO at the cinema Gotthard in Zug (Switzerland). The screening will be followed by a 20 minute lecture on how Sergio Leone transformed Kurosawa's masterpiece into his first catholic Italian western.

Mirror images: Mifune enters from the right (top) as Eastwood enters from the left (below).

There is certainly more to Leone's adaptation than re-arranged widescreen compositions.