Impure Cinema: An Interview with Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Preview)
by Eugene Kwon

The discourse of death has always haunted cinema. But its state of crisis seems especially acute nowadays with the juggernaut dominance of streaming platforms and declining numbers of moviegoers. This global change in the cinema has certainly affected how movies are talked about in Japan which, despite its long and phenomenal film and media history, has certainly seen better days. It is then somewhat of a marvelous surprise that one of the world’s most important filmmakers has come out of Japan: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. His success with Drive My Car at the Academy Awards in 2022—when it was nominated for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film (the first Japanese film to be so honored) and won the Oscar for Best International Film—catapulted him into the international spotlight. It is remarkable that Hamaguchi’s slow ascendance comes at a time that is far from auspicious for the Japanese film industry. Many key film directors, including Hirokazu Kore-eda and Koji Fukada, have criticized and lamented systematic problems, including low compensation for directors and the lack of preventative measures for sexual harassment. Aaron Gerow rightly points out in Motoko Rich's New York Times article (“Drive My Car’s Oscar is a Slow-Burn Return for Japan’s Cinema,” March 28, 2022) that Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winning film may actually be an “argument against the Japanese film industry” since it lies far outside its purviews in terms of its production process and its box-office success. Far from a representative figure, Hamaguchi represents a style of filmmaking that is being threatened in Japan with no systematic support to encourage young filmmakers. With such local and global circumstances facing Hamaguchi, it is precisely at this stage in his career that I decided to meet with him and listen to what he had to say. 

Reading his writings and watching all of his films, I was immediately taken by the simple fact that Hamaguchi has been making films steadily for the past two decades. His trajectory defies any romanticized notion of the auteur. As a student at Tokyo University, he was initiated into cinema by the surrounding cinephile culture and began to develop a passion for the films of John Cassavetes whom he wrote about in his 2003 graduation thesis, “Space and Time in John Cassavetes.” It clearly evinces the deep influence of Shigehiko Hasumi, a French literature scholar and film critic, as well as Hamaguchi’s immersion in film theory at the time (his thesis highlights a passage, for example, about frontality in cinema from David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson’s 1998 textbook, The Classical Hollywood Cinema).

It was around this time that he decided to venture into filmmaking. Early short and feature films, including Like Nothing Happened (2002), Solaris (2007), and Passion (2008), reflect his interest in the fickleness of relationships à la French New Wave auteurs like Éric Rohmer. An assignment project from Kiyoshi Kurosawa at Tokyo University of the Arts, Hamaguchi’s Solaris forgoes the metaphysics of Tarkovsky’s 1972 film and the charged romance of Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 version. Instead, it focuses on shifting desires and relationships that pivot around the female character of Moriya Mariko (Maeda Ayaka), the spectral creation of the mysterious planet Solaris. His next film, Passion, continues to explores the same theme. With the films of Cassavetes and Rohmer as its guiding influences, it follows a group of young people living in Yokohama as their romantic relationships become increasingly entangled. This early film, along with Solaris, pays attention to the ways in which we all dissemble—and reveal ourselves—in our everyday communication with one another.

It perhaps comes as no surprise that Hamaguchi has ventured into documentary with his conviction in the camera’s uncanny power to reveal the innermost state of actors. With Sakai Kô, Hamaguchi made a trilogy of documentaries (The Sound of Waves series, aka the Tohoku Trilogy), which features interviews with the survivors of the 2011 tsunami. In these films, we see Hamaguchi and Sakai directly talking to the interview subjects, tête-à- tête. As he describes in his 2015 book Acting in Front of the Camera (not yet available in English)—a work, like Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematograph, destined to become an inspirational text for future filmmakers, critics, and scholars—those films mark a transitional point in his career, when he gained more confidence in positioning the camera before his subjects to capture their presence. With this newly gained confidence, he directly confronted the place of performance and the role of communication in ordinary life with his ambitious follow-ups, Intimacies (2012) and Happy Hour (2015). Based on an acting workshop that Hamaguchi led, Intimacies, a two-part, 255-minute hybrid docufiction epic about the staging of the eponymous play, zones in on the crafting of gestures. More than anything else, the film is about the process of artmaking, something that Hamaguchi will return to in Drive My Car with its staging of Uncle Vanya.

