Kei Kumai (1. Juni 1930 - 23. May 2007)
by Rüdiger Tomczak
I remember the first interview I had with Kei Kumai. It was 1992
during the Berlin Filmfestival. It was also the begin of a friendship
with a japanese film director. Whenever I made an interview with him
he spent a lot of time for that ignoring the hectic atmosphere of a
big filmfestival.
I have to think of the first film I saw by Kumai. It was Umi To
Dokuyaku (The Sea and the Poison, 1987) during the Berlin
Filmfestival 1987, a film about a war criminal trial in Japan after
World War 2. I have seen all his film from up to this one, the
earlier films are still for me to discover. The films by Kumai which
impressed me most were his three adaptions from novels by Japanese
writer Shusako Endo. Beside The Sea and the Poison there were Fukai
Kawa (Deep River, 1995) and Ai Suru (To Love, 1997). Especially Fukai
Kawa which I have seen during the Worldfilmfestival 1995 did n´t get
out of my mind. The film takes place mostly in India in the holy city
Benares and is a mosaic of different human fates. which are crossing
each other. It is one of the japanese films in the 90s which remind
me in its richness in the great time of Japanese cinema of the 30s
and 50s.
I remember another interview I had with Kumai in the year 1995
during the Worldfilmfestival of Montreal with Korean Mi
Jeong-Lee. During this interview Kumai told us that he had to work as
an adolescent wit Korean Forced laborers at an airport where Kamikaze
pilots were starting. As an adolescent he witnessed discrimination of
non-japanese during that time. Kumai was too young for being
responsible for the japanese terror but too sensitive to be able to
forget the dark chapter of Japanese civilization. But he was old
enough to get an idea about the dark sides of human beings during the
war.
I remember my last encounter with Kei Kumai again during the
Berlin Filmfestival this time in the year 2001. And again he was
accompanied by his wife Akiko. 2001 he was awarded with the Golden
Berlinale Camera for his Life Achievement. remember that he hugged me
very strong. That touched me because it is a rare sign of sympathy
for a Japanese man of his generation.
End of May 2007 my friend Claude R. Blouin informed me that he
read in internet about the death of Kei Kumai. Kei Kumai passed away
on May 23 2007 after a stroke. The first thing which came into my
mind was the fact that I owe him indirectly some of my longtime
friendships. Valerie Dhiver, a french woman I met first after a
market screening of SEN NO RIKYU (The Death of the tea master Rikyu,
1989) during the Berlin Filmfestival 1990. Half a year later, Valerie
worked for the production company of Kumais next film Shikibu
Monogatari. During the Montreal Worldfilmfestival she met Claude R.
Blouin and gave me his address one year later.
Another friendship with the Vietnam born Canadian Florence MC
Nguyen began 1995 through a common enthusiasm for Kei Kumais film
Fukai Kawa. Thinking about these three friends which I had never met
without Kei Kumai is mixed in my memories with this mosaic of human
relationships in Fukai Kawa.
I don´t know if it is a consolation that Kumais films are still
alive.
I never wrote before an obituary about a director who meant
something to me as a person. Always when a person precious to me
passes away things come up to my mind I wanted to tell him.
These are the most helpless moments.
Kei Kumai has passed away and the shock of this cognition is just
the begin and the mourning has just begun.
*
(from shomingeki No. 19, summer 2007)
From my Japan Diary, November 2009 (shomingeki No. 22, May 2010)
(..)
From the memory in my mythic image of Japan (Ozu) to a memory in a
person I really met in life several times, the director Kei Kumai who
passed away in May, 27, 2007.
I visited his widow Akiko Kumai in Mitaka, a suburb of Tokyo, who
invited me for tea. Kei Kumai is buried in the place of his birth
Nagano (two hours by train from Tokyo). In the living room of the
Kumais there was a small memorial corner for Kei: a big portrait and
the three awards most precious to him:
There was the Silver Bear he won 1987 in Berlin for Umi To
Dokuyaku, the Silver Lion he won for Sen no Rikyu 1989 in Venice and
the Golden Berlinale Camera he won 2001 for his life achievement.
