| Dan Howard |
Dogra Magra plays at the Trylon Cinema on Saturday, June 7th and Tuesday, June 10th, as part of Bleak Week. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
When was the last time you had a really messed up dream? Did you want to just shake it off and forget the dream, or did it pique your curiosity? In the case of both avant-garde and bleak storytelling, it’s speculated that those who are drawn towards the two mediums approach them with an open-mindedness and a desire for cathartic release. The kind of deep, thought-provoking, emotional tidal waves that hits us like a ton of bricks and provide a sense of metamorphosis and revelation inside the unresolved bitterness of films like Come and See or Persona. We’re craving something more than the sunshine and rainbows happy ending and the typical formulas and plots that studios keep putting out into the multiplexes. From what I’ve observed in his work, Matsumoto is exactly the type of person who not only craves these stories but craves them so much that that’s what he’s drawn to creating. It’s what seems to make him tick. When I decided to dig deeper, I found it surprising that there was so little to be found of Toshio Matsumoto’s childhood or his life prior to being a filmmaker. With only so much known about his personal life, I’d like to analyze his body of work, consisting of four feature films and a number of abstract shorts, so that we may gain better insight into his mind.
In 2023, I came across a Japanese film that I hadn’t heard of before, Funeral Parade of Roses (1969), being shown at Alamo Drafthouse. The plot sounded fascinating, so I set out on a cold February night for a rare opportunity to see it on the big screen. I hadn’t realized that it was a loose adaptation of Oedipus Rex and I ended up leaving filled with dread, unease, ringing ears (because the speakers were blaring loud half of the time), and thinking to myself, “What the hell did I just see?” That was my introduction to Toshio Matsumoto’s work. Fast forward two years later, an opportunity comes across to write about him. Similar to Funeral Parade of Roses, I had never seen nor heard of Dogra Magra, but based on the prior film, I had a feeling I’d be in for another depressing tale. However, despite the film’s grim nature, I ended up loving it. Which got me to thinking, “What draws certain filmmakers towards these bleak stories? What draws Toshio Matsumoto to them?”
In Dogra Magra, a man, who’s told his name is Ichirô Kure (Yôji Matsuda), wakes up in a psych ward with no indication of how he came to be there, and must turn to the help of the professor in charge of the institution. Once he learns of Ichirô killing his wife the day before their wedding, the young man becomes his own detective as Professor Wakabayashi (Hideo Murota) guides him to people, places, and things that could potentially lead to his memories returning to him. The young man is determined to prove that he is not Ichirô and sets out to find the truth about Ichirô, himself, and this supposed Inherited Psychological Condition that led to the murder of Ichirô’s beloved.
Dogra Magra is undoubtedly one of the great overlooked masterworks of feel-bad cinema and a staple in Toshio Matusmoto’s filmography. To get a better understanding of what led Matsumoto to Dogra, it’s only appropriate to adhere to Matsumoto’s avant-garde style and work backwards. The actual novel of Dogra Magra itself is a heavily complex structure and Matsumoto used this to his advantage, filling the screen with his signature avant-garde style. A fetus floating in a womb. The words “O fetus, O fetus. Why do you undulate? Is it the knowing of your mother’s heart that fills you with dread?” are displayed as the shot’s centerfold. A faint image of a woman being strangled leads to a view of the ceiling of a dirty hospital room. Classic Toshio. However, Yumeno Kyūsaku’s novel was also filled with philosophical and psychological aspects that were ultimately reduced in the film. By foregoing the novel’s layered complexities in favor of a more accessible, easier-to-follow adaptation, one wonders if it is a disservice to the young man’s story. How he ultimately views whether Professor Wakabayashi’s methods are of help or manipulative. Can he even trust his own thoughts without Wakabayashi’s guidance?
In every one of Matsumoto’s feature works, the stories involve a death via some degree of suicide or homicide, like with Ichirô killing his wife. Matsumoto was fearless when tackling subjects that Japanese culture had, at the time, considered taboo. With the violent, staggering film Demons (1971), he tells the tale of a disgraced samurai seeking bloody revenge against a geisha for robbing him. Matsumoto had begun his bold approach to cinema just two years prior with his first and most famous feature, Funeral Parade of Roses, which tackles multiple taboo subjects. Matsumoto had taken one of the biggest risks of the time by telling a story set amongst the underground queer / trans community in 1960s Japan, following a trans girl named Eddie after she kills her mother and… As an adaptation of Oedipus Rex, it’s easy to guess how it ends.
Although Funeral Parade of Roses and Demons are regarded as masterpieces today, they were met with mixed reactions upon release. Although, when his third feature, The War of the 16 Year Olds, was released in 1973, its critical and commercial failure seemingly led Matsumoto to largely receding from the public eye to become a professor and Dean of Arts at the Kyoto University of Art and Design and going back to directing more avant-garde shorts. While Matsumoto’s techniques of challenging traditional narrative forms had worked in his previous two films, this story of a drifter befriending a girl in a small town haunted by its WWII past lacked coherence in tone and was a structural mess. Matsumoto did not return to feature film work until around 1987 when he adapted Dogra Magra for his final major work.
When you hold his three feature films next to each other, you begin to sense a recurring theme around death alongside his protagonists’ journeys of self-discovery and self-destruction in their identities within a dreading, dream-like atmosphere. Themes that are ever-present in Dogra. But why write these types of characters? Did Matsumoto merely observe the queer culture that he noticed popping up around Tokyo or was he himself a gay man? Did he simply think, “there aren’t enough brutal samurai revenge pictures out there?” Did he himself have ghosts from WWII? Was being wrongfully locked in an insane asylum ever cross his mind? There aren’t many dots to connect with so little to go on. I’d like to think perhaps he sympathized with the young man waking up in a mental hospital, putting himself in the shoes of someone suddenly being told they committed such horrible acts of violence, and continuing to be fascinated by what would drive a person to that madness. Or maybe Matsumoto was just seeking a challenge.
While some of the short films do contain the familiar darker undertones of his features, I found they didn’t quite reach that same level of sinister as Roses or Dogra. Shorts like Mona Lisa and Extasis act as image manipulations of still portraits whereas the varied imagery in films like Phantom and For the Damaged Right Eye—which serves as a spiritual precursor for Roses—display deeper messages weaved within, largely pertaining to societal living and spirituality while also maintaining a dark undertone with the musical score choices. It’s evident that Matsumoto had his own desire for a cathartic release and wanted a philosophical understanding of every aspect of humanity, exploring the darkest depths to which people may fall and simultaneously exploring themes of identity and even a loss of humanity amongst his protagonists.
At the end of the day, Toshio Matsumoto is as much a spectator as the rest of us, seeking answers to his questions through art as much as he is attempting to convey any number of answers to our own. I get the feeling that Matsumoto ultimately did see the inherent good in humanity but wanted to tread unfamiliar waters. With great beauty can also come great pain. Maybe that’s what he ultimately hoped for his protagonist who suddenly found himself in an insane asylum. Perhaps he himself reached an understanding with the unknown and with the somber throughout his 85 years of life on this Earth. What a legacy and body of work to leave behind as a result.
Edited by Finn Odum