I can't stop thinking about the scene where the detective stops Matsuoka outside the school and, as they're leaving, offhandedly asks how we cut his hand and Matsuoka replies, "chopping vegetables" while making the stabbing motion.
I haven’t been able to see Chime yet, but I watched Cure again recently to try to get a handle on it. Since Franz Mesmer’s work plays a central role in the film, I read about his method of curing ailments by potentiating a force that he believed all humans contain. I think that Kurosawa’s take on the “Cure” is that when we reach the zero point of capitalism, we embrace the hollowness of the self improvement philosophies that we are taught to define ourselves by. Mamiya is after all, just the missionary to “propagate the ceremony.”
I’m not sure if you like Thomas Ligotti, but there is a lot of overlap in his thematic concerns with Kurosawa’s. Two of my favorite of his stories are “Dream of a Manikin” and “The Town Manager”. “Manikin” involves the dissolution of the self, as a psychiatrist uncovers uncomfortable evidence that what he views as his personality is only a contrivance. “The Town Manager” is about the degradation of a town by predatory capitalism. Ligotti is also a lifelong resident of Detroit, and shares Kurosawa’s fascination with spaces that are “human-built yet hostile to humanity.”
I’m actually in the midst of reading Ligotti for the first time (I’m about 100 pages into Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe), and I’m really liking it.
That’s an interesting connection. The key distinction I see, based on my initial impressions of Ligotti, is that Ligotti tracks that dissolution of the self as a subjective experience as it’s happening. Kurosawa, rather, comes in at a point after this process has taken place and afflicted an entire society. He also typically presents things dispassionately, from a distance; subjectivity has necessarily been eradicated along with the self.
Those are great collections! I see your point about the distance Kurosawa presents, indicating that this dissolution is already firmly entrenched in society. It’s as if the camera is infected with the same sense of dispassion as the characters.
I can't stop thinking about the scene where the detective stops Matsuoka outside the school and, as they're leaving, offhandedly asks how we cut his hand and Matsuoka replies, "chopping vegetables" while making the stabbing motion.
Thanks for this post!
I haven’t been able to see Chime yet, but I watched Cure again recently to try to get a handle on it. Since Franz Mesmer’s work plays a central role in the film, I read about his method of curing ailments by potentiating a force that he believed all humans contain. I think that Kurosawa’s take on the “Cure” is that when we reach the zero point of capitalism, we embrace the hollowness of the self improvement philosophies that we are taught to define ourselves by. Mamiya is after all, just the missionary to “propagate the ceremony.”
I’m not sure if you like Thomas Ligotti, but there is a lot of overlap in his thematic concerns with Kurosawa’s. Two of my favorite of his stories are “Dream of a Manikin” and “The Town Manager”. “Manikin” involves the dissolution of the self, as a psychiatrist uncovers uncomfortable evidence that what he views as his personality is only a contrivance. “The Town Manager” is about the degradation of a town by predatory capitalism. Ligotti is also a lifelong resident of Detroit, and shares Kurosawa’s fascination with spaces that are “human-built yet hostile to humanity.”
I’m actually in the midst of reading Ligotti for the first time (I’m about 100 pages into Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe), and I’m really liking it.
That’s an interesting connection. The key distinction I see, based on my initial impressions of Ligotti, is that Ligotti tracks that dissolution of the self as a subjective experience as it’s happening. Kurosawa, rather, comes in at a point after this process has taken place and afflicted an entire society. He also typically presents things dispassionately, from a distance; subjectivity has necessarily been eradicated along with the self.
Those are great collections! I see your point about the distance Kurosawa presents, indicating that this dissolution is already firmly entrenched in society. It’s as if the camera is infected with the same sense of dispassion as the characters.