Director: Gen Iwama (Japan). Year of Release: 2019
Paris Photo 2019, the biggest art show in the world. After the obligatory shot of the Eiffel Tower backed by a blue sky and white clouds, we move into the exhibition hall. One stall in particular is surrounded by a huge queue. The people waiting are mainly but not all Japanese. They all ask for a selfie with the man behind the table, and wait as he laboriously autographs his first name in their catalogues or on the back of their mobile phones. The time he takes you understand the queue.
Cards on the table time. Before watching this film, I wasn’t aware of Daido Moriyama, but the photos shown in the film look good. The film was taken around the 50th anniversary of the re-release of his collection “Japan, a Photo Theatre”. Well, sort of a re-release. Moriyama makes it painstakingly clear to everyone from the book publisher to the people creating the paper (which had to be exactly 5 grammes), that these were to be the same photos, but looking different.
It is one of the frustrating aspects of this film is that we overhear these conversations, but don’t really get a sense of what they really mean. At one stage, Moriyama is sent the proofs of the new book. He looks crestfallen, saying that this is not what he wanted at all. And yet we are not really told what he wants. As often happens, we observe his creations over his shoulder, gaining an inkling of what he is creating, without really experiencing what makes it special.
Much more satisfying are the shots showing Moriyama at work. He wanders through the streets of Tokyo, a small camera in his hand. Every so often, he raises the camera and takes a picture. He doesn’t change the focus. At best he occasionally moves the camera nearer towards or further from the subject – sometimes people, but mainly just the local architecture. Once more, we only view the results from afar. They are monochrome and grainy and look spectacular.
Again, more questions are raised than are strictly necessary. The district through which Moriyama walks is bright and full of primary colours – whether this be the vivid adverts or the slightly more seedy strip bars. The shots that we see on film are usually quite different to the black and white photos that Moriyama is taking. A comparison would be very interesting, and yet I only remember one shot – of a boat on the river – that we see the 2 different visions in consecutive takes.
The film meanders through Moriyama’s life, and we do see that some of his later collections do use vivid colour. These also look spectacular, and I would have appreciated hearing either Moriyama or by the film’s director explain the different techniques used, and the development of Moriyama’s style. But director Gen Iwama remains silent throughout, speaking only through a series of title cards which appear at regular intervals, as if this were a silent film.
Iwama tries to inject some tension into the film by counting down to the Paris Photo. After the opening scenes, he goes back the best part of a year to show Moriyama and his publisher preparing for the exhibition. Every so often another title card appears, saying 200 days to go, 100 days to go, and so on, to the background of tense, percussive music. We see stressed business meetings where people frantically discuss whether everything will be ready on time.
The trouble is that this process of preparing for the book launch is the least interesting aspect of Moriyama’s work. He is obviously an intelligent man with interesting ideas about his work. As we see him shamble around town with a rain coat and a t-shirt saying “Andy Warhol” or “On the Road”, he looks like the Columbo of photography, someone who’s opinion would be really interesting to hear. And we do occasionally hear from him – just rarely about his art.
There are exceptions, such as when he talks about his almost accidental shift from analogue to digital format, when the paper and technologies that he used to use became gradually unavailable. Whereas other people in the film talk in incessant (and, let’s not mince words, boring) detail about different materials, Moriyama’s attitude to his work appears to be much more pragmatic: find a camera, find a subject, take a picture and just move on.
Moriyama is also less precious about his subjects than other photographers who claim to aspire towards high art. He takes pictures of the people and the places that he knows, finding beauty in the ordinary, There may well be no method behind this madness. Moriyama may just pick up a camera every day and go through his neighbourhood. But this stands in such contrast to the endless business talk in other parts of the film that it made me want to hear it more.
Daido Moriyama was 80 when this film was made. He is now 84. He is not afraid to reference high art, explaining that the big difference between his work and that of his old friend and fellow-photographer Takuma Nakahira is that Nakahiro preferred Godard and he Fellini. But he makes such statements in such a down-to-earth manner and with such a humility that you at no sense feel that he is using cultural references to obfuscate meaning.
It is a shame that this film is not more like its subject. Maybe it would have brought little to explain works of art who are what they are and need no explanation. In this case, though, it would have been nice to see more of his photographs and less of people talking about them. This was a largely forgettable film which at the same time had me wanting to know much more about its exceptional subject.
CinePhil 