644 CHAPTER 26 Beyond the Industrialized West 26.1 0 The Bandit Queen: Phoolan 26.1 1 Bombay's vision of a united India: as the parents are reunited with their Devi protects her wounded lover. children, hands drop weapons and stretch out in friendship. critical cinema. "In India, there is no salvation outside Yet local audiences remained loyal to the national the commercial cinema." 1 Also pursuing this path was product-which was now incorporating more sexuality Mani Rathnam, a Tamil filmmakerwho found great suc­ along with MTV dance styles (e.g., Trimurti, 1995). Juras­ cess with Nayakan ("Hero," 1986), an adaptation of The sic Park was unable to trump another 1994 release, the Godfather. Rathnam's Bombay (1994) denounces the traditional romantic comedy-drama Hum Aapke Hain bloody religious strife of the early 1990s. A Hindu jour­ Koun ... ! ("Who Am I to You? "). Filled with sparkling nalist marries a Muslim woman, and the couple and their studio-shot dance numbers (Color Plate 26.5), it became children are thrust into the middle of anti-Muslim riot­ the most popular filmof the decade. Even after restric­ ing. Bombay neighborhoods are spectacularly re-created tions were lifted, American imports claimed no more than in a Madras studio, riot scenes are shot and edited for 10 percent of the box office. In a country where nearly visceral force, hand-held cameras race through the half the population earned only a dollar a day, admission streets, and children watch as people trapped in cars are to a local filmran only about fifty cents while Hollywood burned alive. Banned in some Indian states, Bombay filmswere priced between two and three dollars per ticket. proved successful in most regions, thanks not only to its And, despite rounds of violence as gangsters intimidated topicality but also to its star performances, engaging producers, there were other signs of health. Indian films music, and redemptive ending, in which hands drop their were starting to sell in Europe, Japan, and North Amer­ weapons and stretch out in friendship (26.11). ica, while an up-to-date, 2000-acre production complex Apart from the works of Nair and Kapur, few In­ was attracting foreign filmmakers. dian filmswere seen on the festival circuit. One that was, however, offered thoughtful testimony about the years of political violence. Santosh Sivan's Tamil-language film JAPAN The Te rrorist (1998) focuses on a woman who has joined an assassination plot (evidently modeled on the While Japan was becoming one of the world's great eco­ 1991 killing of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi). As nomic powers in the 1970s, its film companies were the conspiracy moves forward, she discovers the impor­ falling on hard times. As in western countries, the prob­ tance of human life. Sivan was under no illusions that lems began with slumping attendance. In 1958, the peak the filmwoul d attract a mass audience. "We didn't want year for the Japanese box office, 1.2 billion tickets were to make it like one masala package.,,2 sold; in 1972, fewer than 200 million were sold. The stu­ Hollywood had long targeted India, where theaters dios cut production to around 350 features per year. The attracted up to 7 billion viewers per year. In 1992, the vertically integrated Toei, Toho, and Shochiku ruled the government ended the NFDC's monopoly on film im­ domestic market, but the latter two put little money into port, and, for the first time, recent American movies filmmaking, preferring to invest in other leisure-time poured in. The success of Jurassic Park in 1994 and Ti­ industries. tanic in 1998 convinced Hollywood that the market The studios' most dependable in-house projects would respond to the right blockbusters. came to be their endless series, such as Toho's Godzilla Japan 645 movies and Shochiku's sentimental Tora-San dramas. erotic play. At the climax, the man languidly succumbs Like their Hollywood counterparts, most of the studios to murder and mutilation. The film relinquishes virtually built their release schedules out of independent projects all the modernist experimentation that had made Oshima that they had helped finance. The Big Three dominated famous, presenting its erotic encounters in sumptuous distribution and exhibition, so they still controlled the imagery (Color Plate 26.6). Although shot in Japan, In market. The most profitable genres were martial-arts the Realm of the Senses was heavily censored there. films, yakuza (gangster) tales, science-fiction movies Imamura, Kurosawa, and Oshima slowed their pace (based on the success of Star Wa rs), disaster films,and to a filmevery four or fiveyears. While they struggled to the so-called roman porno (soft-core pornography). findbacking for their ambitious projects, a younger gen­ eration was glad to work quickly and cheaply. The super- 8mm underground, often Punk-flavored, carried several Independent Filmmaking: An Irreverent Generation directors to mainstream production. Born around 1960, As the studios floundered, independent production and the new generation found political modernism as alien as