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| Tatsuo's Experience of Great Nature: What the
Cinematic Images Reveal |
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| With this brief resume of Shinto to build on, we
can further explore Tatsuo’s experience of Great Nature by attending
to what some of the cinematic images in Himatsuri show us.
Following the illuminating theory of cinema developed by Gilles Deleuze,
we can see that the natural scenes in Himatsuri rely heavily
on what Deleuze calls Affection-Images.5 Affection-images
are the result of the invention of the close-up of the face and can
be highly expressive.6 There are two kinds of affection-image.
Think first of the face of a person lost in rapt attention. Here the
face is an “immobile receptive plate” which presents itself
as a reflecting unity and thereby expresses such qualities as attentiveness,
admiration, awe, wonder, or frozen terror. This is the impassive face,
a whole delineated by its outline and central features.
In contrast, the second kind of affection-image is characterized by
small movements of parts of the face, of the mouth, eyes or other
facial muscles. Such “micro-movements” can express the power
of desire or can betray fear or hatred. It is slight changes in the
mouth that can make manifest a character’s hitherto unnoticed
cruelty, for example.
In Himatsuri, affection-images play a crucial
role. This is possible because faces are not the only vehicles for
the affection-image. “Face substitutes” can do as well.
In fact, Deleuze begins his account of the affection-image with
the example of the famous clock “face” in High Noon.
The clock acts as a face substitute, by turns a reflective, immobile
face and also a moving hand exhibiting micro movements tending to
the climactic moment of noon when the fateful duel will take place.
Thus, other features can play the role of the face and be affection-images.
In Himatsuri, the immobile surface is often a lake or inlet
reflecting its environment. These surfaces are capable of the micro-movements
essential to the second kind of the affection-image as well. These
movements are ripples, sparkles of sunlight shimmering across the
surface (video 1 below), or more disturbingly, bubbles of poisoning
oil rising from underneath, followed by the appearance of many floating
dead fish (video 2 below) and at a key moment, the micro-movements
of leaves in the wind.
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One more feature of affection-images must be mentioned
before we can say something about Tatsuo’s experience of Great
Nature as it is revealed by such images. Affection-images such as
facial close-ups isolate the face from its environment; the face that
fills the screen is not seen as a head cut off from its body. In fact,
it can cease to be the expression of a character and become instead
a pure expression abstracted from its actualization in space and time.
As Deleuze notes, “the close-up does indeed suspend individuation,
and …[we are]… right to say that it makes all faces look
alike.”7 And what do such images express? Not the
feelings of an individual, but pure, possible qualities and powers
abstracted from particular instantiations. That is, faces and face
substitutes can express underlying pure qualities, powers, and energies
that find instantiation in particulars but are themselves pre-individual
singularities that reveal a world before it is divided, individuated,
actualized, or fixed in space and time.
This excursion into film theory shows us something
about Tatsuo’s relation to Great Nature as it is instantiated
in the forests and inlets of his environment. To put it all too
briefly: he perceives nature in terms of underlying, permeating
powers and qualities, continually fresh and renewing (musubi);
it is a perception that is in the moment, immediate, and immanent—unencumbered
by conceptual relationships and utilitarian concerns. We will return
to this point later.
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| At the Midpoint: |
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| So far, we have noted Tatsuo’s relationship
with Great Nature as revealed by the affection-images of Himatsuri.
This goes some way toward explaining and clarifying his deep
opposition to the marine park. For the park is not going to reveal
an original world of kami energy; rather it is a commercial
simulation of such nature. If we shift now from imagery to
narrative, we can trace Tatsuo’s path from his decision in the
forest rainstorm to his participation in the Fire Festival and thence
to his sacrificial act. This will take us to the theory of ritual
sacrifice advanced by Georges Bataille.
It is important to note that Himatsuri is
not straightforwardly a film about political protest, though it
contains some elements of political struggle like the poisoning
of the fish. Tatsuo’s actions lack the earmarks of political
activity: he is not enlisting others in a cause, engaging in negotiation,
nor speaking from an ideological perspective. Instead, his murderous
act is tied to the ritual from which the film takes its name and
itself has all the markings of a ritual sacrifice. This inclines
us to approach the film by means of insights from Ritual Studies.
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| 5 Gilles Delueze. 1986. Cinema 1: The
Movement-Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.. |
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| 6 Affection-images contrast with action-images
(e.g., medium shots of human actions), and perception-images (e.g.,
long shots of the environment). Subsequently, Deleuze contrasts movement-images
generally with time-images. |
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| 7 Cinema 1, p. 103. He adds: “…all
non-made-up faces look like Falconetti, and all made-up faces look
like Garbo.” |
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