Dr. Akagi

Imamura always approached his characters as representatives of the human race with genuine fascination, but whereas in the 1960s his films were characterised by a rather anthropological coldness and a satirical, and thus essentially evaluative, point of view, the films from the last third of his career radiate greater enthusiasm for and sometimes even celebration of the everyday and corporeal as the basis of all human actions. We can see this slight change not only as the maturation of his creative approach, which tellingly came after the director’s documentary period, when he got a better insight into the realistic archetypes for the heroes and heroines of his fictional films, but also as an expression of defiance against the increasing aloofness and artificiality of (not only Japanese) society in the last decades of the twentieth century. Imamura’s jovial odes to human nature, such as Zegen, Dr. Akagi and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, are peculiarly and unfairly overshadowed by his seemingly more serious films such as The Ballad of Narayama and Black Rain. However, his films like Dr. Akagi are the essence of Imamura’s approach to the human race and its toil set against the backdrop of major historical events. The titular Dr. Akagi is the quintessential Imamura protagonist – a character of the people who has been forgotten by history, but whose story can tell us much more about the people and, in particular, the Second World War than any heroic epic can. The ridiculous, eager little man, obsessed with the idea of hepatitis infection and diagnosing all of his patients with hepatitis as a matter of principle, is simultaneously a fool, a hero and a subversive saviour when he administers glucose and prescribes bed rest and a hearty diet to everyone around him at the end of the war, a time of tense uneasiness, dwindling food rations and feverish, unrealistic efforts to reverse the course of the war. At the same time, his story is also about the bitter conflict between a man with the ambition to help and the machinery of history represented by a tenaciously stupid and limited military apparatus (in this respect, one of the highlights of the film is the moment when the doctor uncovers the cause of the hepatitis epidemic). Imamura populates the film with a fascinating gallery of supporting characters, all of whom not only aid the depiction of the absurdity of the war situation, but also express the amazing togetherness of people at a time when the absurd civilisational concepts of hierarchy, morality, ethics and good reputation have simply ceased to apply. Besides the profligate Buddhist monk and the brilliant morphine-addicted surgeon, a stand-out character is the girl Sonoko, whom the doctor hires as a nurse so that she will stop selling herself, but she fails to follow through with this because of her ridiculous circumstances and is even discouraged from doing so by her younger siblings. Together with Zegen, Dr. Akagi is a wonderfully absurd depiction of the Second World War in the Japanese context that will leave viewers with a bittersweet feeling of catharsis over the essence, futility and, mainly, foolishness of human drudgery. Paradoxically, it can even be said that in these films Imamura actually achieved that classic aesthetic ideal of mono no aware (the pathos of fleetingness in relation to human actions), so greatly promoted by Yasujiro Ozu, with whom Imamura began his career as an assistant director, though even before making his own directorial debut, he had developed an aversion to the revered master and his value system (after leaving the Shochiku Studio, Imamura found an ideal mentor in Yuzo Kawaima, a hedonistic admirer of human baseness). Whereas Ozu melancholically lulls viewers with odes to the middle class, Imamura opens up for them a world free of bourgeois refinement and instead empathetically celebrates corporeality and instinct. (22.03.2014) (weniger) (mehr)