I have so much to do but I have to write this down, before I lose this fleeting feeling. I can still hear the haunting song sung by the crippled old man in the wheeled wooden chair set low to the ground...
"Long time ago, a brother god and a sister goddess...."
This film makes me ache, and I cannot quite explain why. Perhaps it is true what Slavoj Zizek said, that cinema makes alive desires we never knew we had.
The Profound Desire of the Gods, also known as Kuragejima - Legends from a Southern Island, was shot in 1968 by Shohei Imamura. An engineer from Tokyo goes to a remote island populated by a primitive, superstitious, tribal people, and in going to this tightly knit community, upsets it irrevocably. The film pits the primitive against civilization, modernity against superstition, incest against social norm.
Toriko, a mentally retarded girl, epitomizes base human desire in all its rawness. The film opens to her dancing and laughing without a care in the world in the middle of a raucous crowd of men. She sings of herself as a lover who comes to tempt in the night, and bares her desire without shame. The engineer, the modern man, is enraptured; but he abandons her in the end, and the villagers tell stories of how she turned into stone while waiting on the beach.
Yet we see her again at the last scene, always one step ahead of the steam train, showing that in spite of all of our advances in culture and technology, we cannot stamp out base human desire: this is the reason why we feel "all in pieces" in modern cities. Although we have driven out the primitive, the primitive is always with us: in our hearts, always condemning, never dying.
You see, I am a modern person. There is no reason why I should mourn for the loss of the primitive. Yet, I do...
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Profound Desire of the Gods
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2 comments:
I am not entirely clear how you would define "loss of the primitive;" however, I would agree that there is often a desire for the "the simple life." In America, I would describe it as the 1950s. For the most part, Americans were living a good life. Without the continuous din of electronic communications and a slower pace, a person enjoy life without feeling as though they were running from place to place. Oddly enough, your post spoke to me in a unique way. I am the father of a young girl with Down's Syndrome. Although she does not behave in the manner described from the film, she is the embodiment of fun and joy. She is happy anywhere and everywhere. I find it odd that, although she will never reach the academic achievements of her brother, she has a gift that many of us would envy. She isn't stressed out. She isn't worried about anything. She is living life and enjoying it for the sheer joy of living. Grant it, it is by my efforts that the comforts of life come to her, yet I am envious of the peace in her mind. Perhaps someday she will share the that secret with me, and I will learn to share that level of peace and joy of life.
I think she will share with you her secret one day... It's only a question of when...
Thanks for coming by, Mark. Your comment is precious.
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