a kind of nun
by Douglas Messerli
Aya Koda and Yōko Mizuki (screenplay),
Kon Ichikawa (director) Otōto (Her Brother) 1960
In Her Brother the great
Japanese director, Kon Ichikawa, is not so much interested in the “story” of
this family’s life as he is in studying their dynamics, where, in the
patriarchal system of the day, everything centers around the youngest boy’s
well-being and his father’s solitude.
Ichikawa’s greatest films have to do with large moral battles, and even
his later domestic drama, The Makioka
Sisters, is epic in the complexity of the sisters’ family life and their
importance in the culture in which they live.
Her Brother, however, is a far
more tepid expression of family life, focusing, as it does, on Gen’s
near-saintliness, and family healing after the young center of their
attentions, Hekiro, slowly dies of tuberculosis. By the time of the boy’s
death, Gen has seemingly lost her youthful beauty, having had to transform
herself into the unappreciated third parent, willing even to share Hekiro’s
dishware which might likely lead to her own infection with TB.
Yes, Ichikawa’s beautifully filmed work, subtly expresses the
difficulties of being a woman in this period of Japanese society, but Gen is
hardly represented as a model of any rebellion against that world. And,
finally, we can only suggest that in her meek obedience she has brought the
tragedy of her life upon herself.
Only in a few instances do we see that she has a spark of
self-recognition that might carry her away from the smothering world in which
she lives: a moment when she triumphantly hits the billiard balls, blushes at the attentions of
the young factory worker, or rails against Hekiro’s lecherous parole officer.
Most of the time, however, like the last hours of Hekiro’s life in which
she ties a ribbon between his arm and hers so that he might awaken her to
“celebrate” for one last time, she willingly ties herself to his life. If we
are saddened by this would-be juvenile delinquent’s death, we also celebrate
it, while doubting that Gen will ever be able to discover a more fruitful way
of living. As her religiously obsessed mother-in-law might have wished, she has
already become a kind of nun.
It is hard to imagine why this film was remade in 2010 by Yoji Yamada,
even though it was seen as a celebration of Ichikawa himself.
Los Angeles, August 16, 2017
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2017).
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