Caterpillar (film)

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Movie
German title Caterpillar
Original title キ ャ タ ピ ラ ー
Country of production Japan
original language Japanese
Publishing year 2010
length 85 minutes
Rod
Director Kōji Wakamatsu
script Hisako Kurosawa ,
Masao Adachi
production Noriko Ozaki
music Mamoru Ko
camera Tomohiko Tsuji ,
Yoshihisa Tda
cut Shuichi Kakesu
occupation

Caterpillar (Japanese:キャタピラー) is a film of Japanese director Kōji Wakamatsu from the year 2010. The drama is about Lieutenant Kurokawa, who as a disabled veteran from the Chinese-Japanese War Second returns, and his wife. The company carefully follows its dealings with its husband, who no longer has any extremities. The film deals with the suffering of the war, a sense of duty and devotion to the emperor , as well as sexual violence . Caterpillar started in competition at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival . The leading actress Shinobu Terajima received the Silver Bear for her performance .

action

Lieutenant Kurokawa is fighting in the Second Sino-Japanese War and committing war crimes against the Chinese civilian population. He is seriously injured in an attack and loses both arms and legs. He also becomes dumb and deaf. When he returns to his village, Kurokawa is celebrated as a war hero. Despite his disabilities, he has sex with his wife, Shigeko Kurokawa, who is forced and violent. Ms. Kurokawa is repulsed by her husband, but she feels a duty to look after him. This corresponds to her role in Japan at the time, fulfilling her obligation to the emperor and her country. She is under the attention of relatives, friends and other residents of the village. Ms. Kurokawa's inner conflict intensifies as the film progresses. At the latest when her husband claims her portion of the strictly rationed food for himself, she realizes that he will not change towards her. The story ends with the Japanese emperor's radio address on the surrender on August 15, 1945.

background

The idea for the film Caterpillar came to Kōji Wakamatsu while filming United Red Army , which was released in 2008. In it he addressed the left youth of the 1960s and 1970s in Japan. As a result, he came to the realization that in order to understand this generation he had to focus on the parents' generation and their experiences in the war. He did not necessarily want to focus on the war itself and its battles, but on the women and children, who, although they do not take part directly in combat, suffer greatly from the consequences of the war. Wakamatsu filmed the book 芋 虫 (Imomushi, The Caterpillar) by Edogawa Rampo from 1929 and moved the plot within the time frame. The focus is also changed by the director, so that the wife's sadistic fantasies, which play a formative role in the book, recede in favor of the drama, which is peppered with brutal scenes.

Reviews

The film received increased attention through its participation in the Berlinale and was often reviewed with this in mind. Caterpillar ran on the fifth day of the festival and was described by Andreas Platthaus in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “the most radical work in this competition to date”. The critics placed a special focus on the portrayal of war and violence in the film. In Spiegel Online's Berlinale blog, Andreas Borcholte criticized the fact that Kōji Wakamatsu was trying "to convey the message that war in general is a terrible thing with very bold scenes of corpses and rape". Borcholte found the portrayal of sexuality disturbing and formative for the film, which failed to tell “a psychological drama” based on the “revenge, shame and despair between the injured person and his wife condemned to servility”. Finally, in his review, Borcholte comes to the conclusion that Caterpillar is not a good film, but that it had the best chances in the competition so far. In the Berliner Zeitung noted Jens Balzer negative about the film: "Because the communication between the spouses to be limited, the story loses but soon in redundancies". With the use of war and propaganda images, the director also overshoots the target and thus covers “the psychological subtleties that have just been achieved”.

Awards

Caterpillar took part in the competition at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival in 2010, but was left behind in the award of the Golden Bear compared to the Turkish contribution Bal . Shinobu Terajima won the Silver Bear for best actress for her portrayal of Shigeko Kurokawa . The award was accepted on behalf of director Kōji Wakamatsu, as Terajima had already left for Japan.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Caterpillar . (PDF; 188 kB) berlinale.de; Berlinale film archive, accessed March 22, 2010
  2. ↑ Meeting of the film phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de; Modern Japan Weblog ; accessed March 23, 2010
  3. ↑ Andreas Platthaus: What the war leaves of people . faz.net; accessed March 23, 2010.
  4. ↑ Andreas Borcholte: Fett, fetter, Franzose - Part 5: Day 5 - First the sex, then the pleasure . In: Spiegel Online ; accessed March 23, 2010
  5. ↑ Jens Balzer: 60th Berlinale: Competition - Sex, War and Amputations . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 16, 2010