distribution gained ground (p. 530). Smaller firms fi­ the New Wave directors had found the great tradition of nanced nonstudio projects and became strong presences Ozu and Mizoguchi. The young directors of the late in international export. The most artistically oriented 1970s and early 1980s reveled in the anarchic vulgarity independent group was the Art Theater Guild (ATG), of violent manga (comic books) and heavy-metal rock founded in 1961 and throughout the 1970s still funding music. Financed by the Art Theater Guild and some a few filmsby Nagisa Oshima, Susumu Hani, Yoshige major studios, they attacked the stereotypes of Japanese Yoshida, Kaneto Shindo, and other New Wave directors. harmony and prosperity with a raucous humor. The ATG also owned a circuit of art-house theaters for Not surprisingly, they often concentrated on youth showcasing its product. Bigger independent companies culture, with such rocker-biker films as Crazy Thunder founded by department stores, television companies, and Road (1980, Sogo Ishii). Domestic tradition was another publishing concerns also began producing films, and target. In Yoshimitsu Morita's The Family Game (1983), these firms gave the studios stiff competition. a college student tutoring a boy winds up seducing an en­ Most of the well-established auteurs were able to tire family. Sogo Ishii offered The Crazy Family (1984), work by acquiring financingfr om both the studios and in which household hatreds escalate into a desperate independent sources. Kon Ichikawa had a hit with a chainsaw battle. The same absurd violence permeates Godfather-type gangster story, The Inugami Family Shinya Tsukamoto's Te tsuo (1989). Tsukamoto, who (1976), financed by Toho and a publishing house spe­ started shooting super-8mm movies at age 14, worked in cializing in crime fiction. Shohei Imamura's own com­ an advertising agency and directed television commer­ pany joined with Shochiku for a characteristic tale of cials before he produced this raw fantasy about ordinary rape and revenge, Vengeance Is Mine (1979). His Ballad citizens becoming robots as a result of their macabre ofNarayama (1983), a Toei production, won worldwide erotic impulses. notice for its presentation of the rural custom of aban­ Parallel to the new generation of live-action direc­ doning the old to die. tors there emerged a group of animators specializing The most renowned big-budget directors moved to­ in feature-length science-fiction and fantasy cartoons ward internationally financed productions. Akira Kuro­ known as anime. Derived from manga, these energetic sawa's Dersu Uzala (1975) was a Russian project; Kage­ filmsfe atures robots, astronauts, and superheroic teen­ musha (1980) and Ran (1985) were assisted by French agers (even schoolgirls, as in Project A-Ko, 1986). Sev­ and U.S. backing. Dreams (1990) was partially financed eral domestic box-office hits of the 1980s were animated by Warner Bros. features, and one, Katsuhiro Otomo's bloody, postapoc­ Nagisa Oshima's international coproductions Em­ alyptic Akira (1987), became a cult success in other coun­ pire of Passion (1978), Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence tries. Working with low budgets, anime artists gave up (1982), and Max mon amour (1986), the last made with­ much of the complex movement of classic animation in out any Japanese participation, represented a retreat favor of canted angles, rapid editing, computer-generated from the disjunctive experimentation of his works of the imagery, and a striking command of gradual shading and 1960s. None of these productions matched the scan­ translucent surfaces (Color Plate 26.7). Anime of all dalous success of his firstFrench- Japanese vehicle, In the types yielded profitable foreign television and video­ Realm of the Senses (1976). Based on a famous 1936 in­ cassette sales. cident, it centers on a man and woman who withdraw Another hope of the mainstream industry was Juzo from the political upheavals of their day into a world of Itami. Son of a distinguished director, he had been an 646 CHAPTER 26 Beyond the Industrialized West country was supreme in manufacturing automobiles, watches, motorcycles, cameras, and electronic goods. Japan replaced the United States as the world's major creditor, holding the largest banks and insurance compa­ nies and investing billions of dollars in foreign companies and real estate. During the same period, investment com­ panies began funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to Hollywood firms.With the launching of pay television and high-definitiontel evision, Japanese media companies needed attractive material of the sort that Hollywood could provide. Most spectacularly, Japanese manufacturers of con­ sumer electronics were buying Hollywood studios. Sony purchased Columbia Pictures Entertainment for $3.4 bil­ 26.1 2 The Funeral: a family member takes a snapshot. "Get lion in 1989, while Matsushita Electric Industrial Com­ a little closer to the coffin.Look sad." pany paid $6 billion for Music Corporation of America, the parent company of Universal Pictures.