The jump from rainy Manchester to post-war Tokyo to develop a dramatization on the life of a renowned photographer is quite a jump, but it’s precisely what England is Mine director Mark Gill chose to do when telling the story of one of Japan’s most fascinating photographers, Masahisa Fukase. Ravens goes most of the way to paying justice to a creator whose work is as unusual as the man himself, though perhaps its fantasy at-times obscures a deeper understanding of the person behind the lens and how he treated those around him.
Still, there’s nothing quite like Ravens in the current Japanese theatrical landscape. No standard biopic, the film deliberately departs from the realm of fact and reality in an attempt to understand the loose grip on the work Fukase shared. The film is titled after one of his most famous photo works, Ravens, shot shortly after divorcing his wife and returning home to Hokkaido and featuring close-up and landscape shots of ravens and other things he spotted during his time in the region. These impressionist photos are ominous and consuming, black-and-white silhouettes standing like the last thing a person would see before the end, or perhaps a look inside at Fukase’s very soul.
It’s the latter interpretation that drive’s Gill’s work on Ravens, an inner voice that manifests itself as a human-sized raven that speaks in English to the Japanese Fukase (played by Tadanobu Asano fresh from his success on Shogun) as he begins to lose his grip on the world and his skills. It first appears to him as a child during an argument with his father, who ran a photography studio in Hokkaido that he was supposed to inherit before taking his own path as a photographer in Tokyo, and appears to him throughout his life as a question to his integrity and skills.
The resulting film plays as a fiendish back-and-forth between the desires to please family and friends and break beyond conformity to the point that it breaks the forth wall to argue whether the raven or the man is the protagonist of this tale. It’s bold and daring, bringing a grimy and fantastical vibe to the imaginative lens of an artist that drives the rest of the story.
As the raven makes a home in Fukase’s consciousness, we begin to see him flourish as a photographer as he meets one of his wives, Yoko Wanibe (Kumi Takiuchi). It’s a joint fascination in the unconventional with their art that draws them to one another, with a first date taking photos in an abandoned factory. Another of Fukase’s most well-known photo projects is documented in this relationship, that being his regular domestic portraits as he would photo his wife from their apartment balcony and around the home.
There’s a fascinating push-and-pull between his commitments to those around him in his more level-headed moments and his desire to sacrifice all for this art that really places audiences into the mindset of what it takes to be an artist. It’s easy to repeat the age-old adage that to create something that resonates with people means exposing a part of yourself, but there’s another that toys between creating for the self and creating for the world around you and what they wish to see, or what it takes merely to survive.
The Japanese avant-garde and rebellious creative culture of the 1960s and 1970s manifests in the photos of Fukase and the practicalities of breaking from the established post-war norms of life that his creative path represented. Both him and his wife were far from conventional people in 1960s Japan, Yoko being a free spirit whose modeling and desires to become a Noh actor contrasted with an it-girl energy and a flagrance for high-art to express the soul even if it included baring it all, nudity included.
Yoko is a spark in the film, given space to speak to her merits as a creator beyond the ways she is often relegated in popular culture to a mere muse for Fukase’s work. Her conflicted relationship with this man over decades, coupled with her own stardom that goes far beyond the platform his photos created, is a fascinating counterbalance to what would otherwise be a one-note look at the creative world. Even the raven has to admit she’s the star, even if these words come from a mix of admiration at taking the spotlight at his own photo exhibits and jealousy.
The film imposes that the raven is the inner demon that drove Fukase and made his work so enthralling to witness even today. The raven’s choice to speak English is more than a mere stylistic choice or to make a co-production with an English director palatable to the international audiences that will inevitably see this film in the coming months - it physically separates these impulses from the conventional wisdom and norms of the established world around us. Never mind that the feathered costume is intricate enough to bring real gravitas and presence, enough so that even in their absence their ideas linger.
Where Yoko shines and Fukase’s arguments with his feathered alter-ego intrigue, lifted further by strong acting performances that drill into the conflicted minds of both, the film stops short of truly understanding who these people are beyond their work.
The existence of the raven is enough to confirm this film has no desire to extoll realism on the story at hand, but it should be noted where the film differs from the real creator’s life. Beyond Yoko, the other partners Fukase was with and even photographed during his life are never mentioned. While none were a central subject in the way Yoko was, to continue this story into Fukase’s death in 2012 following twenty years in care, incapacitated and unable to act independently following a fall from the staircase of his favorite bar, makes their absence notable.
While the film features the work of Yoko and Ravens, alongside some photos that would find their way into a photo book of self-portraits taken naked in his bathtub, Bukubuku, other works by the artist are absent. The film lacks a deeper look at his complicated relationship with his family or Yoko’s artistic pursuits leaving us desiring a deeper understanding as to not just what was created and the tribulations to create, but who these people were on a more fundamental level.
This isn’t trying to be a comprehensive look at Fukase’s life, more using his work as a dramatic way to explore the tortured artist. But it feels a missed opportunity not to dig that little bit deeper, even if the final film remains captivating. “Pick up a camera then scream and bleed,” Fukase says of the process of creating, and if nothing else this film emphasizes that in a moody, unsettling style that lingers long after the credits stop rolling. For that, Ravens is a bold swing on the conventional biopic that mostly succeeds.
Japanese Movie Spotlight is a monthly column highlighting new Japanese cinema releases. You can check out the full archive of the column over on Letterboxd.
