The Books of My Life: In the Realm of the Senses

For film scholar Joan Mellen the films of Oshima Nagisa, including Ai no corrida/In the Realm of the Senses, the subject of Mellen's book in the BFI Film Classics series (In the Realm of he Senses, London: BFI, 2004, are rebellious and even revolutionary. Oshima's films, argues Mellen, are reactions to modern Japan, the Japan of industrialisation, the Japan of militarism, the Japan of nationalism, and the Japan of feudal victimisation.

Mellen explores the mise-en-scene, particularly Oshima's use of colour, camera angles, close-ups, and real sex in In the Realm of the Senses. She nicely, as I mentioned earlier, puts Oshima's work in its Japanese contexts, specifically, Oshima's student radicalism and his opposition to modern Japan's militarism, nationalism, and sense of victimhood, a perspective not every student of Japanese film agrees with. She discusses the films of Luis Bunuel and their impact on Oshima. She nicely explores other films that came out of similar the same post-war atmosphere, namely Imamura Shohei's The Insect Woman (1963) and History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (1970), Dusan Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971), one of my favourute films,  Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972), which she rightly, in my opinion, notes doesn't go as far as Oshima (and I would add early Makavejev) in subverting gender ideologies, and Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1972). She explores the controversies that followed the film particularly in Japan where it was censored.

I found Mellen's discussion of the social and cultural contexts of Oshima's works and his Ai no corrida fascinating. I recommend Mellen's book to anyone interested in radical cinema and Japanese cinema.