Dispatches From Grad School: 'Ikiru,' 'Daisies' & 'A Question of Silence'

In my film hoe era

For my “year in review” post last December, I began by somewhat apologizing for my inactivity on here. Amid a recent series of personal and vocational endeavors (which included travel, freelance work, a teaching assistantship and grad school), I found myself busier than ever—and this blog spent 10 months gathering dust as a result. Of course, not much has changed since I wrote that post. In fact, I’ve found myself in a pretty big slump since at least March for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into right now.¹ Nevertheless, the end of my second semester in this MFA program came with some self-reflection, and this included re-reading much of the writing I turned in over the course of the last four-and-a-half months in order to assess its merits and shortcomings. Like this newsletter, grad school has in part been a venture to sharpen my writing and analytical skills, and I intend to keep it that way by being my own biggest critic. 

Among the writing I’ve done since January are the weekly film reflections I had to turn in for my Film Violence and International Masterworks classes. These discussion posts were meant to gain students points in both courses and get our thinking going prior to our in-class discussions. Whenever I remembered to do them², they also served as a good exercise against burnout, and I’m grateful for the free-reign I was given by my professor for both courses, Dr. Bruno Guaraná, who encouraged us to critique the media we engaged with in class, reflect on our viewing experiences, analyze films using the reading materials he assigned, or do any variation of the above.

While re-reading the discussion posts I’d written for these two courses, I was hit with pride at the unique angles from which I was able to approach some of the films we saw…but more often, embarrassment at the way my words often failed me in the short time frame we were given to turn these in. Still, there’s at least some merit in writing something even somewhat insightful while sticking to the capsule-sized dimensions of this exercise, and many of the films we watched in these classes are ones I’ve been itching to write about since. So, I figured, what better way to keep readers of this newsletter updated on what I’ve been doing than to share some of my better exercise entries (with tweaking, of course). Below, see three of my favorite reflections from this past semester—with more to come next week.

Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)

Watanabe works as a section chief at Tokyo Public Affairs. As a middleman, he’s just one of many pegs in an assembly line of bureaucratic inaction. The same way his job is meaningless, his life is too; as he’s succumbed to the monotony of his work in order to provide for himself and his adult son, he’s forgotten what it means to live a fulfilling life, with purpose and emotion drained from his humdrum existence. His foil is Toyo, a younger female acquaintance who seems joyous and high-spirited despite having a similarly monotonous occupation as a toymaker. When Watanabe asks Toyo what her secret to finding happiness is, she responds: “All I do is work and eat—that's all…That and make toys.” Her suggestion that he also become a maker of some kind leads him to lobby for a playground in their city, despite concerns from his higher-ups that he may be overstepping their jurisdiction.

The first time I watched Ikiru, this pivotal conversation between Toyo and Watanabe reminded me of a surprisingly moving essay I once read about an ‘80s children’s film titled The Brave Little Toaster. In her write-up, author Danielle Purdy recounts watching the cartoon as a kid and learning about the inherent value of all of the objects she owned at the time—no matter how obsolete or outdated they seemed. She also writes about the connection between emotional attachment and repair, sharing how this early realization led her to become a crafter. Craft she says, is political by nature “because it is collective.” Purdy’s words echo Toyo, who in the aforementioned scene tries to rationalize why her job brings her even a modicum of joy:

“Even making these things is so much fun,” she tells Watanabe. “Making them, I feel like I’m playing with every baby in Japan. Why don’t you try making something too?”

In Ikiru, the prospect of bringing people happiness by building something that will make a difference gives Watanabe a sense of fulfillment in his final year of life. His initiative to get the playground made also breaks him from the individualistic mode he’s stuck in, making him a part of a collective. Through this transformation, Watanabe is able to regain a sense of purpose right before his death, which is mourned by ordinary folks who remain touched by his generosity.

Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966)

Discussing Daisies with my FT 250 (Understanding Film) students really put into perspective A) how polarizing the reactions to this film tend to be (people either love it or hate it, with very few falling in the middle), and B) the myriad of ways that one can interpret this movie. This second point is generally true for experimental and surrealist cinema, but I can't help but relay it to Daisies because from our class discussion it seemed that everyone got something different out of Chytilová's feminist and anti-authoritarian critique—and everyone’s interpretations were valid.

