The Shimura Trick

Takashi Shimura is the eternal sufferer of the Akira Kurosawa universe; while Mifune is the primary architect of the Kurosawa narrative (via an anxious intention or a corrupt soul), it is Shimura who must bear the brunt of the former’s actions – together, therefore, they form a formidable team of assassination-specialists: the first kills, the second destroys evidence. Mifune is the impulsive protege; Shimura the elder statesman. This elaborately-conducted assignment of roles will reflect directly in their performances too – while Mifune is always overbearing physically, conducting his performance via-physical mimicry (a lion in Rashomon, an old man in I Live in Fear, a 20-feet tall statue in Hidden Fortress); Shimura is timid and weak, the sort of man you would favour yourself against if it came down to a slap-match. 

A Shimura performance is placid, burdened with the torment of the world, prepared to absorb the effects of all the misery of the world, responding with nothing more than a faint quiver of his large shock-absorbing lower lip. This is a meticulously constructed framework of faux-tranquil though – it is an entire plane of normalcy created to underline the single moment of abnormality, because if Mifune trembles, bulges his eyes and contracts his foreheads with a deep guttural grunt, it is just him acting – but if Shimura happens to do it, something must be wrong.

The Shimura Trick is a clever set-up – the actor will, having played the part in an absolutely ‘normal’ manner (the greatness of a Mifune lies in how visible the performance is; Shimura, on the other hand, must leave no traces of a ‘performance’ behind to be called ‘great') up till that point in the film, will, just moments before the single moment of abnormality (usually a shocking disclosure) turn the normalcy up a few notches: he will use his hanky to clean the sweat behind his ears, light up a cigarette, smile at a character standing in front of him – all to lead the undiscerning viewer into thinking ‘everything’s fine’ when suddenly, the moment will take place and Shimura, acting via-prop, will bring whatever maneuver of faux-normalcy he has been involved in to an abrupt halt. The hanky, possessed no longer by a firm grip, will dangle between his fingers, the cigarette will tilt vertically down and the smile will vanish – the entire intention behind such a ruse being to fully transmit the state of shock Shimura’s character is under. The ruse reveals itself to a viewer only after one’s watched a few Shimura performances – after a certain point, you wouldn’t fall for it anymore and what’s more, you can predict its occurrence – the moment Shimura, unnaturally upright in posture and a hesitant user of props – takes out a hanky or a cigarette or a large grin, you know something’s gonna change.

I Live in Fear (1955) / Akira Kurosawa

Fat Men Make Cry

Wakayama, the Lone Wolf

Tomisaburo Wakayama comes across as a complete slob - he drags his overweight frame across the ground with the alacrity of a metallic crane, his skin drapes over his cheekbones like an inflated raft, his lower lip dangles in listless isolation. His hairpiece is in a state of utter disarray, with strands scattered and astray, he sweats profusely on the face, his kimono has clumsy tears here/there and his eyes open at best to a sluggish slit – at best, he looks like a soup shop owner slapped awake. But this is his greatest strength too – much like Sammo Hung, who invented the ‘teapot-body as martial-arts star style’ (see: Winners as Sinners, where he makes a big deal of his body-shape), Wakayama’s success in ol’ fashioned dueling (and he always duels, even when against an army of hundred : fighters must wait for their turn) is because of the sheer surprise he springs – he wins, therefore, not despite his stoutness, but because of it. His opponents attach a certain (low) level of agility to his body-type, and are often disappointed when he, more supple than they thought, dances (Kenji Misumi knows it is dance, after all) across the floor and slits their head open into a blood-sprinkle more profound than their ill-informed prejudice against fat men. Wakayama is therefore the Efren Reyes of jidaegeki and indeed, all of martial-art cinema. 

Reyes moves around the table languidly, performing at best a formality – his shirt is untucked, he has a stupid smile on his face, and if there is ever a bow-tie, it is closer to the first button than to the collar-groove. Also, he is considered the best player to have ever played pool. Similarly, the gaucheness of Wakayama’s appearance is his greatest deception – where opponents accept a casual attitude, he goes in quick, sets up the deception, pots the balls and comes out.

Violations

Miller's Crossing (1990) / Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

At one level or the other, the garment of all Coen Bros. films is woven around a discussion of the sustainability of a spoken (and not documented) agreement: as such, the characters are supposed to honour an established regimen – a grand central unifying code-of-life. A Coen Bros. film, however, begins at the last straw: the characters are already paying remittances for their past follies and their past debts. When Miller’s Crossing begins, Leo and Tony have already been in legion with each other for years or H.I. is already in the penitentiary when Raising Arizona begins – the Coens are more interested in implications of a position instead of origin-stories and recollections. As such, the grand code between the characters has been set from before the film starts – what we are called onto witness is the different manners of its transgression.

In that, Miller’s Crossing is the prototypical Coen Bros. film, because it is at its most fundamental about one thing: loyalties among men. That sort of (simultaneously) schlock and hard-sell lends itself easily to the gangster-movie format, because the universe of such a film is full of individuals who make grand commitments, but never on paper (for all of The Godfather trilogy’s crime syndicate-corporate family insinuations and Goodfellas’ flaunting of a large ‘network’ of crime – no one ever signs a piece of paper). Instead, they are merely Jewish businessmen handshakes, gentlemen’s agreements, the law of the spoken word – where one must (and is expected to) stick to a commitment he made. 

