Yojimbo: 2 x 2D

To me, Yojimbo seems markedly two-dimensional in terms of its visual direction. Although, when I say “two dimensional”, I really mean 2×2 dimensional: there appear to be two presentational axes on which the film primarily operates. One is the horizontal axis (“left-to-right” or vice versa), while the other is the axis of depth (viewer-to-the-horizon or vice versa).

These two together would, of course, in normal circumstances create a three dimensional grid. Yet, in Yojimbo this does not appear to happen, as the two axes rarely seem to interact. I would say that in most shots you can divide what is on screen (characters, backgrounds) onto two distinct classes: those that move or position horizontally, and those that move or position towards or away from camera. In order for something to switch from one axis to another, we almost always appear to need a cut.

I hope that what I am writing here makes sense. This post would definitely benefit from screenshots, but unfortunately my laptop cannot read the Region 1 DVD that I have of Yojimbo.

If my observation is valid, I wonder what motivated Kurosawa to deal with the film in this way. I would, after all, say that this is quite atypical of Kurosawa, who is usually not afraid of moving the camera not only left and right or up and down, but also “diagonally”, giving us those wonderfully natural camera movements that follow characters and go around them. All this appears to be pretty much missing from Yojimbo.

That it has nothing to do with the camera man lacking in anything is pretty clear, considering that it was Kazuo Miyagawa who returned behind Kurosawa’s camera in Yojimbo for the first time since Rashomon. And I think that we all agree that Rashomon was anything but two-dimensional in the way the camera moved.

Yojimbo was, however, Kurosawa’s third widescreen film, and I wonder if this might have had something to do with it. It is, in fact, perhaps not a coincidence that from the first four widescreen films that Kurosawa directed, three were rather light in their content matter — The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo and Sanjuro are (at least in terms of their narration and social commentary) all quite simple films when compared to much of the rest of Kurosawa. There was The Bad Sleep Well in between, of course, where Kurosawa tried something more complicated, but at least partially failed to get what he wanted (or so he says, and perhaps so do we as well).

So, was Kurosawa stressing the entertainment rather than the social commentary at this point in his career in order to give himself the space to experiment with this new widescreen format? Is the two-dimensionality, then, just one of those experiments, with Kurosawa only really graduating with the format with High and Low and Red Beard, the films that followed the first four and where he really puts what he has learnt into full use?

Another possibility that I could think of for the direction is the two-dimensionality of Yojimbo as a story. As I said, it is really quite a simple movie that appears to have relatively little to say in the end. Perhaps the direction consciously mirrors that visually?

Or is it actually the “grammar of westerns” that we see here, and which Kurosawa has noted was an inspiration for Yojimbo? I am by no means an expert with westerns, and this is especially true of pre-revisionist westerns, so I cannot go very far along this trail of thought, but my gut feeling from the dozen or so of pre-revisionist westerns that I have seen is that they tend to be quite two-dimensional in their presentation. Am I wrong here, though?

There are probably other possible reasons as well, and as always I’d be happy to hear your views on the matter.

l also haven’t yet had the time to read through Prince’s chapter on Kurosawa’s period films, but this may be something that he discusses in length (I can’t remember, but it does sound like something he would discuss). I have a two-and-a-half hour flight today, so I might take a look then (although I do have some Dashiell Hammett to read, as well).

Ballet on the Grid

Brilliant, Vili! Yes, Yojimbo uses a very specific kind of framing and blocking of the action that depends on a grid. Our depth cues are usually confined to a figure’s change in scale as he moves toward the camera.

It’s been mentioned before that Yojiimbo is a ballet. Mifune’s shoulder-hunching, scratching, catlike walk (accompanied by that wonderful, eccentric, cha-cha-boom of Masaru Sato’s score chugging along at the “entrance” to the film), the choreographed face-off watched by Mifune from the tower. Most of the movement is stage front-back or stage side-side.

Miyagawa’s camerawork is celebrated, here-and much is made of the camera’s cropping of the abortive face-off of the two evil factions that Mifune watches from atop the tower. It’s a “West Side Story” ballet! Forgive me for forgetting who wrote the critical assessment of this scene, discussing the crop, the use of edge, the figures shakily entering into the frame and retreating-all completely lateral movement. It is of course the best use of the wide-screen. Enjoyment of the extended edges, the playfulness of figures moving in and out of the stable camera setup…it is visually delightful. We even get the two main antagonists facing off and shouting a few frustrated spits of dialogue. Not a lot of diagonals as you point out, Vili. It’s funny and it’s visually unforgettable.

