Hadaka no Shima (The Island)

jac 02/9/30

Released: 1961
Length: 92 minutes
Producer: Kindai Eiga Kyokai
Director: Kaneto Shindo
Script: Kaneto Shindo
Cinematographer: Kiyoshi Kuroda
Music: Hikaru Hayashi

Cast:

Toyo.........................................................................................Nobuko Otawa
Senta........................................................................................Taiji Tonoyama
Taro..........................................................................................Shinji Tanaka
Jiro...........................................................................................Masanori Horimoto

Story:

Senta and Toyo live on a tiny island in Japan's Seto Inland Sea with their two sons, Taro and Jiro. Their daily lives are dominated by the fact that the island has no water and is barren, save for a small patch of land which they cultivate ceaselessly. Several times every day they must use a small boat to travel to a larger neighboring island to fetch water for themselves and their crops, bucket by bucket. This routine is endless, altered only by an excursion financed by a sea bream the two boys have caught and by the sudden fatal illness of the older son.

Commentary:

The Island is a visually striking film, notable for both its cinematography and its complete absence of dialogue. Stripped of many of the complexities of most films, it may help you to see more clearly how moods can be created by the choice of shot duration and shot distance. This is a film whose pacing practically forces the audience to reflect on the lives and situations of its characters, because nothing else is happening! Note carefully too the use of repetitive structures at work within this film (for instance, within each day, from day to day, and from season to season)to create a sense of life as cyclical.

The Island received a great deal of acclaim outside of Japan when it was released. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote:

The eloquence is in the fidelity, the solidity and clarity with which Kaneto Shindo…has embraced the rhythmic beauty of the landscape and the mountain-fringed waters of the bay and the rhythmic toil of his people… [NYT, 1962] Stanley Kaufman wrote, Each of the four [family members] is a pillar of their common, small universe. It is impossible to imagine these children growing up lost or bewildered; and it is no bourgeois beatification to say the film lays bare the secret of this impoverished family: they are happy [A World on Film, 386-387]. Japanese critics were, however, sometimes embarrassed by The Island, fearing that it might somehow be seen as an accurate picture of the daily lives of most Japanese. Yet in some ways, that appears to have been Shindo's intention: At the 1961 Moscow film festival he talked about the strong autobiographical element in The Island (which, after all, he wrote as well as directed), saying he wanted to pay homage to his parents with this film poem.

Do you think he succeeded?