"Gohatto" - simply beautiful telling

This time o'year? Seems just perfect to me for re-viewing one of the most memorable, one of the most inspiring films I've ever seen, probably ever made: Oshima Nagisa's late masterpiece of a samurai genre film, “Gohatto”. This 1999 film, internationally acclaimed and so forth, what is it, really, that makes it stand out in so lasting a fashion despite the fact that it's been emphatically criticized by just equal measure (see Andrew Grossman's angry review here, which makes many valid points but to my taste is steeped in the unreasonable and dangerous assumption that art has to execute some (ill-perceived leftist) agenda; I think “Gohatto” is subversive all right, although in a way quite different from what he seems to have in mind; but then again I may have to admit that my taste in these matters tends to lean toward the reactionary, so looks like we're even here...)?

“Gohatto” is basically a love story, a gay love story set against the backdrop of 19^th century Japan, with alternating triangles of love, deception and jealousy among the members of the elite Shinsengumi samurai militia. Excessively, fatally beautiful Kano Sozaburo (convincingly played by my favorite actor Matsuda Ryuhei, which performance won him a Japanese Academy's Newcomer of the Year award) sets loose a chain-reaction of passion rejected and fulfilled, of courting and suspicion among the training warriors. It is his very aura of inflaming sensuality ill-contained, his radiating arrogance so typical of envied youth that compliments his character of cruel, self-serving inertia, which inevitably works to make the members of this school of lofty codes of conduct fall for his charms one by one.

As Kano rejects Toshiro's (Asano Tadanobu) advances and gets involved with fellow samurai Yuzawa Tojiro instead, the entire coaction sure enough leads toward some troublesome boil up, eventually to murder. Captain Hijikata (Beat Takeshi) being in charge of maintaining order in the ranks, sees it forced upon him in the end to intervene and prevent further commotion among his men.

It is a simple yet intoxicating plot, delicately narrated and scrupulously executed by Oshima, mostly by applying red and blue filters to his shots, which serves to give “Gohatto” a very special, almost seductive power all its own. This film is neither a grand style costume opera, nor a mere abstraction of homosexuality and male bonding. No, what I like especially about this one is the thoroughly seen-through atmosphere that, once established, the director maintains to the end, not overplaying his hand to either side, to all-out realism or an encrypted meditation on his theme, but lets carefully hang suspended midair, delicately balanced and intelligently prevented from resolving too much or showing too little. Swordsmanship and a well choreographed sequence of side-stepping, both in fighting, sparring and human relations, this film has a story to tell. And it delivers it in a very convincing, uncompromising and direct fashion, one that leaves no questions unanswered in being all out, in taking gay love for what it is, deep reaching, multifarious and mostly irresolvable like any other array you may happen across in these matters.

To me the film's most outstanding achievement lies in not presenting some grossly stylized rendition of its historical setting, but portraying an era seemingly enchanted by its own spell of outdatedness, of a decadence pure, lucid and credible. “Gohatto” is an elegant chamber-piece adaptation of late Tokugawa Japan, which in my view never gives itself over to cheap lyricism but effectively, suspensefully brings to the silver screen an eerie feeling of self-enclosure, of rigorously, formality-subdued masculinity and latent pressures, some disquieting atmosphere of permeating sexual tensions without being salacious at any point.

And then, there is this grand finale (spoiler!): much discussion has been ongoing as to what exactly Kano may or may not say to Toshiro that bedazzles him in such a way as to allow for the youngster to cut him down in their fight. That Sozaburo says “Forgive me!” is all but established, but what he says after this, the film does not give away - on purpose. My reading however is that it is in fact a fiendishly deceptive confession of love avowed which he gives to Toshiro, understandably catching him off guard.

But there obviously is much more at play here. Just bear in mind the Shinsengumi's oath, never to kill for personal motives, expressly stated at the beginning, and Kano's admission to having joined for obtaining the right to kill, quite a complicated matter indeed. Even more so, when you try to figure out how this peculiar vow Kano refers to when asked by Hijikata as to why he doesn't cut his locks as would be suitable for a grown-up might fit into the equation. Is it he's pledged allegiance with Toshiro after all, something well known from the stories of Ihara Saikaku's “The Way of the Samurai”? And, to further add to the confusion, there is the film's title of course not be neglected, “Gohatto”, more literally translated as “(against) the rule”...

Well, I shall leave it there, for you to decide if it could not be the case that Oshima intends to include rules of aesthetics in this, too. Rules powerfully at work in just about all every-day that ever was or will be, an ironic comment on, as well as a resignation to man's inability to live and perform without subscribing to binding patterns of perception, whose ignorance is unavoidably implicit, just as it is unforgiving in case of being trespassed – and remember the last, the final image he ends this one with!

I reckon “Gohatto” a much more satisfying film than, say, Fassbinder's “Querelle” for example. It may not always be spectacular or original, but its spell certainly works on me! Give it a try if you haven't seen it yet!

(pic©BS Asahi/Bac Films/Canal+)