Let’s not forget the gruesome-but-funny dog-with-hand-in-its-maw. It is choreographed to Sato’s music (a sprightly, cheerful theme!) to come from the rear and arc around Mifune, and pass him on the right of the screen. Another semi-circular pan (that reads as lateral movement because of the framing devices) is the Inokichi and coffin-maker scene as observed by the Old Man and Mifune. Miyagawa frames them, subtly moves and reframes while the action continues. The rectangular compositions (framing through windows and using the back walls as stabilizing and grounding compositional features) give great solidity and atmosphere while the camera moves following Inokichi and his gang. It is significant that we (the camera) are with Mifune, seeing what he would see. It’s the “physical proximity equals psychological proximity” principle. Really check out the masterful framing and re-framing Miyagawa achieves in this scene.

Miyagawa also concludes with framing in the final scenes-particularly Nakadai’s bleed-out. As Kamatari Fujiwara exits towards us through a door frame, he disappears while the door frame remains to bracket the scene of Nakadai’s death and Mifune standing over him. Again, this is what VIli points out-movement toward us. Already Fujiwara had moved toward us as he spotted Shimura framed inside a doorway, and closed in to pursue and kill him. Less memorable is the scene of Fujiwara, spattered in blood moving out from that same door, only this time the composition is a diagonal with teh doorway in the lower left of the screen.

I’m going to go ahead and say that the most memorable action is both horizontal and adjacent to the picture plane, as Vili notes. I think the scenes of Mifune facing off against Nakadai and the last bad guys in the ultimate conflict shows a change of scale, but not direction. We get Mifune far away and small, with the jailors now keeping watch over the bound Old Man, then keep cutting in closer to Mifune, and then the bad guys, 180 degrees as both advance. This makes for clear snapshots of Mifune and Nakadai as they approach “us”-the camera. It also is a bit unnerving, since we are clearly in the line of fire of both sides! (“physical proximity equals psychological proximity”) Mifune’s walk, smile and shoulder hitch are my favorite parts of the ballet, (and since we, the camera, are right in his way, it’s as if he is winking at us) and it all happens in the center of the picture plane, in scale, with only minor changes in outline and interior form. It isn’t until Mifune throws the knife and dodges diagonally that the scene becomes dynamic, and the rigid grid is broken. Of course, it is harder, because of our loss of the grid to really even know what’s happening in such a scene. I had to stop-action many times to see where Daisuke Kato’s character got killed. To tell the truth, it’s still a bit fuzzy in my mind. But, that explosion of action that breaks the grid adds the necessary dynamism to the scene.

A drawing professor of mine had a term for composing this way-the rejection of depth-producing diagonals and depth cues is what he called “scanning”-it’s about design elements that are arranged without concern for pictorial depth, but, rather for interesting placement in a flat grid. The super-long telephoto lenses that Kurosawa favored would have already flattened the image, and created a set of conditions.

It would have been Miyagawa’s purview to find a way to make the framing (“scanning”) dynamic, and interesting. He’s got the constraints of the telephoto lenses already. Hey, and he’s Japanese. The genius Asian traditions of flat design are part of his visual inheritance (as well as Kurosawa’s-a painter, after all!). The use of wide screen would suggest to a creative and sensitive cinematographer like Miyagawa some fun and clever games to play.

It just so happens that these flat designs also make things feel iconic. I’m thinking Sharaku woodcuts of actor’s faces. We can have vivid shape-memories and outlines and mental snapshots because we know where we are in the composition in relation to the grid.

I don’t mean to hog all the forum space, but something just occurred to me, and maybe some of you have an opinion on this…

Miyagawa also concludes with framing in the final scenes-particularly Nakadai’s bleed-out. As Kamatari Fujiwara exits towards us through a door frame, he disappears while the door frame remains to bracket the scene of Nakadai’s death and Mifune standing over him.

Okay, so, after that scene, we have the coda where Mifune cuts the bonds of the Old Man, and reassures him that now the city is “clean” (Or, at least he says that in my Mei Ah version) and turns to leave the town and the movie. And, it occurs to me that something about this last scene, the framing and the light, offer a huge opening. Does anybody else feel it? As if the grid is going to be broken for good? Is there something different in this last composition? Or am I making this up?

Quite interesting, I do understand your 2×2 dimensions. There is something certainly important about it, but I haven’t anything to specifically mention.