Without a doubt, Happy Hour is his most singular and devastating work. “Not knowing about Happy Hour amounts to nothing more than a confession of one’s shameless ignorance of Japan’s modern society,” declares Hasumi. It follows the friendship of four women who live in Kobe, all played by nonprofessional actors. The film explores the nature of friendship and the question of who speaks for the other in the most unaffected, unflinching manner. In both Intimacies and Happy Hour, there are no declarative statements, dragging temporality, or sweeping visual metaphors, all oft-used gestures and strategies of the so-called contemporary art cinema (Bresson once said, “Art films, the ones most devoid of art”). As in Cassavetes’s cinema, acting sheds its façade. The camera becomes an X-ray of the soul, pulling up the unconscious from underground, exposing it bare naked in the unbearable light of the real. It is with this unlocking of the camera’s power that Hamaguchi makes his later acclaimed films, including Asako I & II (2018), Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021), and Drive My Car (2021), in which coincidences, missed opportunities, and abrupt twists of fate become recurring motifs.

Two figures have made an indelible impression on Hamaguchi—Kiyoshi Kurosawa and, of course, Shiguéhiko Hasumi. Kurosawa (Cure, 1997, and Wife of a Spy, 2020) mentored him during his student years, and Hamaguchi makes it clear that he learned many of his insights about cinema from him. Hasumi, although largely unknown in the West, has had a deep impact on film culture in Japan (his influential 1983 book on Ozu Yasujiro is being translated by Ryan Cook). A scholar of French literature, a novelist, and an ardent cinephile, Hasumi may be Japan’s answer to André Bazin in his focus on auteurs and their personal visions. Hasumi’s lectures and seminars, whose style and philosophy are influenced by French critical theory, have become the stuff of legend among cinephiles and Japanese film directors from the 1980s onward. His status as an arbiter of taste (a Japanese filmmaker told me, “Young filmmakers feel honored to be criticized by him”) and his polarizing style (“It would have been better if cinema had never been born,” he wrote disparagingly about Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life) have garnered both followers and critics. Regardless of this mixed reception, it is remarkable that a film critic has had such a seismic impact on a country’s film culture, with filmmakers such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Shinji Aoyama, Takeshi Kitano, and, of course, Hamaguchi having all paid tribute to Hasumi.

An interview is a form of documentary. Taking Hamaguchi’s cinematic approach to heart, my close friend and assistant, Matsumoto Mai, became the “camera” while I faced Hamaguchi tête-à-tête. The conversation took place on a summer morning at a relaxed lounge on the thirty-third floor of a Shibuya building. With most of his films after Asako I & II already covered by many English-language journals, I set out to conduct an in-depth interview that touches upon his films that remain obscure in America and elsewhere in the world. What follows are those portions deleted from the interview that appears in the Fall 2023 issue of Cineaste. The interview was conducted in Japanese and translated into English by Eugene Kwon.—Eugene Kwon 

Cineaste: Would you tell me about your early efforts with film? What were you trying to achieve?

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi: During my twenties, I aimed to create a certain block of time and space. With Cassavetes’s films, I was fascinated by how fragmented cuts come together to form a strong and continuous sense of time and space, something that I talk about in my thesis. I was interested in how emotions are portrayed in his films. Characters suddenly behave or speak in a way that contradicts their previous actions and words. If you depict them in a conventional manner, they become contradictory characters. But with a strong sense of continuous time and space, these contradictory characters become very compelling for viewers. Another important point for me was how to arrange the gazes of characters in my films. I was really preoccupied with these things in my twenties.

Cineaste: You spent one year at Harvard’s Reischauer Center as a visiting filmmaker. Did you have any meaningful interaction with other filmmakers there? 