For instance, the contrast between the Maries’ hyperfeminine presentation and their grotesque behavior seems to go against the patriarchy's enforcement of traditional gender norms, as well as society's expectation for women to reject independence and rely on men in order to cover their physiological needs. The girls’ enforcement of the binary through a caricaturesque performance of femininity is merely a facade to trick their many suitors into giving them food and money. “Is this what you want from us women?” Chytilová seems to be asking audiences. “Be careful what you wish for, then.” As such, we can interpret this exaggerated girliness as ironic in a film that seems to reject classic western standards of femininity.

On the other hand, one of my students pointed out that the girls’ femininity could also be viewed as empowering when we consider how much western feminist iconography exudes traditionally masculine depictions of strength and virility (think: Rosy the Riveter flexing her biceps). That the characters in this film use their femininity to their advantage while also rebelling against common standards of etiquette is its own kind of empowerment. Both interpretations can be true at once, and they don't necessarily contradict each other. If there's one thing Chytilová and other Czech New Wave filmmakers were against, it's the loss of individuality under authoritarianism. As such, discourses born from different interpretations of the same media are healthy for the circulation of ideas in a free society.

A Question of Silence (Marleen Gorris, 1982)

Like most women, I’m obviously no stranger to the micro-aggressions that the characters in A Question of Silence endure over the course of the film. While watching the movie, I found myself identifying most with the character of Janine, a psychologist tasked with evaluating three unacquainted women who are all on trial for spontaneously murdering a male shopkeeper together in broad daylight. A woman who is constantly patronized by her male co-workers (a cross she must bear for having the gall to work the same job as them), Janine felt more compelling to me than the three patients, whose motives were almost too vague to empathize with at first.

After finishing the film, I opened Twitter on my phone and began scrolling down the timeline as the ending marinated in my mind. Almost immediately, I came across a horrifying news report about a pregnant woman who was shot at a Walgreens in Nashville last Thursday, by a store employee who accused her of shoplifting. She was shot four times in the stomach and twice in each leg, and was rushed to the hospital in critical condition where she received three surgeries—including an emergency C-section.

In an essay titled “Lady Killers,” critic B. Ruby Rich goes over the negative response A Questions of Silence garnered upon release from other critics who took issue with the film’s supposed justification of what they perceived as misandrist violence. She’s correct in that, by virtue of depicting a hypothetical scenario outside of our realm of plausibility, the film isn’t nearly as ill-advised as the initial response would have you believe. Fact is, violence perpetrated against men by women as depicted in this film does not exist. Obviously, women can be abusive—that’s not up for debate—but never will three unacquainted ladies beat a male storeowner to death seemingly at random, because he sneered at them. On the other hand, spontaneous violence by men against women remains exceedingly common more than 40 years after A Question of Silence’s release, as proven by the aforementioned Nashville incident which was spurred by a scenario eerily similar to the one in Gorris’ film.

Shoplifting is itself a gendered crime, which makes it ideologically grounded, despite the storeowner’s apparent inability to take Christine seriously after he discovers her stealing the garment. As Rich explains, the act of shoplifting represents “the consumer's inchoate attempt to break her fraudulent contract with an economic system that denies her significant power and prohibits direct satisfaction of desire or need.” Like Janine, all three of the women who commit the violent crime had experienced mistreatment from their patrons, spouses and employers up until that moment. The sneering shop owner who attempts to make Christine feel foolish as he towers over her menacingly is the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back.

Acts of violence like the one inflicted upon this man may not happen in real life, but implicit abuses against women—discrimination, objectification, belittlement and emotional mistreatment—do, in addition to the heightened risk of gendered crimes that threaten women and other sexual minorities even now. A Question of Silence isn’t the rallying cry for housewives to commit acts of murder that people initially made it out to be, but a searing portrayal of buttoned-up rage and a testament to the strength in our solidarity for one another. This makes the women’s motivations anything but vague.

1. Seriously, it’s nothing to worry about—just your regular depression, burnout, etc. You’ve heard it all before!

2. Lol