It appears to be a means of separating the grouping of characters rather then a exploration of widescreen. Although, another aspect is the use of long lens and the problems of tracking a shot. So leaving the framing very wide, to establish setting and mood, you have no choice but to expand the character movements vertically and create a depth horizontal as perceived depth is lost on long lenses. A movement of diagonal wouldn’t come off visually too well, and may even look odd. I still think the 2D is more to do with the story telling, rather then the technical of widescreen.

I hope to look into this more and perhaps Vili can further elaborate as to what he sees, if I can provide some screenshots if he is unable. It is all really of great interest to me, and something I didnt notice all that much, but it when looking for it-it’s use is rather obvious and certainly would appear to have a specfic purpose.

It should also be noted that Saito should be credited for a vast majority of camera usage. The crisp cuts are certainly Miyagawa, but there are some odd bumps and movements in the still shots that are Saito. I also feel the wide shots with their 2 dimensions is a hybrid of both cinematographers.

It all rather interesting, I havent a clue if Kurosawa had a purpose behind any of it, but it something that really should be looked into.

This is all fascinating but most of it over my head. I do find myself hankering for screenshots, and will need to watch Yojimbo again with a print out of the posts. There certainly seems to be something in the connection between 2D and the sort of story Kurosawa is telling. I’ll do my best to comment when I get the chance to sit down with the movie again.

Yeah, after viewing Yojimbo again, and, after the many fascinating posts in the forum, I’m gonna go ahead and say that the idea of Yojimbo as a choreographed “ballet” or “West Side Story“-dance is still happening for me.

I said earlier:

A drawing professor of mine had a term for composing this way-the rejection of depth-producing diagonals and depth cues is what he called “scanning”-it’s about design elements that are arranged without concern for pictorial depth, but, rather for interesting placement in a flat grid. The super-long telephoto lenses that Kurosawa favored would have already flattened the image, and created a set of conditions.

Yeah and to elaborate, I think it might be worthwhile here to note that in composition, Japanese and Chinese traditional arts use a kind of perspective called “isometric” as opposed to “linear” (the kind of perspective used in the west, developed in the Italian Renaissance, where parallel lines converge at a point on the horizon). In Japan and China, a diagonal is used to show recession in space. So, a table placed at an angle to the picture plane is meant to indicate depth. Depth without depth. The kind of depth we get in Kurosawa.

Other cues, such as overlapping and scale exist, still. But, the compression caused by the telephoto lenses makes distances between objects adjacent to the picture plane compressed and shorter, and nullify the effect of “depth” as expressed in a two-dimensional space.

None of which answers Vili’s “why”.

I will still insist that, particularly in the aborted fight-to-the-finish scene with Mifune on the tower, the use of widescreen and lateral moviement is intentional and intentionally funny-playing with the boundaries of vision in such a visual way indicates the “eye” behind the scene-and that may be Miyagawa’s or “camera unit two” or Kurosawa himself or a combo. That, I cannot answer. But, we do know that Miyagawa was considered the master of framing! And, he began his career as a cinematographer of comedies!

http://www.cinematographers.nl/GreatDoPh/miyagawa.htm

So, that’s where I place my vote!

Japanese and Chinese traditional arts use a kind of perspective called “isometric” as opposed to “linear”

I have seen my fair share of Japanese art, but never really thought about this. It is something that I would really like to read more about!

In comparative arts classes, or in interdisciplinary art education courses, sections on world cultures and visual traditions would explore the Asian/Western uses of the picture plane, including different attitudes and goals towards the depiction of three dimensions on two.

In the West-we find that moment when Japanese woodcuts influence the compositions of the Impressionists a decisive one for a shift from illusionistic three-dimensionality to an acceptance (embrace) of the picture plane. It’s a really big moment for Western traditions that had embraced the linear perspective developed in the Renaissance.

Some of the books commonly used in such courses include: Arts and Ideas by Fleming, Artforms by Preble, Preble and Frank and Experiencing Art Around Us by Buser.

A good place to start thinking about the visual arts as valuable traditions distinct from literature might be Gombrich’s The Story of Art. It’s a simple book, almost as if written for children, but a profound one, that introduces core concepts such as “making versus matching”.

Thanks for the pointers, Coco! Much appreciated, indeed. As the first three works mentioned are all around $100, I don’t think that I will be able to get those anytime soon. I might try the libraries, though.

