But, to be fair, though, the experience and the opinion on any decent film watched immediately after seeing Star Wars Episodes 7 & 8 would get a significant bump by default. And yet, saying 'This Transient Life' is "decent" filmmaking would be offending it because the film is one of the most assured works I've ever seen, so good so to feel like a response to Tarko's 'Stalker' (even though 'Stalker' came out almost a decade later). But it's even better than that, for the setting and camera here are Japanese, and these guys don't care to fool around, not even slightly in self-indulgent stuff - straight to business.
I was constantly thinking of 'Stalker' during the second half of the movie, and now I fear I can't avoid making some parallelizations between the two films. If in Tarko's masterpiece, we see what it means to always hold on to your faith, in Jissôji's highly controversial but commanding cinematics, we witness a man act with no beliefs. And I love talking about this kind of stuff, but, as always, I'm not going to get into intimate interpretations regarding the plot and themes. I'm just going to talk about how Jissôji wears his "discourse" - this is cinema for the thinking - making perfect use of the medium's tools.
Just like in 'Stalker' where Tarko uses the environment he's shooting excellently to convey motifs of uncertainty, sorrow, and disbelief, showcasing the internal emotional spectrum of his characters perfectly, Jissôji does that with the same efficiency. And I'd argue it must have been even harder than it was for Andrei for Akio to work with his settings in achieving that. Yet he nails it. From the beginning, where we see the protagonist for the first time, we see him alone in this broad landscape showing his disconnection from everything, immediately letting us know there's a conflict in him. Later we see him walk alone in these tight corridors formed in between buildings while the camera is shooting from a low angle in front of him, and we see the edges of the buildings almost touch his head. You can interpret that as the thoughts revolving inside his head suffocating him, making it apparent that there's something that's bugging him. And Jissôji works with his settings beautifully throughout. The last time I noticed this level of proficiency in using the environment to tell the story, it'd be Antonioni's 'La Notte.'
Where 'This Transient Life' seems to have nothing in common with 'Stalker' is how it's shot and edited. If in 'Stalker' though the shots are tonally perfect - Tarko's visual prowess in that film is impeccable - Andrei meanders a lot (the self-indulgent stuff I mentioned earlier), making it exhausting to get through some of the shots, here you get nothing like that. Akio cuts quicker and to the point. And the overall camera-work is much more lively than that in 'Stalker.' Jissôji's shooting seems to lean more on the likes of Kalatozov (keeping it Japan v. Russia). And whenever I see "Kalatozov," I think of passion. Immense passion for the camera. And that's what I felt watching 'This Transient Life.' But if, in Kalatozov's case, you get the intense, grab-me-by-the-throat - I'm talking camera - kind of passion, when it comes to Jissôji, that passion is delicate. The camera moves gentler, and it's not as extravagant as Kalatozov's, but it carries almost the same ingenuity. There's a particular moment in this film where I thought the camera movement was so symbolic, and that's the pendulum-swinging camera scene. The camera moves from one side to the other, right and left, as the main character talks about hell and heaven. I thought that was a beautiful, creative choice that works great as an emphasis on the conversation.
I'm not going to go on any longer. I loved the movie. I didn't watch any Japanese films during April, and that hadn't happened in a while. Japanese cinema rules! And just noticed it, these Japanese filmmakers' names sound so badass.