Invariably, however, in each gangster film, someone will violate the terms of this harmonious accord: someone will rat, someone will want to usurp control, someone will generally be a dick – but while in a lot of gangster films, such violations act as narrative-triggers or plot-devices that can then justify the murder-mayhem that will follow; a Coen Bros. film will turn it into a solemn discussion of human virtues (or the lack of it). Therefore, when Tom Regan decides to play the grand-schemer-manipulator – setting one up with two, two with three, one with three – he enters into a network of double and triple crosses – a network of transgressions, thereby setting up multiple debates at the same time. One about ethics (Johnny Casper says: ‘It is now a matter of whether he is ethical or not’, about a trusted cohort), the other about morality (Verna says to Tom: ‘You always break…’ and lastly, humanity itself (Bernie to Tom: ‘Look inside your heart’. Reply: What heart?’). It is absolutely clear by the end, obviously, that he, the most disloyal of all, is the most loyal – he merely does not honor minor accords in the face of his devotion to a grander monolith. 

Eventually, it is wholly natural for the Coens to conduct, at a seething regularity such discussions – their collective identity as filmmakers being about projecting a small-town admiration for simple virtues into the big bad world of Hollywood. That the device they choose to set such a discussion up is invariably the tenacity of a male bond is interesting too – their own creative partnership, after all, functioned for the first half of their career based on the agreement that only one of them get the credit for direction.

Intimacy

Loves of a Blonde (1965) / Milos Forman

Italianamerican (1974) / Martin Scorsese

The First Half of a Song-Performance

From Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi (1966) / Shaheed Latif:

At the moment of the beginning of the song's performance, both the sisters are in love with the same man (he plays the piano like someone kneads the dough). In a manner that belongs very much to Bergman, both of them project their feeling of entitlement to such a luxury ( being the object of love of a man) very aggressively onto the whole situation. Neither is willing to concede any ground in this ménage à trois (more sexual than it is spiritual) - both demand their own respective close-ups, their private eyeline-matches with the actor and their very own, astutely choreographed, set of gestures (the first flutters an eyebrow, the second twitches a lip; the first betrays a cutesy grin, the second blushes a black-and-white blush etc.) 

What is interesting too, ofcourse, is how the scene is directed to play a willing audience to their wholly presumptuous universes of a privately blooming love (entirely hypothetical at this point too - what if he doesn't love either?) - the camera lingers on the first, and then on the second, with the meticulously created impartiality of a newly elected leader who wants to be 'there for everyone'. Both are permitted an audience, as also equally divided immutable time-slots reserved exclusively for an individual performance.

As it stands, the picturisation itself becomes almost entirely about the act of 'looking' - as such, the scene becomes an assortment of fleeting glances, moony-eyed glazes, and rather intrusively-affixed stares. The song itself becomes the permeating fiber that is the basic material for this network of 'looking' - as the actor begins to sing, the camera dollies out, his voice being projected into meaningless vacuum, until the members of his audience are revealed through a cut : the sister-duo, at which point the camera dollies-in; thereby forming a system of projection-absorption of the actor's song.

Ofcourse, it is also at another level about the confusion inherent in an eyeline-match : if used well, such as in this case, you may not know exactly what the actor is looking at - the sisters are confused themselves (or are, unarguably clear who the song is being sung for) and their confusion transmits to the audience as well (if you do not know any better). In that, the editing becomes particularly essential too - because the shot of the actor looking in the sisters' direction is never followed directly with the close-up of one of the sisters, since such a schema will annihilate the ambiguity and reveal to us the object of his affection; instead, the reverse-shot of the shot of him looking is always a long-shot of both of them, which may then dolly-in to one of them, depending on who summons the camera first.

On Posture

Drive (2011) / Nicolas Winding Refn

Like a lot of Gosling performances, the one in Drive is essentially a catalogue of various human postures. Much like Warren Oates, a similarly brave actor, who acted with the length of his beard (dense growth: disgruntled, maniac, psychotic; stubble: violent but tragic, clean-shaven: in love, optimistic but a tad cynical), Gosling acts with the angle at which he reclines his back. Therefore Half-Nelson is a perpetual slouch while Lars and the Real Girl is an overtly-perpendicular spine. Ofcourse, Drive is wholly about a character placed against/as an inextricable part of a milieu/setting (no film in recent times, not even quirky indies, have such elaborate wallpapering: the home has redder-warmer tones, the motel has greener, unwelcoming tones) – therefore, Gosling’s driver-character is often placed against a stark background – his silhouette is pasted upon wallpapered-backgrounds, his profile is often used against a flurry of Los Angeles-at-night lights while he drives the car. The much-discussed credit sequence plays like a clothing ad – Gosling does a lot of things but accomplishes very little – he sits in his car with a leg stretched out, walks with a jacket hung over one shoulder, walks even more – but he never really is getting anywhere in the fade-in, fade-out montage. It is because the credit sequence, emblematically of the whole film, is a simple-minded ode to posture (much like any advertisement for cosmetics or clothes). 

As a result, the film, much like any Melville, reveals its lead protagonist’s mental state through an external quality – when Gosling’s character is falling in love with a residential neighbour and reasonably satisfied with the quality of his life, he stands/walks/sits with an upright, perfectly vertical back with not a hint of a slouch – but when he goes about extracting revenge in the final half-an-hour of the film, his body contorts into weird awkward shapes. When the final mutual kniving-session does take place, director Refn decides to film the dueling parties in shadows, therefore, in strictly pictorial terms, Gosling’s body turns into a shape – one which struggles uncomfortably atop the boot of the car. When order is restored in the final shot (or is it?), Gosling’s profile, straight-as-an-arrow and immovable, once again fills the frame from its head to toe, while Los Angeles lights pass by in the background.

Personal Revolutions

Duck, You Sucker (1971) / Sergio Leone

The Gladiators (1969) / Peter Watkins