Assassination

Masahiro Shinoda's Assassination (1964) was the first jidai geki (period drama) for the Nuberu Bagu (Japanese New Wave) director. It dives deep into Japan's history prior to the Meiji Restoration by presenting the story of a talented swordsman who worships the Emperor and is eventually corrupted by the rivalry between the Emperor and the Shogunate.

Shinoda does dig deep into history, but it's also a vivid character study. The fragmented presentation has its ups and downs: while it makes the film ambiguous in an interesting way it relies a bit too much on the assumption that the viewer knows the historical event. I managed to comprehend the film without prior knowledge, but it was a challenging task to say the least. The opening of the film tries to inform the audience of the context, but it's not sufficient enough.

Purely on the level of characters and themes Assassination is a triumph and the form is even more delightful. Breathtaking and menacing compositions, wild camerawork and intense editing make the film a gem on their own. Even ambitious attempts like disruptive freezeframes and first person camera work surprisingly smoothly. Takemitsu's soundtrack is experimental and great yet again.

Assassination takes too many risks in its execution. It could easily be considered a masterpiece if the audience knew the historical context well enough. Shinoda barely manages to make it historically relevant for other viewers (which is a bad hindrance for a film so deeply embedded in it), but even without that it's a rather impressive achievement.

Score: 8 out of 10

Silence

It is not easy to summarize Masahiro Shinoda's Silence (1971). In a way it's like Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) if it was set in the 17th century Japan. But that would be a misleading comparison for multiple reasons.

First of all, Silence is not expressionistic at all. Secondly, it is not only about the "silence of God" because Shinoda makes the most of Endo's original novel which criticizes Japan and organized religion as well as exploring a cultural conflict vividly. How does he do that? By telling a story of two Portuguese Catholic priests sneaking into Japan to guide the Japanese Christians in secret, which leads to a long and gruesome aftermath. One might wonder if Shinoda can keep it all together coherently within a single film. He surely manages to do that: the writing is surprisingly fluid in all aspects.

However, the form is not perfect. The jaw-dropping cinematography and powerful editing work well with Takemitsu's musical score, but there are a few irritating inconsistencies. The lighting is odd in the early scenes and the worst offender is the English dialogue. It is written well, but the British actors stumble with it terribly. And it doesn't help a lot when it hasn't even been recorded well. This is a problem when English is used for a third (if not more) of the entire dialogue of the film.

Silence could have become the ultimate clusterfuck of religion, culture and faith if it the glaring flaw had been polished to be less noticable.

Score: 9 out of 10