Biva alive and dead – Weekend – Kommersant
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After several transfers, “Inu-o: The Birth of a Legend” is still released in Russian cinemas – a historical almost rock opera, a new full-length anime by Masaaki Yuasa and his Science SARU studio (“Devil Man: Crybaby”, “Hands off Film Club !”). The corporate identity of the director, one of the most important authors in the anime genre, deserves a special discussion.
End of the XII century. The confrontation between the two most influential clans of Japan – Minamoto and Taira – ended in a crushing defeat for the latter. This was largely marked by the naval battle in Dannoura Bay, where, together with the Taira samurai, three imperial regalia (a bronze mirror, a tsurugi sword and jasper pendants), as well as the six-year-old ruler Antoku, went to the bottom.
Over the next 300 years, the chronicle of the fall of the house of Taira acquires the status of Japan’s most popular TV series: selected stories are told by wandering storytellers playing music on bivas, as well as artists of sarugaku – a street theater that does not shy away from farce, stilts, or clowning. The country is dominated by the shogunate – read, military dictatorship – Ashikagi Yoshimitsu, who wants to strengthen his power by returning the legendary relics. In parallel, he patronizes the arts, in particular the emerging noh theater.
At the same time, two seemingly unrelated events occur that will be attributed to the curse of the Taira clan. The diving boy Tomona goes blind when he and his father retrieve the imperial tsurugi from the bottom (the wave of light cuts the parent in half). The leader of the sarugaku troupe, who enjoys shogunal patronage, has a third son, whose body is severely deformed and covered with scales and hair. Of course, in a few years the young men will meet: Tomona will learn to play the biwa and become a monk-musician, and the outlandish boy will receive the name Inu-o – literally “Dog King” – and will discover in himself a gift for the most incredible dances. Together they will begin to conquer Japan.
Like any legend, “The Birth of a Legend” is better to see and hear in its entirety once: even a cursory retelling of the plot is in vain bogged down in details. Without them, it’s hard to describe the outlines of the grand scheme that director Masaaki Yuasa enacts with an effortless ease beyond the reach of written language. The opening scene already invites you on a journey through 600 years of Japanese history, and then a small flashback follows for another 300 – to Dannoura Bay. However, the “Tale of the House of Taira”, as the whole genre of chants and performances was later called, is dedicated to the 11-episode anime of the same name by the same Science SARU studio, but under the direction of director Naoki Yamada (her poetic “Voice Form” was recently released). Watching it is not exactly necessary before going to Inu-o (there is no serious need even to look at Wikipedia beforehand), but it will certainly be a nice bonus and warm-up before Yuasa’s “rock concert”.
In general, the director of “The Birth of a Legend” is a figure of equal size to all those who are well-known outside the sector of anime fans: Miyazaki, Shinkai, Hosoda – substitute the right one. A tireless worker, Masaaki Yuasa releases on a project, or even two a year, but is identified from three notes not by his favorite topics. Rather, by the fluidity of lines and the flight of fancy. This applies to mind-blowing plots, and caricature-witty character design, and eclectic art styles. Yuasa easily marries pictorial traditions with game inserts, almost an animado; theatrical masks and scenery – with the aesthetics of manga and comics; children’s caricature – with visual innovations of pop art, road signs and messengers. And not only heaps them together with postmodern complacency, but often traces the evolution of the image through the years – without attracting any special attention to the work done. No wonder his high-profile directorial debut was called A Game of the Mind (2004) and sang the boundless fiction of mankind.
“Inu-o” invites you to see the origins of the theater but – the plot is akin to a rebellion of beatniks or rockers, and the titular character himself and his companion with a biba do not resemble street performers, but the medieval incarnation of The Rolling Stones. In their songs and dances, hidden plots of national history and genuine democracy merge, inviting the audience to dance and even sing along (interactive was not accepted then, especially in high society). And this is at a time when the art of sarugaku is being actively institutionalized at temples, becoming solid entertainment for respectable gentlemen (the result will be called no theater), and the heads of troupes especially close to the court will have the right to form the cultural agenda. In particular, the blind master Kakuichi, who taught Tomona to play the biwa, will form the next canon of The Tale of the Taira House – and Inu-o’s revelations will not be there.
It turns out that the outcasts, who have found themselves in the craft, art, not only delight the audience with musical parables about past times, but defy the canons, power, physical limitations and time itself. One of the motifs of “Inu-o” is eternal life in the creative heritage, even if your name is erased or forgotten, as happened with the title character, whose authorship was not preserved by any of his songs. The fate of Tomona is even sadder, but his short acquaintance with the young Zeami Motokiyo is a significant contribution to the formation of the theater but and the basics of the Japanese acting school, which he then compiled. In the end, art is not only and not so much the author’s intention, detailed and inviolable, but a method of communication: between eras, peoples and social strata, global and personal, unconscious, hidden and postulated. In short, between mediums: spheres and souls.
Everything is as the Chinese sage Lao Tzu bequeathed: “What has hardened will not win.” The seething energy of two young people is laying new, previously unnoticed routes for human history and thought. And sooner or later, both the political structure of the shogunate, and the “cultural canon” designed to protect the consciousness of the people from chaos, and the notorious “generational cannibalism”, which, however, have been experienced more than once in Japan (usually the term is applied to the revanchism of those who are obsessed on defeat in World War II). Speaking in a streamlined way, the curse of Inu-o is not some kind of divine / imperial disgrace, but the desire of senior colleagues to extend the moment of mortal glory at the cost of the lives of their descendants. The plot, as they say, is eternal. However, immersing yourself in art, Yuasa’s film convinces, is a far more winning strategy than clinging to status and privileges. You can’t take them to the grave.
At the box office from March 2
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