Hamaguchi: I lived in Iran from the ages of three to five due to my parents’ job. Thereafter, I lived in Japan. I moved around a lot when I was a kid. It was my first time going to America during my years at the Reischauer Center at Harvard. I knew that Lucien Castaing-Taylor was at Harvard. I saw his Leviathan [2012] and was quite interested, but unfortunately I was never able to meet him personally. I had frequent interaction with an Argentinian filmmaker, Matías Piñeiro, who was teaching at Boston’s MassArt. Both of us watched each others’ works and I thought that his films were great. Lav Diaz was also there, teaching through Harvard’s Radcliffe Program, but our interaction was quite minimum. 

Cineaste: Do you notice any significant differences between Japan’s and America’s film cultures? 

Hamaguchi: I do. I have a sense that Japan is a bit special. My impression is that much of cinephile culture in Japan is under the great influence of Hasumi Shigehiko, particularly his film criticism during the 1980s. Cinephiles in Japan are not merely fans who watch as many movies as they can but rather someone who strive to really grasp the visuals and the sound of each work as precisely as possible. It’s up to each individual what kind of a theory to develop from this activity, but there is this overall emphasis on seeing details within the frame and also paying close attention to sound exterior to the frame. Someone who doesn’t precisely remember the details is not considered reliable in Japan’s cinephile culture.  

This overall tendency imposes the act of “thoroughly watching” films on the viewer. And honing this capacity of “watching” is directly tied to filmmaking practice, which has really become a core element in Japan’s cinephile culture. This tendency naturally ends up nurturing filmmakers, like Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Shinji Aoyama. Honestly, I don’t feel like there really is a cinephile culture outside Japan that wrestles this much with the question of seeing details of the frame, discussing what was “seen” and what was “heard” through a film. At least, the impression that I get from talking to journalists overseas is that there is more of an emphasis on watching many films and interpreting overall narrative aspects of films and the cultural code that underlies them.  

Cineaste: Let’s move on to one your early films, The Depths (2010). Would you tell me how that came about?

Hamaguchi: I had graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts. Every year, there is a joint project between Tokyo University of the Arts (TUA) and the Korean Academy of Film. A project called The Depths by Shim Yoon-bo, a Korean producer, was approved, and the shooting was going to take place in Japan. When they were looking for a director, the students at TUA in their curriculum couldn’t do it, so TUA approached me.

The production cultures in Japan and Korea were already quite different at that time. The cinematographer, Yang Geun-young, was accustomed to a production style that involved having storyboards, and we would have discussions based on them. Even with storyboards, we couldn’t shoot exactly as we envisioned. We couldn’t find the proper locations, have the right lighting, or gather the necessary technical equipment. Instead of strictly following storyboards, we ended up adapting to whatever we found on the spot. Since Yang came all the way from Korea, we tried to align with her style, but both of us didn’t have a perfectly aligned perspective on filmmaking. As a result, we had ongoing discussions about why certain shots were chosen. While these discussions were certainly beneficial, it also meant that our production schedule was constantly running out of time. Eventually, the storyboards disappeared around the middle of the production, and the number of shots and camera positions decreased.

Cineaste: Stylistically, there are many shots that stand out in The Depths. For instance, the shot of Ryu from above while it’s raining, and the shot of the flight taking off toward the end. Such shots and camera movements are quite rare in your filmography. Were they your own ideas?

Hamaguchi: Yes. But it was also the result of conversations between me, Yang, and the producer [Shim Yoon-bo]. At first, I couldn’t fully understand the plot that the producer presented. I didn’t know how to approach it. I wrote the script based on the given conditions, but I think the Korean staff members weren’t completely satisfied with it. Those shots that you mention were conceived for telling a kind of story which I wasn’t really used to. The actors, however, really gave their all. They believed in something that I myself couldn’t believe in, and that alone made it work. And that’s why I could believe in the film.

Cineaste: I’d like to ask you about Korean cinema. Having filmed The Depths with Korean actors and staff, what are your thoughts on the difference between the two countries’ production cultures? 

Hamaguchi: I’m not very familiar with it, but at that time I felt that the scale of production was quite different. I sensed that the Korean staff members were disappointed by the scale in Japan. Tokyo University of the Arts had its roots in the mini-theater culture with Horikoshi Kenzo, who established Euro Space [a famous art-house film venue in Tokyo], as a central figure. The university aimed to merge the mini-theater and art-house style with the commercial film industry in Japan without losing their essence. On the other hand, the Korean Film Academy clearly models itself after Hollywood. It’s trying to make a Korean version of American production style. The perspectives of the two countries are completely different, and I’m not sure which approach is better.

