THE UNSUNG: Black Rain (1989)

Directed by Shohei Imamura

* * * 1/2

NOTE: This is not to be confused with the Michael Douglas thriller of the same, which also came out the same year and also happens takes place in Japan. The irony still stuns me.

At the time I’m writing this, today marks the 73^rd anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. I’ve just now realized that in spite of being such a significant moment in Japan’s history, it’s not too common to see it in the movies. Perhaps there are just too many painful memories associated with such a traumatic event, but perhaps too many people saw Shohei Imamura’s Black Rain and saw no need to make a Hiroshima movie, realizing that everything that could be said about the aftermath of Hiroshima has been firmly stated by Imamura’s film, and to make another film on the subject would be redundant. Of course, I’d love to think the reason is the latter. If that were the case, though, I wouldn’t be adding this film to the Unsung series.

Black Rain opens on the morning August 6^th, 1945. To use a clichéd phrase, it seems like just another day; the family is gathering for breakfast, discussing the latest in family matters and gossip. It is then that the most traumatic of Japan’s recent memory literally strikes – the city of Hiroshima has been struck by the atomic bomb. The family is not in the midst of the chaos, but some several miles outside of the city, where they can see the mushroom cloud, towering over Hiroshima like a tyrannical colossus. In the moments after the bombing, the family find themselves being showered on by dark drops of fallout – the titular black rain.

Black Rain, however, is not a nuclear drama a la Threads or Testament. Instead, the atomic bombing is only a catalyst for the drama that follows. We cut, in disturbing immediacy, to some weeks or so after the bombing. From this point forward, barely anybody seems to directly acknowledge the bombing, as if sweeping the issue under the rug, even though fellow townsfolk drop like flies due to some after-effect of “the flash”.

Yasuko (Yoshiko Tanaka) has just received a doctor’s certificate claiming she is perfectly healthy, in spite of her exposure to the black rain. Her family is determined to get her married very soon, but prospective husbands decline Yasuko due to her fallout exposure – rumors about potential ailments she is carrying spread like wildfire around town. Her place in society is steadily pushed outward, to the point where she is essentially a pariah. She seems to only shrug her shoulders at rejection, though, as if it’s a character flaw of her own fault that she can work on.

We feel for this family when they can’t marry off Yasuko due to mere rumor and gossip. Interestingly enough, though, I will admit that the family itself isn’t one of Black Rain’s strongest points, as they feel like something out of a run-of-the-mill quality Ozu film. In turn, they feel somewhat bland. Yet why do we feel for them? Perhaps it’s because of Japanese society’s notorious emphasis on status. Perhaps it’s having knowledge of their ordeal with the Hiroshima bomb – as exploitive a device as that may sound, I assure you the deaths of the bomb are not cheapened in any way.

To make a film using Hiroshima as a means to denounce nuclear weapons would be taking the easy route – international TV was already getting that message across with films like The Day After and Threads (this was the ‘80s, remind you). Shohei Imamura was one of the leading figures of the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s. With films like The Insect Woman and Vengeance is Mine under his belt, he proved himself to be one of the most fearless and provocative filmmakers of his time, during a period of notably fortuitous and wild filmmaking, and perhaps that fortitude is no clearer than here, in Black Rain, where he had the audacity to criticize Japanese society after such a traumatic event. Yet how ironic that in spite of the anger at his own people that boils throughout the duration of Black Rain, the film we are physically watching is rather reserved, and quite beautiful.

Without detailed knowledge of Imamura’s Black Rain, one would never guess they were watching a film released in 1989; shot on grainy black and white with fairly minimal camerawork, it looks more like something released in the ‘50s or ‘60s, the age defined by filmmakers such as Kurosawa and Ozu. In spite of this, though, the subject matter of Black Rain is too biting, confrontational, and socially transgressive for something of an earlier era. This contradiction of style and content is brilliantly subtle, and is one of the major elements that makes this such an interesting movie.

Black Rain is terrific on a visual level. Upon watching this film a second time, it really dawned on me what a task it must have been to pull that off the “classic” style so well, to recreate a look and feel that filmmakers have long since evolved from. Double impressive that the style never once comes off as forced nostalgia. And the film looks gorgeous, too; the Japanese countryside is so beautifully captured, even at the film’s gloomiest moments. There’s a shot early in the film when the family first see the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima- this, to me, is one of the most underrated images in the art form.

Aside from the somewhat bland characters, if there is any other weak point of Black Rain, it is probably the writing, which feels somewhat lackluster from time to time. Granted, much of the film’s point is an oblivious populous that mundanely moves on as if nothing’s wrong, but sometimes this intended mundanity dwells a bit too much from time to time. Make no mistake, though; the good most definitely outweighs the bad (not even bad, just weak), and Black Rain still comes out swinging as a powerful movie. Seemingly forgotten these days, but still powerful.