Battles on All Fronts (Red Angel)

Earlier today I saw the 1966 Japanese film "Red Angel". It was directed by Yasuzo Matsumura, a New Wave director whose film "Blind Beast" I had seen a few years ago. This film, shot in black and white, narrates the experiences of a Japanese nurse during the campaigns in China in the late 1930s and early 1940s, a period in which the war became a desperate and losing venture. It is a chronicle of self-discovery, guilt and compassion for the way in which the main characters can lose and then recover their humanity.

The nurse is a young woman in her twenties by the name of Sakura Nishi. She is very innocent, and has been inserted into a desperate situation, in which she sees first hand the suffering of men who have no real commitment to the war or the ideologies that justified it, but are trying merely to survive and hold on to a remnant of their humanity. It is affirmed, once again, the war is a brutal, degrading and dehumanizing experience, and the scenes in which the surgeon (Dr. Okaba) is forced to amputate one and another limb as he struggles with the tremendous overload of patients would horrify anyone. He has become an automaton, and yet, he displays a fragile humanity that will end up seducing the nurse.

There are various battles that are being waged at the same time. The Japanese are battling the Chinese, but the characters struggle with themselves as well as with other. In the final sequence, in which a group of barricades soldiers struggle to survive an attack of enemy soldiers after having been decimated by an outbreak of cholera, reveals a desperate situation that is stark in its contours. Indeed, throughout the film, the ideals as well as the ideology of war are systematically deconstructed and refuted by the spectacle of suffering that overwhelms the protagonists. War is hardly a rational enterprise, nor can a doctor nor a nurse continue to function as professionals in an environment in which they are forced to decide who will live and die. And yet, this situation brings them together, and nurse Nishi will gradually seduce the doctor as the two characters struggle to consummate a moment of intimacy and warmth.

It is at times a very dark and brutal film, with difficult scenes that reveal as much the gore and the anguish of characters who have been wounded, as well as the emotional angst and the desperation of others who seek to find a source of inner peace. What are precious moments of peace and tranquility are overwhelmed by the circumstances, and they become that much more unsettling but also, ironically, inspiring.

I look forward to viewing more of Matsumura's films. He has a considerable filmography, but unfortunately few of his films have been translated. I am hoping this will change gradually in the next few years.



Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2011
Copyrights ORomero 2011