Priest: If men don't trust each other,
this earth might as well be hell.
Commoner: Right. The world's a kind of
hell.
Priest: No! I don't want to believe
that!
Commoner: No one will hear you, no
matter how loud you shout.
Just think. Which one of these stories do you
believe?
Woodcutter: None makes any sense.
Commoner: Don't worry about it. It
isn't as if men were reasonable.
- scene from Rashomon
(Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
I was
reminded of Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon while watching the latest
film by young CALF animator Ryo Ōkawara: A Wind
Egg (空の卵 / Kara no Tamago,
2012). Just as the plot of Rashomon circles around an act of
senseless violence, so too this animation centres on violence of a most
disturbing nature. A Wind Egg also employs a Rashomon
narrative structure with the story being told in fragments from five different
points of view. However, in this case the story is told purely with visuals, music, and sound effects --- no dialogue whatsoever.
Summary
The
animation opens with an act of violence: we see the boy from the point-of-view of his abuser as he suddenly gets
slapped hard twice across the face.
The opening credits are followed by an establishing shot of a desolate
grey farm and then a close-up of a rooster crowing. The animation then cuts to the first of five
POV vignettes. The vignettes show
fragments of the same period of time. It
is only when they have all been viewed that one can piece together the order of
the events that take place.
The Father (父/chichi)
A red nosed,
unshaven, aggressive-looking man examines eggs in a shed. He scowls
suspiciously from side to side, as if making sure that he is alone, then he
furtively caresses and kisses one of the eggs.
He licks the egg lasciviously before being startled by the door opening.
The mother comes in with a box of eggs
and drops them ungraciously on table. He
glares at her, quivering with resentment.
The boy’s face pops up from his hiding place under the table.
The Younger Sister (妹/imōto)
With her
crazy smile, the younger sister spies on her family. She grins madly upon witnessing her brother
being struck by their father. The
younger sister crawls up the wall like a spider to watch her mother entering
the shed. She shivers in the window and
witnesses her brother falling from the sky.
The Mother (母/haha)
The mother
walks from the hen house to the shed. An egg
falls from her basket in slow motion to the ground. Reprise of the scene in shed from her
perspective. She goes outside and strips
off her clothes. There is a surreal dream sequence which draws a parallel
between the caressing of the egg and sex which ends with the man licking the
egg and the boy jumping from the roof.
The Boy (少年/shōnen)
The boy sits
in the cage with the chickens. He watches
one defecate and picks it up, puts it in his mouth, chews on it, then spits it
out. He watches geese flying overhead then
sinks into the earth. He watches his
mother from the roof as she walks from the hen house to the shed. He then witnesses his mother enter chicken
coop and attack a chicken. He dives off of house.
The Family (家族/kazoku)
This final
vignette brings more elements of the story together. We see the full context of
the boy hiding under his father’s table, his sister tattling on him then
laughing wildly as the father strikes the boy and throws him into an empty
shed. The boy has an egg with him. The egg hatches a miniature Doppelgänger of the boy. A final surreal montage: whispering into the
ear, a scream, a crazy dinner table scene, the zipping of the mouth, a family in
chaos. .
. the boy on the rooftop in the shape of rooster with glasses on. .
. does he fall to his death or
fly to his freedom?
Style
This is Ōkawara’s
graduation film for the Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts) graduate animation programme
and his first in which he experiments with narrative form. His earlier animated shorts were more
conceptual. Orchestra (2008), which he co-directed
with fellow students Masaki Okuda
and Yutaro Ogara, and Animal Dance
(2009) bring music and movement together in a way reminiscent of the works of Norman McLaren, and insomniac (2008) visually depicts the way
sounds and images clutter the mind and prevent sleep.
Stylistically,
A Wind Egg, has much in common with
the works of his Geidai mentor Kōji
Yamamura. The grey washed
backgrounds and layering of the image with paint flecks during the dream (or
rather nightmare) sequence are reminiscent of the techniques used by Yamamura
in films like Mt. Head (2002)
and Muybridge’s
Strings (2011). Colour is kept to a minimal with grey and black being the predominant hues.
Theme of Abuse
A Wind Egg played at Nippon Connection 2013 as part of
the omnibus
of Geidai films presented by Prof. Mitsuko
Okamoto. The audience at Nippon Connection
has been following the Japanese independent scene for the past decade and there
has been much discussion in recent years about the prevalence of abuse and
violence in animation by young independent filmmakers. This trend includes the films of Saori Shiroki – particularly MAGGOT
(2007) and The
Woman Who Stole Fingers (2010) – and Kei
Oyama (Hand Soap,
2008), and Atsushi Wada’s Gentle
Whistle, Bird and Stone (2010).
I cannot speculate on if this reflects anything about modern Japanese society; however, I do believe the personal nature of independent
animation allows for artists to address these darker issues of human nature. I have long been of the opinion that animation
has the power to address subject matter that is too difficult for viewers to witness
with live action – Renzō and Sayoko
Kinoshita’s Pica-don
(1978) and Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (1988) are two
films that automatically spring to mind.
Just as Pica-don and Grave of the Fireflies deal with the trauma of inhumane wartime
violence, A Wind Egg takes on the deeply confronting issues surrounding
the trauma caused by sexual perversion and domestic violence within the family
unit. The fractured nature of the
narrative is indicative of the way in which abuse – be it psychological, sexual
or physical – disrupts family life and traumatizes its victims. Initially, this film appears to be full of despair,
but upon further reflection there is indeed a glimmer of hope at the end. Eggs are symbolic of birth and creation, and
roosters are associated with Amaterasu, the Shintō goddess of the sun. Perhaps the boy has indeed been reborn at the
end of the film and is indeed flapping his way into a brighter future.
A Wind Egg won the Lotte Reiniger
Promotion Award for Animated Film at the Stuttgart
Trickfilm Festival. It appears on
the DVD Geidai
Animation 3rd Graduate Works 2012. You can follow Ryo Okawara on Twitter.
#nippon13 #nc2013
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013