There was also a small place for incense. That was an unforgettable
moment. I did n´t had the nerve to take any photographs.
After the tea I smoked a cigarette how I would have done it with
Kei Kumai. I exchanged with Akiko Kumai some experience we made in
India where Kei Kumai made his most beautiful film Fukai Kawa. He was
invited to an indian filmfestival with his film. I remember my
obituary from 2007 about him. Actually I just really took farewell on
this very day, November 18, 2009.
PS:
Kei Kumai participated 6 times at the Berlin Filmfestival and his
films won two times a Silver Bear and he got once a special prize for
his life achievement. The Berlin Filmfestival after his dead did ´t
even mention him and there was not the slightest try to honor him
with a special homage. He was a big part of the Berlinale history but
this festival have already forgotten him.
It is unforgivable.
Fukai Kawa (Deep River), by Kei Kumai, Japan: 1995
(provisorily translation from German, shomingeki
No. 1, November 1995)
to Florence M.C Nguyen
*
The old buildings of the sacred city Benares and the titles as
a foreseeing about the things, the film will tell about. These
buildings, once constructed by human hands are beginning to decay
into its elements.
A total shot of narrow country roads on which a bus full of
Japanese tourist is driving. The landscape, the animals, which are
very close to the streets and the bus. Like the camera, the bus is
realizing parts of the world, like the objective, it offers only a
fragment of the world. Before the story can begin, the camera
searches in the bus the faces of the characters. At first, the
voice-over from the Japanese Mitsuko Naruse. But than, the camera
stops unexpectedly in front of an old mans face. With a few shots,
this film moves from common to concrete parts of a film story. Just
in the first shots, we realize this film will deal with several
persons, who exist independant from each other, but whose stories can
be connected with each other.
The first flashback, which turns from an observant perspective
into a subjective one. The story of the widower Isobe: Scenes in a
hospitals x-ray laboratory, in which we see pictures of the deadly
sick wife of Isobe. At her bed, tenderly conversations between the
aging couple, which seem at the same time helpless and moving. Than a
view from the room out of the window to a tree, which sheets are
moving softly in the wind. Strangely off-side from the story, an
imagine of the things which are being.
Boiling water in a clapping tea kettle on an oven which wakes up him at
night. Later, his wife tells him, that she dreamt exactly what has
happen to him at night. The sequence, which deals about a
supernatural situation is at the same time of analytic severity,
obviously divided in shots. At his wives bed, she tells him about her
believe in reincarnation. A cut - and we see Isobe with relatives and
friends at the funeral. Later, when everybody has gone, a shot of the
empty corridor shows the loneliness of the widow. All this gives
already an idea about the fascination of Japanese cinema in its
tension between the illusion of a fictive world and the disillusion
through the transparence of the cinematographic movement as a sequel
of shots, which appear sometimes like a still.
In the second flashback, Mitsuko is introduced, a young woman in
her thirties. Mitsuko in a pink-colored T-shirt among other students.
They are mocking themselves about the shy Christian student Otsu. Few
moments later, they are sitting in a quite noble bar. They make bad
jokes with Otsu, who hardly can bear alcohol. In the background, two
musicians play music on a harp and a flute. Outside of the action,
but as present as the involved persons. This, one of the most
beautiful scenes of the film is a concrete reference to a cinema
tradition, which preferred to count on loveable composed pictures
instead of illusions.
For a short period, Otsu and Mitsuko become a couple. Later she
rejects him and becomes for herself the most lonely character in the
film. Lyon, a few years later: Mitsuko, now married with a rich
businessman (in red clothes and different styled hair), phones from a
hotel room with Otsu, who studies theology in France. A walk among
walls, which look like an antique amphitheater, she in a blue jacket,
he in a black priests rope. A traveling shot follows them discretely.
The blue of Mitsukos jacket and the monotone movement are evoking a
strange coldness and alienation. At their farewell, they depart in
different directions. For moments, an universe of distance seems to
be between them. Emptiness, loneliness, farewell to the unexpected.
In the Lyon-chapter, there are appearing fragments of accidental
sacred music, like short ideas of deliverance. The search for the
person we love most may be the search for god.
