August 21: Pale Flower/Kawaita hana (1964 -- Masahiro Shinoda)

★★★★★


Another great cinema experience here.  Pale Flower ranks with the beautiful films of bored existentialism from early 60s Antonioni, who deals with Europeans facing the same malaise as Muraki and Saeko here.  This Japanese pair see life as bland and uninteresting and seek thrill experiences to authenticate their existence. 

The thrills they seek include ever-higher gambling stakes as Saeko becomes used to risk and must wager more for excitement.  In fact, we learn that her intensity of living is so strong that even the other card players feel more alive when she’s there and look forward to her being in their game.  She also does a wild highway race with another sports car down Tokyo interstates in the middle of the night; the race ends when the driver of the other car stops and comes over to the couple, laughing hysterically.  He, too, had needed a thrill to feel authentic, and Saeko had shared that with him.  She even tries drugs as a way to feel, too, though we don’t see that scene.  I guess that if Masahiro Shinoda’s studio thought the card games were too graphic, they’d have definitely frowned on drug use. 

 Muraki is as bored as Saeko, as he says in voiceover at the film’s opening, but he’s experienced the intensity of truly living in killing another man; he explains to her that the feeling at the moment of killing is deeper and more authentic than any other thrill experience.  He feels some draw towards Saeko’s quest, but having felt intensely alive as he murdered the man, Muraki often doesn’t participate in Saeko’s seeking with the relish she does.  Having lived so intensely in doing his first killing, he finds that other thrills lack intensity, so he ultimately volunteers to do a hit for his gang even though he’ll return to jail because of it.  But before he kills his target, he seeks out Saeko so he can invite her share in the intensity of his moment.  It’s the climax of the film.

I like the ending of Pale Flower, too, sad and ironic as it is.  Muraki is in jail by then and unlikely to again feel authenticating thrill, while Saeko is dead, murdered in a scene which we hear involved sex and drugs; she was evidently continuing to seek intense thrill with the junkie Muraki had feared would lure her to her death.  We also see Muraki’s protégé show up at a card game in the suit that Muraki had given him, but the kid’s open face and body language tell the viewer that he has none of the depth of the man who'd previously worn the suit.  The young guy doesn’t understand what had been going on around him.

And layered on the philosophy, Pale Flower has gorgeous cinematography.  Shinoda uses intense blacks and whites and frequent strong composition in the frame, both two-dimensionally and leading into deep background.  The scenes of the (obscure-to-me) card games are tense and riveting even though a western viewer probably doesn’t understand the rules.  The films interiors are full and lit theatrically; its exteriors tight, creating the feel of characters trapped in a maze.  Even the clothes are remarkable with their elegance.  

Without the compelling characters and theme, I’d want to watch this movie just for its visuals.  With all of these elements together, Pale Flower if a great experience for the brain, the eye and the heart.