The Face Knife

As a self-appointed critic, it is my duty to drain the fun out of everything and attempt to provide a reason why what you’re enjoying is not simply amusement but a more important and altogether cogent statement about Art and Life.

Then I’m confronted by something like Princess Racoon, which is altogether impossible to exhaust. 82 year old Japanese director Seijan Suzuki has taken a simple fairy tale story of a love that should not be and collaged it with a grab bag of visual and audio source materials, creating a mix of formalisms that would be annoying if it weren’t so exhilarating.

The forbidden love is between a “Tanuki” Princess, a mischievous forest demon who can assume bat, racoon-esque, and human form, and your standard young fairy-tale human prince, who has been banished by his father, master of Castle Grace, for threatening to usurp his place as “the fairest of them all.”

So far, this sounds like it could be the plot for a standard Hollywood CGI special effects blockbuster, but instead of using the latest cinematic technology to create a “realistic” version of what a fantastic world should be like, Suzuki uses what are more less ancient methods derived from theater to create the cinematic space. The horizon is delimited by backdrops that are reminiscent of wood-block prints, or simple composite shots. For instance, Castle Grace is a bare stage set with a large Gate, a crater, a baroque-looking oil painting, a purple sky background, and, lest I forget, human beings as candelabras and other furniture (the Master’s favorite way of torturing those who have disobeyed him - including his parents).

Most of the action itself takes place in similarly minimalist ways - combat consists of ritual exchanges of blows (and Suzuki takes this formalism to the last degree, culminating a duel to the death in a rock, paper, scissors contest, the most arch indication of the method to Suzuki’s madness).

I cannot help but think of Sergei Eisenstein’s thoughts on Kabuki theater in Film Form. Granted, I wouldn’t know Kabuki from Tanuki, and I have no idea if Eisenstein’s thoughts were actually correct, but his description of the conventions of Kabuki in the forms of gestures, costume, background and sound, and how they are all treated equally as units of theater, were instrumental in constructing his program for the Sound Film. In one example Eisenstein gives, long-distance travel is indicated on stage first through a movement toward the front of the stage, then a change in a folding screen backdrop to denote perspective, a clothe obscuring that screen to denote that the starting place had vanished, and finally, samisen music of a certain rhythm.

However, to me, rather than the montage techniques for which Eisenstein was justly famous, this type of formalism has the opposite effect of the time and space distorting effects of montage. Montage is discontinuous - in Princess Racoon, even though the scene may change, it’s still linked to the same (magical) world. Tanuki Palace opens it’s doors to several different parts of the world, all at once. It is a nexus of cinematic continuity - the camera can track out of Tanuki palace and onto the beach, into the forest, up to the forbidden mountain.

Going back to the fight scenes again, these are also examples of a preference for all-overness rather than montage. In the fights (as well as the many dance sequences) , there is a prescribed area that the actors move through - their motions render depth of field visible to the viewer, and seem all that more exciting and ‘real’ for it - even though they’re so formalized. Contrast to the standard “fight scene” of contemporary film - the constant cuts, the close ups of hand and claw in a dizzying spectacle that disorients but doesn’t excite. The editing used in those scenes I would say is completely uncinematic, which is sad because human combat is such a great subject for film, to show off the way the lens captures reality. In the only other Suzuki film I’ve seen, Youth of the Beast, he uses depth photography very effectively, in static compositions as well as action.

This is not to say that Princess Racoon is a dry exercise in experimental cinema. In fact, it’s uproarious, fun, and silly, with a magic bowl of eggnog, a Ninja named Ostrich and many, many songs in many, many styles. It’s not necessary to think about technique and what it might mean when viewing the film, but it gives me a little to talk about.

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Filmbrain, where I was tipped off to the existence of this film, has a great review today, much better than mine at getting across the fun of the film.

Anyone have any ideas for illustrations? I’m sort of at a loss…. Frog of Paradise?

Okay, what’s the deal with the explicit Christianity of the denizens of Castle Grace? Ideas?
I’m going to continue to edit this today, and maybe add a cartoon.