Cineaste: I want to hear more from you about your thoughts on the relationship between theory and practice. Has your interest in and familiarity with film criticism and theory helped you as a film director? 

Hamaguchi: Quite honestly, I don’t really think there is much of a relationship between theory/criticism and the actual act of filmmaking, at least within the extent of my own filmmaking. Theory in particularly is usually generalized, and it’s really hard to apply such a generalized theory on film sets, which are quite distinct. It’s a bit too standardized so it can’t really be used on film sets. It’s the same with criticism, I think. Even if you’ve read it, you wouldn’t consciously use it in producing a film. Really good film criticism captures something that lies at the unconscious level for filmmakers. You can call it a certain cultural code, or perhaps some kind of a pattern that repeats itself on an unconscious level. The more excellent the criticism is, the more it captures one aspect of reality that makes the film come into being, but it’s not universally applicable. 

On the other hand, “words” themselves, are important for the creative process since filmmaking is a collaborative effort. It’s absolutely necessary to convey and express through concrete language. Of course, a film director might be under the influence of film criticism when making a film, but it’s more about concrete actions, like placing the camera here and adjusting the height of the camera. By watching movies, we develop criteria for what we find desirable for ourselves. Simply having those criteria within our bodies, however, doesn’t impact the filmmaking process. That’s why we need to rearticulate them via language properly.

Take, for instance, the 180-degree imaginary line that’s often mentioned in film shooting [in which the camera should stay on one side of an imaginary line between characters to maintain visual consistency]. In theory, we know what this is. Even in practice, it’s really something to be aware of. But sometimes, there are situations where it may be acceptable or even desirable to cross the line. And for such a situation, we must have tactful language on film set. As film directors, we can’t work based solely on implicit knowledge that they used in the old days. Now in Japan, film crews gather only for a short period and disperse afterward. We can’t communicate and work with the staff and cast without saying a word, assuming that it will be understood. Each time we get into production, it’s like starting from scratch, so we must share to some extent through language. That’s something that I try to keep in mind. I think about how to better convey the direction I want to take. Of course, there are times when my communication is refused. But nonetheless, I always think about the intent that I want to convey, whatever the outcome.  

Cineaste: Hasumi Shigehiko appears in many of your writings, including your graduation thesis and your contribution to a volume that commemorates his scholarship and criticism. What do you take away from his ideas?

Hamaguchi: What really influenced me during my twenties was Hasumi’s 1983 book Director Ozu Yasujiro. With Hasumi’s writings, it’s tough to draw a clear line, even for Japanese people, on what parts we should literally embrace because it was written strategically against the interpretations of Ozu at that time. I think it’s a challenge for everything to be understood overseas. But the essence of his argument is truly simple. Hasumi asks us: “Are you observing closely and listening carefully before writing about film?” Otherwise, the film would end up being used to reinforce self-narratives or theories. There’s a strong affinity between Hasumi’s central idea and filmmakers on set. On set, if something is not captured visually, the fictional world being created may not be established. Or if a certain sound is not heard, a specific emotion may not be achieved. It demands an utmost sensitivity to seeing and listening. We’re not part of the generation that directly took Hasumi’s lectures [at various institutions, including Rikkyo University]—which certainly had as much of an impact as his writings—but it’s quite famous that his students were asked what they saw during a screening, with Hasumi constantly pointing out how much they missed when watching a film. People who really see what is in front of them are few and far between. I think the realization that one can miss so much in watching a movie is an essential process.

Cineaste: Along with Cassavetes, Robert Bresson is a crucial film director for you. Would you tell me about his importance to you as a film director?

Hamaguchi: I don’t think I fully understand the realm that Robert Bresson reached throughout his lifetime. As Bresson himself admitted, there were significant changes throughout his career. For cinephiles, every one of his films is remarkable from beginning to end. Bresson’s work, whether it’s his conscious exploration of music, sound, or his collaborative efforts with his actors he calls “models,” is consistently exceptional and surpasses standards at every stage of his career. It’s not just Bresson’s use of models but also the evolution that he undergoes throughout his career that I find inspiring.

