Still Walking and Realism

What is real when it comes to cinema or art?  Can we lose ourselves in the suspicion of disbelief; a choosing to ignore our inner suspicions and lose ourselves in the story, believing for a moment that this is a real family sitting around and eating on the anniversary of the death of their son?  Or will our rational selves convince us that this is just a fictional representation?  And really, how will the film affect us, should we allow it to do so?  McGonigal wonders about the representation of the real in the world of cinema and gaming, stating that: “stories helped to define film as a dangerously immersive medium, capable of seducing rational audience members into foolish belief and producing an astonishing incapacity to distinguish the imaginary from the real.”  But she further goes on to discuss the fact that the audience chooses to pretend to believe.  Coining what she terms “the Pinocchio Effect,” she notes the audience’s unfulfilled desire to believe for real what they clearly know what is not real. 

This applies, not only to the audience’s view of the film, but also of the characters within the film and their interactions with stories.  As this is a blog post, I feel like it is permissible for me to be a bit candid in my review.  I didn’t have time to view Still Walking until I arrived at my parent’s house for Thanksgiving.  I asked my mother if she would like to watch the film with me.  Suffice it to say that this was, perhaps, her first encounter with a foreign film, and most certainly one of this nature.   The everyday conversationality of this film and its realistic depiction of a Japanese family struggling to bridge the gap between old tradition and new practices, between generations that don’t seem to communicate well might have been too much for her.  The ten minute discussions on sushi and continual walking up and down the stairs, as well as the arguments on the names of sumo wrestlers seemed to show only the mere mundane.  Often in film (and in theatre), the audience encounters moments of extreme circumstances, the life and death situations that make a film riveting.  Modern cinema certainly has a tendency to represent the remarkable, but Still Walking, perhaps in a memory of the early actualities, feels quite pedestrian.  But perhaps this humdrum quality is a better attempt to capture the real.  Certainly more real that any Tom Cruise film…seriously, any…

Brecht spoke of the urgent need for popular literature, stating that “telling the truth seems increasingly urgent.” (107)  He clarified that popular is defined as the people who are not fully involved in the process of development but are actually taking it over; deciding it.  In this quest, the masses take over their own forms of expression and enrich them.  And in this way, literature should give a truthful representation of life.  So, if the director wants to tackle the task of representing a truthful Japanese family, he must allow them to use both old methods of storytelling and new.  Traditional family life is represented in mostly still shots.  Very few cinemagraphic moments of panning are involved, and those that are deal primarily with nature.  Instead stationary cameras seem to capture a day in the life of this extended family.  It seems almost real in the dialogue, a family cooking together, flitting from subject to subject, talking around matters instead of dealing directly with them.  Further, there are a number of conversations that begin in the shot and continue of screen, just as they would for a stationary observer in the room.  There is careless jabbering between siblings and meaningful moments where they try to figure out how to deal with their aging parents.  In fact, there seems to be an excessive amount of dialogue in the pieces…the sister hardly ever shuts her mouth…as my mother frequently matched her comments with observations of her own.  The characters talk so much but have an inability to communicate about anything important; something true in any family.  It’s often easier to dart around the subjects of food than to deal with a son who feels like he can never measure up and a father who feels abandoned.  Indeed, in the brief moment when the father and son begin to have an actual conversation about something important, they are interrupted by a number of distractions.  It seems that in this realm, the filmmakers are following Brecht’s advice that with modern literature, we can’t rely on old methods for telling a story, but rather must use old and new in realistic writing; a realistic art that is meant to cause change. 

Brecht further discusses the psychological stripping down of the characters in an attempt to tell the truth; which is really the most important thing.  He says that we must “put living reality in the hands of living people in such a way that is can be mastered.” (109).  And further that “realism needs to be broad and political, free from aesthetic restrictions and independent of convention….writing from the standpoint of the class which has prepared the broadest solutions for the most pressing problems afflicting human society.” (109)  If Still Walking had been a more commercialized version of the storytelling, if it had chosen to follow the characters from room to room, to not use silence as a story teller, to use certain technologies sparingly and focus instead of doing something Bazin would approve of, which is to take still photographs and give them life and movement, it would not have been so successful in its attempt at realism. 

The characters themselves even deal with the concept of the real.  There are several references to the word normal and what it means to be a real parent.  They question whether the laughter on a television show can be real, and if a statement can be trusted if you don’t know who initially said it – like the story of the yellow butterfly of the comment about the corn that upset the brother so much.  The characters question truth, even perhaps demonstrating what McGonigal sees as the two kinds of play (make believe or make belief), which either protects boundaries of what is real and what is pretend or intentionally blurs the boundaries.  The mother projects her dead son onto a butterfly and her hatred and anger on the boy he saved.   The son defends that very same boy as a means of defending himself and his own failures.   Further, the mother uses a song to draw out uncomfortable memories from the past.  She both make-believes  and make-beliefs about what is real.  In fact, perhaps the mother could be accused of  “longing to believe in the face of the very impossibility of believing.”  She, like the filmgoer, is an intentional participant in a fabricated world; a world that helps her survive her changing one. 

Brecht states that storytellers have  “many ways of suppressing the truth and many ways of stating it.” (110)  And that their representation of truth must fulfill a purpose and their goal is to make people think.  And Bazin further clarifies that preservation of life comes by a representation of life.  He noted that “We are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually re-presented.”

The reproduction is the model in the process of becoming, and in that way, that “the cinema is objectivity in time” (14)  But of course, we know that these are mere actors telling a contrived story in a very convincing and often uncomfortable way.  The use of symbols and the chosen shots give movement to the representation of the real.  And those symbols are found throughout the piece.  The house is showing subtle signs of falling apart – bathroom tiles, missing drawers, etc. much like the family who barely communicates and sees each other but once a year.  The promises that “we should go one of these days” to the soccer game go unfulfilled.  Brecht further clarifies that we should not be afraid to put bold things in front of the proletariat, the audience, as is indeed the case with the bathtub scene with the father and mother.  In a very private and uncomfortable way, we find out about the father’s affair and that his wife has known all along and chosen to represent her own reality.  If the goal of Brechtian discourse or agit-prop performance is to make one think, that is certainly a task well completed by both the mother and the filmmakers.  The audience, in Brecht’s words, will be forgiving, so long as the message is truthful.

And that “the picture given of life must be compared…with the actual life portrayed.” (112)

And so it is with my mother.  She may not have loved the film, but it make her think.  She may have disliked the characters and their inability to say what was really on their mind, but that very thing opened up a discourse for her to say what was on her mind.   As Bazin noted, the cinema “allows us to admire in reproduction something that our eyes alone could not have taught us to love.” (16)  And in this realm, she, and we could appreciate this representation and what it aimed to accomplish.  And then she could go turn on Downton Abbey and feel better about life.