(written on a train Montréal-Québec, September, 5, 95)
The bus drives through the night. The framing plot could transits
into the main plot. The story of Mitsuko in India could begin. But
the camera stops on the face of the old Kiguchi, a war veteran, who
is recalling a friend, who died recently. This friend (played by
Toshiro Mifune with the charismatic but now thinly face) has saved
his live during wartime. His friends wife told Kiguchi, that his
friend saved his live through eating the flesh of another came rad.
Since that, he is tortured by painful feelings of guiltiness. A
flashback into a flashback, black and white and silent. An almost
starved soldier commits suicide with a grenade. A hard cut to a
flower (colored) and the sound of the explosion we don't see. Instead
of a speculative effect, Kumai reduces the movement to a picture.
Sometimes it seems that FUKAI KAWA reminds us, that cinema is
consisting of pictures and the cinematographic illusion is nothing
else than a phenomenon of the machine and the human eye. The first
half of the film is over, the bus reaches the sacred city Benares. An
ocean of lights, people in the streets. Three persons on the search
for spiritual truth or just for themselves, a tourist couple on the
search for pictures with their camera. The imagine of the goddess
Chamunda in the temple. Two indian musicians playing in the bus. In
that frame, they have the same presence like the musicians from the
beginning of the film. In one scene, Mitsuko is talking with the
travel guide in a hotel bar. In the background, we see the bar keeper
working with his drinks.
The reunion of Mitsuko and Otsu: Otsu, now in shabby clothes, but
seemingly mentally more stable. Mitsuko (now with a short haircut) is
divorced. The story of Mitsuko and Otsu could begin from new and is
almost finished now. The widow sees his death wife during the river
landscape at night. A double lightning, obviously as an effect of the
cinematographic apparatus, which will soon be asked by the pure
presence of the things. Mitsuko dressed in a blue sari, bathing in
the Ganga. Kiguchi praying in the temple for the death friends soul.
Sequences which are composing themselves to a ceremony, which is at
the same time one of the religion and one of cinema.
(written on a train Québec-Montréal, September, 8, 1995)
A tourist tries to take pictures from a hindu funeral ceremony.
While the enraged hindus follow him, Otsu tries to get the photo
camera for avoiding a massacre. The fall Otsus from steep stone
stairs: A detail shot of his foot, which losses its stability. The
movement, is slowed by slow motion followed by the sound of the fall,
which we don't see any more, but which goes more under the skin than
every speculative effect.
The day of departure: Japanese are waiting for the bus in the
hotel lobby. In one shot we see on the left side the tourist couple.
On the table, their is the film, which provoked Otsus accident ( and
later his death). On the right side sits Mitsuko. She waits for news
from the hospital. Her face is almost emotionless. Shots, which
hardly inform about the persons mental situation. But in my
imagination, they are getting a likely intensity like the famous
strawberry cake-sequence in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS.
Mitsuko and a Hindu, who recites a prayer, both driving in a boat
on the river. Celebratory, he is putting the death Otsu´s ashes into
the Ganga. Like the Zen-student Honkakubo at the end of SEN NO RIKYU,
Mitsuko stays with empty hands. She has let go everything, but won
something like believe. At the end, a small decorated candlelight is
driving on the river at twilight time, moving far and faraway from
the boat. The story is finished. The film story, created by humans
hand dies and is given over to the elements. The deserted Ganga. My
interpretation of that subject about love that finds only fulfillment
in the death would be pessimistic. But the cinematographic
spirituality of the Japanese Kei Kumai tells a very different story.
The films end is like a giving back of men and things, which were
lent for the film story. FUKAI KAWA connects traditions of Japanese
realism and the reflections about its limits, references to classical
Japanese cinema with its admiration for every single shot as a
sovereign emancipated picture in the film, and the presentation of
what the film narration is consist of. In FUKAI KAWA, Kei Kumais most
beautiful film since SEN NO RIKYU (1989), we can make a lot of
experiences about cinema and film making.
Rüdiger Tomczak
This film was shown 1995 at the Montreal Worldfilmfestival.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen this film again since that time. I pray
for a release on DVD with English subtitles.
