Given the presentation of the images and the tone of the first few scenes, Mothers (1967) is perhaps a more complicated film than one might immediately suspect. As with the majority of director Toshio Matsumoto's early short work, the similarities to filmmakers like Jean Luc Godard, Chris Marker and Peter Greenaway are all notable right from the start; with the amalgamation of seemingly found, documentary-like images combined with beautifully composed shots of people and places suggesting a kind of mishmash of probing cinéma vérité, with something altogether more abstract. The film begins with a shot of a baby being baptised in a font. We hear children crying "mummy" on the soundtrack before music and narration introduce a series of shots showing children and parents going about their everyday activities. The film stresses a seemingly more working class environment and minorities over the more bourgeois or middle-class (though they do feature); with numerous shots of old buildings and tenements close to collapse, alongside more vague and enigmatic images, such as the woman dancing wildly to rock n' roll music while her children look on, bemused.
The image is a striking one, bringing to mind the subsequent work of directors like Werner Herzog or Harmony Korine; breaking down the boundaries between the real and the surreal in the same was as films like Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) or Gummo (1997). As the film progresses the images become more distressing. The film begins using stock footage from Africa and South-East Asia to show children affected by war and atrocity. Napalm scars, severed limbs, crying mothers cradling dead children and ants crawling in an open wound are again juxtaposed against the actions of people and places. The narration continues. These shots are in direct contrast with the opening sequences, which, although bleak in their milieu, capture a comparatively affluent 60's New York setting of cars, clothes and television, as well as the middle-part of the film, wherein Matsumoto gives us a brief insight into the life of a working class French family, whose daily life in contrasted by a series of stock-shots of everyday Parisian activity.
It's a compelling and fascinating film that survives without the use of character or narrative; with the potency of Matsumoto's imagery - which moves from rough, hand-held, street-level investigation into more structured shots of children gazing into the lens - managing to tell a story that is both affective and persuasive. Tribal, prayer, sport, sacrifice... it's hard to know what Matsumoto is suggesting with the film, especially without the aid of subtitles. As a result, we end up with a vague travelogue of ideas; fascinating and confusing, yet filled with fantastically evocative images, both bleak and beautiful, which suggest so much about Matsumoto could be trying to capture or convey. Without the subtitles (my Japanese isn't very good) much of this review is more of a reflection than a critique. I can't begin to comprehend what role the narration plays here; whether Matsumoto is making light of these images in an ironic sense, or simply telling the story of these characters. The fact that the narrator is a woman suggests much in the way of the motherhood theme that features in both the title and the presentation of the images.
Hopefully I will get to see this film again someday, preferably with the subtitles, so that I can really appreciate what Matsumoto is trying to say. Obviously, the director is hoping that we make contrasts and comparisons between the three different worlds depicted in the film, with the structure of each segment repeating various themes and ideas through the use of imagery. As the film ends, Matsumoto has stripped away everything other than a single, iconic image of a mother on the beach with her two infant sons. Again, it is reminiscent of Herzog almost, in this case, the closing moments of Cobra Verde (1987), albeit, with an altogether more hopeful tone. As with the rest of the film, the single image tells a story and seemingly reinforces Matsumoto's entire message of the film. Like his previous short-form experiments, The Weavers of Nishijin (1961) and The Song of Stone (1963), I'd imagine that Mothers works on a number of sub-textual, possibly socio-political levels that work beneath the images. Without the use of subtitles these themes remain vague, and yet, regardless of this, the experience of the film and the quietly affecting quality of Matsumoto's direction is really second to none.
The image is a striking one, bringing to mind the subsequent work of directors like Werner Herzog or Harmony Korine; breaking down the boundaries between the real and the surreal in the same was as films like Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) or Gummo (1997). As the film progresses the images become more distressing. The film begins using stock footage from Africa and South-East Asia to show children affected by war and atrocity. Napalm scars, severed limbs, crying mothers cradling dead children and ants crawling in an open wound are again juxtaposed against the actions of people and places. The narration continues. These shots are in direct contrast with the opening sequences, which, although bleak in their milieu, capture a comparatively affluent 60's New York setting of cars, clothes and television, as well as the middle-part of the film, wherein Matsumoto gives us a brief insight into the life of a working class French family, whose daily life in contrasted by a series of stock-shots of everyday Parisian activity.
It's a compelling and fascinating film that survives without the use of character or narrative; with the potency of Matsumoto's imagery - which moves from rough, hand-held, street-level investigation into more structured shots of children gazing into the lens - managing to tell a story that is both affective and persuasive. Tribal, prayer, sport, sacrifice... it's hard to know what Matsumoto is suggesting with the film, especially without the aid of subtitles. As a result, we end up with a vague travelogue of ideas; fascinating and confusing, yet filled with fantastically evocative images, both bleak and beautiful, which suggest so much about Matsumoto could be trying to capture or convey. Without the subtitles (my Japanese isn't very good) much of this review is more of a reflection than a critique. I can't begin to comprehend what role the narration plays here; whether Matsumoto is making light of these images in an ironic sense, or simply telling the story of these characters. The fact that the narrator is a woman suggests much in the way of the motherhood theme that features in both the title and the presentation of the images.
Hopefully I will get to see this film again someday, preferably with the subtitles, so that I can really appreciate what Matsumoto is trying to say. Obviously, the director is hoping that we make contrasts and comparisons between the three different worlds depicted in the film, with the structure of each segment repeating various themes and ideas through the use of imagery. As the film ends, Matsumoto has stripped away everything other than a single, iconic image of a mother on the beach with her two infant sons. Again, it is reminiscent of Herzog almost, in this case, the closing moments of Cobra Verde (1987), albeit, with an altogether more hopeful tone. As with the rest of the film, the single image tells a story and seemingly reinforces Matsumoto's entire message of the film. Like his previous short-form experiments, The Weavers of Nishijin (1961) and The Song of Stone (1963), I'd imagine that Mothers works on a number of sub-textual, possibly socio-political levels that work beneath the images. Without the use of subtitles these themes remain vague, and yet, regardless of this, the experience of the film and the quietly affecting quality of Matsumoto's direction is really second to none.