I happen to have seen and written about a number of end-of-the-world and post-apocalyptic movies lately. Most of them were dystopias and/or special effects films that depicted the possible ends of the world as we know it and what would happen afterwards to the survivors. But we forgot that less than 80 years ago, humanity had a sample (in cinematic terms we could call the event a trailer) of the Apocalypse. All these were reminded to me by ‘Black Rain‘ (the Japanese title is ‘Kuroi ame‘), the movie made in 1989 by the Japanese director Shôhei Imamura, which depicts the immediate devastation caused by the first atomic bomb in history used in a super-populated area on August 6 1945 in Hiroshima and the long-term effects of the nuclear explosion on the fates of survivors exposed to radiation. It is a powerful and moving film that combines much that can be said about this traumatic event. It is a document, a manifesto, a historical analysis and a social critique about how survivors were treated in post-war Japanese society. From the perspective of the victims, what happened then in Hiroshima represented the end of the world as they had known it and the physical and mental traumas would mark the rest of their lives.
The story in the film begins on the morning of August 6, 1945 in the vicinity of Hiroshima. We are introduced to the main characters, members of an ordinary Japanese family. Shigematsu Shizuma is a clerk and boards a train to the city. His niece, Yasuko, took a day of in a nearby village to help the family move. Suddenly there is a huge explosion, the one that is called throughout the film ‘the lightning that kills’. The city is destroyed, thousands of people are burned alive instantly, others suffer terrible burns and injuries. All are irradiated. Shigematsu and his wife will be directly exposed but will survive. Yasuko will only be exposed to the black, radioactive rain. Theoretically, she would have been less exposed than the ones in the city. A jump in time five years later. The victims try to rebuild their lives, but the specter of radiation-induced diseases constantly threatens, and their presence in the disaster zone becomes a stigma that prevents them from reintegrating into society. Yasuko, despite her beauty, is unable to marry because all the suitors and their families are afraid to tie their lives with those whose fate and health were marked by the explosion, suspecting that they will fall ill or become infertile.
The scenes depicting the destruction caused by the bomb are chaotic and hallucinatory. The contrast with the apparently quiet and orderly life dominated by the ceremoniality of Japanese social and family relations is stark. Beneath appearances, however, tensions accumulate. The family lives under the terror of the disease and faces the prejudices and fears of those around them. In a neighboring family, a soldier returned from the front is dealing with the post-traumas caused by the violence he witnessed on the battlefield. Shôhei Imamura chose to shoot ‘Black Rain‘ in black and white. It’s an inspired choice derived from the content and cinematic tradition. Filmed in black-and-white were also the newsreels of 1945, and the nightmarish re-enactment of Hiroshima and its outskirts immediately after the explosion naturally integrates and reinforces the documentary value. The use of black and white further reminds the films of Yasujiro Ozu, the master of post-war Japanese cinema, whose stories are set in the same historical period. Imamura was Ozu‘s assistant during those years, but he tried and succeeded in breaking with the tradition of the mentor, having learned many of the secrets of the art from him. Most of his films look different and have themes far removed from those of Ozu‘s films. Here, however, Imamura renounces here distancing and borrows many methods from Ozu, from social criticism filtered and exposed through a family story to interior and exterior shots filmed with a static camera and in black and white. The casting is also Ozu-style, with the beautiful and angelic Yoshiko Tanaka in the role of the devoted young woman and Kazuo Kitamura in the complex and interesting role of the uncle. Some of Ozu‘s well-known films feature similar family relationships (usually between daughters and fathers).
Shôhei Imamura focused on social criticism, but we can’t help watching and interpreting ‘Black Rain‘ as an anti-war film. We are dealing with a society that tries to forget and never discusses responsibility. The neglect to the point of stigmatization of survivors is part of the same collective traumatic psychosis. News bulletins mark time in the days and in the evenings of the heroes and the passage of time for the spectators. Another war had begun, the Korea war, and politicians did not hesitate to play up the nuclear threat. Mankind seemes to have learned nothing. The film was made 40 years after the events, another 30 years have passed since then. The specter of atomic apocalypse threatens again. It’s hard not to see in this movie another warning.