Cinema Aficiona: Kwaidan (Part 1)
"Ay sure Jesus, that's not a proper Ghost story, we're goin to tha next country!"
Time to talk about one of my favorite movies! I can’t believe it but I really hadn’t revisited this one in over 15 years, and its style and substance, looking back, have absolutely been a lynch pin in my own storytelling proclivities. Kwaidan (1964) directed by Masaki Kobayashi.
The movie Kwaidan is a collection of four ghost stories originally written and published by the author Patrick Hearn in 1904. Patrick Hearn, also known as Lafcadio Hearn and Yakumo Koizumi, was an Irishman who moved to Japan way back in the late 1800s, which is hilarious to me because it just seems that the Irish loved to go to other countries and make fantastic horror stories based on their cultures. Looking at you, Bram Stoker.
I originally saw Kwaidan when I was studying Japanese culture and folklore at University of Florida (Go Gators). These excellent horror stories stick to you like a good broth, I just cannot get them out of my lexicon, and it’s clear that I’ve been seeking that certain jive ever since. Funny enough, the reminder of this movie came from planning an upcoming trip to Koyasan.
I told my buds that I’d refresh myself on the story of 耳なし芳一(Earless Hoichi) and present it on the occasion of touring Okunoin cemetery, and in a fit of total synchronicity, Hideo Kojima recommending films from the Criteron Collection came up, wherein he described Kwaidan as his favorite film! Good taste, Kojimbles. Very good taste.
And with the opening of this film we have, what I like to call, a Kubrick meditation: About a solid 60 seconds of no audio, just to the point where you’re really listening to your own thoughts, only for an ethereal chime to kick in along with haunting ink clouds inter-spliced into the credits.
After the meditative intro we have an image of an old gate which opens before the camera. A once great, but now impoverished estate that has fallen into disrepair, and we’re given the set up for Kwaidan’s first story: Black Hair. Which I will go into in the next update.