An air of heartbreak and unfulfilled romanticism pervades Mikio Naruse’s Floating Clouds, a movie that presents life as a series of cascading letdowns and disappointments. Based on a novel by Fumiko Hayashi, the film, released in 1955, begins in “early winter 1946,” just after World War II has ended. Yukiko (Hideko Takamine) is repatriated to Tokyo from French Indochina, where she worked alongside executives in the Forestry Ministry of Japan, including Tomioka (Masayuki Mori), with whom she’s had an affair. Throughout the film, Yukiko and Tomioka regularly cross paths as the years stretch on since their wartime fling, despite the fact that Tomioka is often resistant to Yukiko for one reason — such as his fealty to his wife — or another — such as a new mistress or economic woes. Both are plagued by a lack of purpose and sense of despair, frequently half-joking about their death and suicide. But they can’t seem to shake one another, and find themselves repeatedly drawn back into each other’s lives.
Structured around this anti-couple’s periodic visitations over a seemingly long but undefined amount of time, Floating Clouds captures a sense of time passing with subtlety and elegance. Besides the opening title card, we aren’t given any direct information about when we’re picking up the story again besides hints dispelled in conversations. There aren’t ham-fisted makeup choices to clue us into their aging (though Tomioka does sport an eyepatch at one interval); rather, Naruse is able to express the upsetting extent to which time is eroding both of these peoples’ spiritual cores merely through small stylistic modulations and via incredible, touching work from Takamine and Mori. In one scene, Tomioka opines that he’s “lost everything, even [his] soul” and while the sentiment is in line with the character’s self-pitying miserabilism, it also rings true to the soul-suck that the post-war conditions of Japan have wrought, as well as the hard luck these characters cyclically fall upon.
The editing by Eiji Ooi also contributes to its expert and devastating view of time’s passage, in addition to expressing the embittered, pithily cynical perspectives of the characters. Scenes will end, not exactly abruptly, but sooner than you’d think, while leaving some questions unanswered, as if the film’s various sequences are but snapshots of memories that will soon be forgotten. What’s remembered and what isn’t is very much of concern to the narrative and to the lead characters, who discuss with heavy-hearted resolve the futility of luxuriating in recollections of feelings of the past. The film brutally identifies how difficult it is to reignite the passion these people once had, locating a more general truth about the ephemeral nature of love and its tendency to go as quickly as it came.
Perhaps even more fascinating is the complexity of the character portrayals in Floating Clouds. As the film wears on, one is inclined to deem Yukiko’s unceasing infatuation with Tomioka as a bit of a misogynist stereotype of a woman as a needy, dependent person thinking with her emotions first — which is to say, why would she keep returning to someone who has treated her so callously? Furthermore, the film’s tragic end could be read as a concession to an old-fashioned view of women’s inherent fragility. But upon further inspection, Floating Clouds’ depictions are much knottier than these cursory reads. As an insightful post at the blog A Mikio Naruse Companion describes, “the initial suggestion that the central relationship is a story of victim and victimizer feels less adequate as the years wear on.” Yukiko is very aware of Tomioka’s shortcomings and lecherous qualities and frequently (even on — spoilers ahead — her death bed) throws it back in his face. Notable and refreshing too is a moment earlier in the film where the heroine matter-of-factly reminds a sexual abuser of his crimes in no uncertain terms. It turns out, there are much less easily explained reasons why these two embattled souls keep returning to one another—depths that only future viewings and closer reads can unpack.
Floating Clouds arrived in the mid-to-late period of a truly staggering 89-film career from Naruse. This critic is only familiar with a handful of the director’s titles, but this particular work is known as a central achievement in the Japanese Golden Age filmmaker’s catalog and it lives up to its reputation. It is what one might describe as a “huge bummer” that is nonetheless entirely captivating. Its greyscale imagery, particularly some scenes that take place right at dusk, seems to draw on the idea of the dwindling luster that powers the movie — in the wake of a terrible war and in the distended aftermath of a misbegotten romance, life itself seems to be slowly draining off the screen.
The post Rediscover: Floating Clouds appeared first on Spectrum Culture.