AI NO BOREI (EMPIRE OF PASSION)
Japan, 1978, 104 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Nagisi Oshima.
A companion film to Nagisa Oshima’s film In the Realm of the Senses. The former was a celebrated film about the claustrophobic world of passion with man and woman first in love then destroying one another by their passion. It also created much discussion with its explicit sexual scenes and the need or lack of need for censorship.
These questions do not pertain specifically to 'Empire of Passion'. Rather the film is in the tradition of the intense Japanese films showing passionate relationships but within a historical setting and with a supernatural background, especially the presence of spirits and ghosts. A comparison could be Onibaba, (The Hole) by Shindo. The 'Empire of Passion' is beautiful to look at in its presentation of Japan in the late 19th century. The film is theatrical and stylised in its presentation of relationships and while exploring human beings also has much to offer on Japanese society, law, justice and punishment.
1. The significance of the title and its reference to the main characters? The reference to Oshima’s other work? Expectations of content, theme. treatment? Comparisons?
2. The Japanese qualities of the film? Production. atmosphere? The use of colour. location photography, re-creation of the period? The score?
3. Audience response to the melodramatic aspects of the film? The basic human situation, the background of the supernatural, dreams and ghosts haunting, crime and punishment?
4. The establishing of the time and place, the atmosphere, the symbolism? The husband and the wheels of the cart and the recurring visual image? The running man? The isolation of the village? The isolated lives of people? The possibility of passion, of crime, of lack of detection, of swift punishment and execution?
5. The film's presentation of the detail of village life, the people themselves and their day to day life, their work, markets, dances, families, gossip etc.? How important was this context for highlighting the central characters and their passion?
6. The portrait of the husband and wife? The woman of forty and her beauty? Her consciousness of this and her age, her love for her child? Her drunken husband and her reaction to him? The gap between them and
The film's presentation of the contrast of their characters and styles?
7. The presence of Toyo? The narrative comment about him? His presence in the village? People's attitude towards him? A young man, drinking, idle? His declaration of passion? The dance, the seduction? The visual presentation of the passion and its credibility especially in the emphasis of the age difference?
8. The development of the plan for murder? The initiative of both? The motives for the murder? The visual presentation of the death and Its cold-blooded aspects? Audience compassion for the murdered husband? The effect on each of them as they murdered the husband, disposed of The body, the consequences? The distance from one another, the gossip, The hidden moments of passion? Their changed lives?
9. The quality of their love ? how much passion, how much shared experience? Their wanting to stop rumours? The inevitability of clashes between them? Concern about the body and the effect of time passing on them?
10. The films focus on the well, the body, the discovery and the lifting of the body?
11. The background of the supernatural, the possibility of ghosts And spirits? Haunting the wife, the villagers? Terror, suspicions?
12. The motives and alibi? The police and their investigations? People's suspicions on the absence of the husband? The work of the police? The second crime and its leading to the discovery?
13. The violent presentation of the punishment of wife and lover? The beatings for confessions? The mutual confessions? Being united in passion and death?
14. A portrait of a common experience? As symbolized within this society. netting. historical time and place? The film's drawing out of the consequences of such passion? The didactic aspects of the film?
