‘Anatahan’ or — von Sternberg vs. Nature?
Japan loves a good smackdown movie: there’s everything from ‘King Kong vs. Godzilla’ (1962), ‘Gamera vs. Gyaos’ (1967) or ‘The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. the Monster Army’ (1974). So what would happen if a Japanese studio pitted one of the most visually excessive directors of all time against the splendour of the natural world? And who would win?!
In 1952 film director Josef von Sternberg was given an irresistible offer by Japanese studio Daiwa Productions, Inc. — to come to Japan, a land of mountains, island and beautiful foliage, and make a movie with total creative control. The film would be ‘Anatahan’ (1953).
And so von Sternberg arrives in Japan, land of mountains, islands and beautiful foliage, and recreates mountains, islands and foliage in a studio using sets, metallic paint and inorganic artifice. But why? Was it to cut costs? Was it the control? Or was von Sternberg the type of filmmaker who would gaze upon the grandeur of the natural world and think to himself “Well, I can certainly do better than that!”?
‘Anatahan’ is based on the true story concerning a group of Japanese sailors who become shipwrecked on a remote Pacific island during World War II. The island is not uninhabited as there is a couple, a man and a young woman, Keiko, living on Anatahan in a crude hut. This couple is the only evidence of a long abandoned plantation once on the island.
The sailors spend seven years on Anatahan, refusing to believe the war is over and rationalising any evidence as it being so as enemy propaganda that must immediately be dismissed. What cannot be dismissed so easily are the men’s ever growing attraction and desire for Keiko. This puts an immense strain on the inter-personal dynamics between the men, a strain that reaches murderous breaking point when a pair of pistols is discovered.
Desire transforms into death on Anatahan.
‘Anatahan’ is a profoundly crazy movie as it contains so many creative decisions that are borderline unfathomable, and it’s not just the decision to re-create Japan inside a studio inside Japan. The dialogue is entirely spoken Japanese without subtitles. We understand what’s going on because von Sternberg (in a flourish of control-freakery excessive even by his standards) provides a voice-over narration spoken by himself. This causes a strange tension between what we see and what we hear with the commentary often describing events yet to occur as well as keeping the locus of the narration free-floating and nebulous (events seem to be happening to the group and, therefore, humanity at large, rather than to one specific individual).
It’s a sensation that is jarring, dreamlike, off-kilter but also utterly beguiling.
This beguilement is enhanced by the visuals which are so artificial that any hint of naturalism would be seen as an unforgivable crime against art; Anatahan feels, and looks, less like a “real” Pacific atoll and more like Skull Island. (Un)Naturally this increases both the aesthetic and emotional intensity of the experience, especially the rise of sexual tension and murderous lust.
To keep track of such competing desires von Sternberg worked less from a script and more from a highly detailed, elaborate and complex colour chart that mapped out all the characters emotional arcs, how they intersect and resolve. This means that we don’t need to understand Japanese to grasp what’s going on, but that then also raises the question of — then why the narration? Again, it all adds up to the feel of a dream and dislocated POVs.
‘Anatahan’ is an odd, beautiful, passionate, weird, poetic, violent, primal, ethereal, beguiling (yes, I’m using that word again because it is so accurate) film pulsating with a glistening idiosyncratic light (I’m struggling to recall another film that looks like this). There’s so much going on here, both thematically and stylistically, that it’s frequently like experiencing three films played simultaneously at once. I guess you certainly can’t say von Sternberg skipped on giving his audiences value for money.