Although he is certainly an influence, I have no intention of imitating his unique methods. For me, it’s not so much about the visual but about voices. Bresson heard an immense amount of information in voices. They may appear very flat, especially the delivery of the models, to the point where some people say Bresson treated his models like dolls. Within those Bressonian models, however, there are lively variations in voice. As time passes, I become increasingly convinced that Bresson was attuned to those nuances. I want to have that kind of ear myself. 

Cineaste: You have deep appreciation for Korean directors like Hong Sang-soo and Bong Joon-ho. It’s not difficult to see why you admire Hong. What particularly intrigues me is your appreciation for Bong’s meticulously calculated style. What aspects of his work do you appreciate?

Hamaguchi: The fact that Bong’s films are meticulously crafted holds inherent value. It’s not easy to make films with such precision, you know, like Parasite [2019]. And it’s the same with Memories of Murder [2003]. It’s remarkable to me how a country that is so geographically or economically close to Japan can come up with such different films. 

In my view, it’s undeniable that Bong has achieved a scale that modern Japanese films have yet to attain. He has tremendous control over his style. While I don’t personally make big-budget films to that extent, I realized how much of a gap there is between Japanese and Korean cinemas when I saw Parasite. His films leave no room for error. Parasite portrays vertical relationships exceptionally well. It may seem overly schematic to Korean viewers especially, but I find it rather crude to criticize his film in terms of realism. I think that it’s probably good for schematization and formalization to be praised more in the context of cinema.

Japanese films may be constrained by budget, but there is more to this. There is often a sense of poverty of the frame in contemporary Japanese cinema. It’s not just about having a low budget, but a lack of knowledge, or not being able to solve difficulties on the set. There’s always something that isn’t quite right within the frame. That is rarely the case with Bong’s films, however, which is really striking.

Cineaste: I find your phrase, “poverty of the frame,” quite striking. What do you mean by this exactly?

Hamaguchi: What I mean is that the fictional being represented and the audiovisuals are not aligned. They are aligned in a way that undermines the fiction. It becomes difficult to believe in the fiction in such a case. 

Cineaste: What’s the cause behind this “poverty within the frame” in your view?

Hamaguchi: It’s somewhat inevitable. It’s not solely due to the Japanese film industry but rather a societal trend. While I don’t personally feel this strongly, it’s a world where those who need to make money from films prioritize short-term and surface-level consumption like any other commodity. In such a situation, Japanese live-action films that don’t include something that anyone can immediately feel on a sensory level gradually decline. On the other hand, Japanese animation, which can work on the audience’s senses more directly compared to cinema, gains more viewers.

It used to be the case that Japanese films did not simply serve as metaphors. They had a subtle richness carried by both the visual and sound. Even if it wasn’t explicitly stated, one could perceive what was there, and it became a sufficiently enriching experience. But the environment for perceiving and appreciating such films has become rare not only in Japan but also worldwide. To adapt to this new situation, the Japanese industry has undergone significant transformations. But unfortunately, it has reached a point where it’s quite difficult to reverse this trend. 

Cineaste: Do you think this global trend is due to digital culture? 

Hamaguchi: Absolutely, I think so. Even my own ability to concentrate has significantly decreased. It’s extremely rare for me to watch a movie at home without touching my smartphone even once. If that’s the case for a filmmaker, it’s only natural that general movie audiences can’t sit still and watch a film. Nowadays, you can watch various movies through streaming services. People can say “I watched that” regardless of whether they watched it in theaters or via streaming. The substance of the very act of “watching” is thereby gradually becoming diluted. This, in turn, makes us realize how helpful movie theaters are as a place for us to watch and listen to things.

Eugene Kwon, a doctoral candidate at Yale, is based in Tokyo and writes about East Asian cinema and media history. He has contributed to Sight and Sound, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Modern Korean Cinema.

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Cineaste, Vol. XLVIII, No. 4