Pigs and Battleships

In any given economic scenario, it is easy to see how poor people become more poor while their rich counterparts are able to accumulate more wealth. This is depicted in 'Pigs and Battleships' through the sufferings experienced by a young Japanese boy who asks his girl friend to stop the sale of her body. Foreign occupation and rampant corruption are responsible for the decline in moral as well as social values of an occupied land. This idea has found complete favor in this film. A filmmaker cannot turn a blind eye at all to ills of the society in which he or she is living. After the making of Japanese film 'Pigs and Battleships', nobody can dare to accuse iconoclast Japanese director late Shohei Imamura of trying to denigrate Japan's image in the eyes of foreign powers. Director Imamura has always made it a point to have an honest yet frank portrayal of Japan's undesirable people in his films. By remaining honest to himself as well as his art, director Imamura has always portrayed what he has witnessed with his own eyes.

This movie takes place in post-war Japan which is under American occupation and essentially focuses on a young man named "Kinta" (Hiroyuki Nagato) who basically does what he can to make ends meet. One day he decides to join an extortion racket and is put in charge of feeding hogs that belong to the local gang. Although she truly loves him, his girlfriend "Haruko" (Jitsuko Yoshimura) not only disapproves of his decision but is also one month pregnant by him as well. Knowing that Kinta isn't quite ready to settle down and support a family she decides to have an abortion which Kinta helps pay for. Meanwhile, the gang Kinta has joined gets involved in murder and soon things become quite complicated for all involved. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a complex film for which I may have missed a few nuances here and there. For example, the manner in which the American military was depicted certainly wasn't favorable--but then the depiction of the Japanese gangsters wasn't that favorable either. That said, it seemed to me that the overall message of the story pertained equally to deplorable members from both Japanese and American society and subsequently upon their negative effect on the culture of Japan as a whole. At least, that is how it seemed to me. In any case, I found this to be an interesting film and I have rated it accordingly. Above average.

It's really interesting to see one of the early works of Imamura. This film includes epitomes of the overall style of the great director: depiction of the lower, outlaw parts of Japanese society; criticizing both the authority and the society for their conformism with prevailing conditions; use of animals(namely pigs for this film) as an allegory for individuals (here it should be underlined that this object of allegory beats up its master!); and characterizing women as determined individuals who have power within the society, and who are more conscious than men. In order to trace the sources of the stylized director who made brilliant films like Kuroi Ame, Narayama bushiko, and Unagi, this film is a must see.

Teen hoodlum Kinta is excited to be given the plum job of supervising the pig pen at the local US base, for which he'll be responsible diverting the food scraps to the black market, and scoring a good income for his yakuza gang. His girlfriend Hiroku earnestly hopes he'll leave the yakuza and get an honest job, but neither is she a paragon of virtue - she is drawn into prostitution and petty thievery. The story mostly follows their troubled relationship, against a backdrop steeped in corruption, which results from the clash of US Forces occupation against the poverty and aspirations of the people of post-war Japan.

A scathing, even cynical critique. There is no tenderness at all here. Even the young lovers embracing is shown more as a desperate clinging than emotional attachment. And corruption is everywhere - there are no good guys. Confronting stuff, well-photographed, memorable as a vivid nightmare.

As context always matters, Imamura makes it not only clear, not subtext but the tex itself, that the Japan of Pigs and Battleships is under an occupation that is a form of Gangsterism. There is a reason the troops are there - they won the war - but the extent to which they are still in Japan 15 years later is not about keeping any kind of peace but a form of taking and taking (Americans = Gangsters? I wasn't born yesterday).

The shots of the battleships bookends the film, and Americans are in the story mostly on the sides, except at one key point about midway through as sexual assaulter brutes who make Haurko (a heartbreaking and very good Yoshimura performance throughout) and young woman who is only with them because she's lost her way and looking for quick money. So, if this is a Crime melodrama, Imamura means to say, involving low level thugs and bad deals involving pigs and their feed and other bad crimes, you can't look at that without seeing what surrounds them all - and more distressing is that (some of) the Japanese citizens *like* the American influence and presence.

This isn't so blunt that Imamura hits us over the head with the message because he couldn't make a dishonest or sentimental turn if he tried. Pigs and Battleships is primarily about Kinto (Nagato), one of those young dudes that can't seem to stop moving his body even when things are (relatively) ok, like there's a low to much higher level anxiety that pervades his mind and spirit. He wants to rise in the ranks with a group of local gangsters, but it doesn't sink in that he'll be the Fall Guy (or maybe it does and he just wants to get all the money he can).

This position he's in doesn't sit well with Haruko, who loves him completely against her better judgment and wants him to go away with her. If she had seen a movie before she might know better, but it doesn't look like many (good) movies play around them, but I digress. Point is, Kinto is the kind of screwed that he doesn't fully know it, and his descent into criminality is more pathetic than tragic until it goes beyond that stage, while Haruko goes through her own foolish acts like with the American sailors. Meanwhile, the Boss of the group is for much of the story thinking he's dying - stomach cancer, but its really an ulcer - and is the one part of the story I'm still thinking about (as in, is it meant to be funny or just kind of sad or whatever).

All of this is shot in continually immersive and impressive long takes and wide shots where Imamura not only knows but cares about how we are seeing people in the frames; often these are when Kinto and Haruko are in a room with others who are using them, be it Kinto with his gangster (would be) pals or Haruko with a group of prostitutes who are in their own form of exploitation. He moves it when he has to and when he does you can be sure that its meant to keep us dramatically or thematically hooked (I liked the one shot that is wide for a few minutes and then moves in on the boy reading about Japanese history, it just feels impactful on some level I have to keep thinking about it a good way).

As I said, the only part that didn't quite work for me is the subplot with the Boss and his cancer-not-cancer, but it doesn't take away from what does. The kind of character of Kinto is sympathetic, even when he puts himself deeper into this group who would love nothing more than to see him go to jail to cover up their crimes and to not be seen again, and when we think he's lost he comes back with his declaration that he'll finally quit... but of course he has to do One More Thing and we all know that never goes well. But what's so incredible is where Imamura takes this in the final act, as those trucks of pigs get taken along on a chase that leads to the red light district, and that's where I have to stop typing to give away what brilliant chaos you have to see for yourself.

Pigs and Battleships has a kind of cunning to ot because Imamura is using the sort of cinematic grammar that I'd expect more in Western/American films, such as those long wide shots (I thought of John Ford only he'd never make something as gritty as this), and he's using that language in a film that is directly about how much Japanese citizens have lost their souls to another kind of Imperial rule. The black and white cinematography is dark and brooding, like Film Noir stretched at points into a nightmare of itself. And as the film goes into its final reel, Nagato makes his Kinto into this damned creature with that machine gun and there's a wildness and abandon that is only extreme in what he ultimately does, but he is still painfully human and damaged. This is a scathing social critique and a highly entertaining crime melodrama with a few really big laughs.