Dodes'ka-den (Japanese; 1970)
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Even the great director Kurosawa had his moments when he was slumped. His popularity was on the decline as TV became more popular. More than 5 years after his last film, Red Beard in 1964, he had nothing to show. His relationship with his prized actor and composer was down. To top it all, even this film was a financial flop. The general masses did not care if it was artistically brilliant, they just wanted entertainment and fun; not a film which takes place in a city dumpster! It seems Kurosawa's chips were so low after this movie that he attempted to end his own life afterwards.
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| Make believe tram driver! |
The whole lay out of the film is somewhat unconventional. There is no protagonist, antagonist or a typical story with issues, climax and resolution. It is actually a compilation of occurrences in the day of the life a group of social discards who put up in the city dump as their place of abode. Their pessimistic outlook of life and their lack of will to improve themselves seem to the driving factor that seem to put them stay put amongst the garbage pile and remain as discards of society.
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Building castles in the air?
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The title of the film refers to the sound made by a mental subnormal boy who is fascinated with trams and thinks that he is driver of one. Day in and day out he struts across the dump driving his imaginary tram chanting "dodes'ka-den, dodes'ka-den" mimicking the sound of a moving train. The child's mother accepts the fate befallen upon his son. She keeps on chanting her Buddhist mantras hoping that one day her son will be alright.
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| Dead man walking? |
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| Life intoxicated |
Other characters in the story include - a catatonic and expressionless man living in isolation oblivious to the stimulus around him; a selfish mother who does not believe in birth control - she is more interested in feeding herself in front of her drooling children with the excuse she has to ensure that her unborn is strong enough to fend for himself when he is born; 2 perpetually drunk labourers and their wives who frequently swap wives and swap houses, and life goes on effortlessly;
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| At the water faucet |
a young girl is made to work day and night making plastic flowers to earn meagre income to finance her lazy uncle's drinking habit - he is too weak to work but not weak enough to sexually assault her when her auntie is hospitalised; this girl has her love interest, the pedlar who supplies liquor to her uncle. Then the is a vagabond father and son who use a disused car as the castle but has big imaginary plans of building a big bungalow with steel gates. Their imaginations make them contented with their present life. There is also a short tale of a office manager who invites his a home where his wife shows her displeasure to their presence and the guests cannot understand his meekness.
Central to the narration is the water faucet where ladies gather to gossip about happening the dump as if it is world news!
The film is a portrayal of characterisation in a film. There is no melodrama or over-exaggeration of hopelessness even though the viewers can obviously see the future of the characters is bleak.
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| Orphan with love interest |
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Eating for the unborn!
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Ten years down the line, they would still be where they are. The drive for change should arise from within. It looks as if, for the characters, even though life had smack them hard to the dumps, they are either too detached from reality or have given up to come back to mainstream. Amongst us we see many in the same boat.
The question is whether it is the duty of the able bodied to provide for them as, in a society, there would always be those who lose out and cannot keep us with the general pace. Or... we should provide them indirectly like the Chinese proverb which talked about giving a fish and teaching to fish?
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