The Story of Art, meanwhile, seems a bargain: 1044 pages for $13.57? That’s only just over a cent per page! Not that I would normally count per-page costs when it comes to books but that’s quite something. 😆 (And sometimes I actually do count — like when I am asked to pay 500 euros for a 100 page book on linguistics, which certainly won’t happen!)

In any case, The Story of Art is now on its way!

Oh I am so happy, Vili! (jumps up and down, clapping hands). I really think that EVERYONE would benefit from a reading of Gombrich’s classic! Plus, it is a fun read! He is a smart and unconventional thinker-in fact, he’s one of the guys who influenced the modern conventions! HA! Gombrich and Arnheim, Claude Levi-Strauss and Panofsky and you have got a foundation! (Of course, then you’ve got to break down the foundation with deconstructivism. Or not. Your choice.)

A NOTE ABOUT THE CLASSICS:

Used to be in university that the humanities covered all those things of which we were expected to have shared knowledge-The Illiad and the Odyssey would be read, the Renaissance discussed, Baroque music explored, the history of the rise of European cities from Greece to Paris learned, and the political systems investigated. That’s something we cannot take for granted in Academe anymore. Now, the universities have moved toward areas of knowledge, so instead of algebra you have one course in quantatative reasoning, instead of art history, one course in knowledge of the arts. It’s become a bit more of a Chinese menu with folks choosing one from column A and one from column B. We’ll know in the next ten years or so how that shakes down! It’s not as if we’ve suddenly lost our faith in a canon of “classics”. Heck, the process of dissolving our core has been in process since the 1960’s-and, a literature class is more likely to read Maya Angelou than John Milton (unless it is a very specific graduate-level, narrow-focus special topics course).

I myself realized, in a discussion about the Illiad with my students when I was in Greece late in the last millenium, that 70% of them hadn’t read it. This is not-so-handy when you are about to travel the Daradanelles and hit up Troy. What will it mean to them, other than a scent of faded heroism? So, yeah, I am a big fan of knowing basic stuff so that we all can converse on an even plane.

I think you will find that Gombrich makes very interesting choices in his book, and spends a fair amount of time on works from, for example, the National Gallery in London, and that seems to me refreshing (He features the Wilton Diptych in the Sainsbury wing of the NG-something you do not find in any other survey art history book). Gardner’s Art Through the Ages for example-is a much drier, safer text, with the “usual suspects” illustrated.

While Gombrich covers all the major folks you would need to know, he also organizes his information in particularly valuable ways. It’s not just a laundry list, as so many art history survey books can be….

I think I’ll choose not to go (back) into deconstruction, thank you very much. 🙂 As much fun as reading Derrida is, I don’t think deconstruction as a system really ends up saying quite as much as it seems to think it does.

Not that I have anything particular against methods applied by deconstructionists, but at the end of the day applications of the theory (if it is a theory to begin with, Derrida didn’t really appear to consider it one) seem to consist of very little else than grand exaggerations and mystified mumbo jumbo. Not that there is anything wrong or particularly new with mystified mumbo jumbo, and there no doubt are gems to be found even in that pile of rubbish, but it’s just difficult to take it seriously, that’s all.

And I should know, for I am guilty myself — I used Derrida as a basis for my thesis in language pedagogy, arguing for his views on identity formation. 😛

As for the fall of humanities, I meant to write about this in a reply to your post in the Love for a Killer thread, but have not had the time to do so.

It is, of course, a pity that everyone can’t be intimately familiar with The Iliad and the Odyssey, but there is just so much other interesting and relevant material out there that it is perfectly understandable that they cannot always be covered.

In fact, I don’t think that it is necessarily the function of a humanist faculty to teach specific works, however big a part of the cultural and literary canon they may be. You do, of course, try to give students a good understanding of the overall canon itself, but personally I would rather spend a semester dissecting a group of poems or a few novels that are largely unknown than rushing through major works simply because you “need to be familiar with them”. I have had experience of both methodologies, and can say that being familiar with works does not really equate to having an understanding of them.

In my opinion, universities are there to teach you methodologies of how to think and how to evaluate your own thought processes, not to pour your head full of information (although it certainly is a bonus if they manage that as well). These, by the way, are skills perhaps more crucial than ever, considering the amount of (often conflicting) information that we are constantly bombarded with and have readily at our disposal, thanks to the Internet.

I do, however, agree that there is something of a “fall of humanities” going on. I guess everyone who has been part of that game agrees on this. One clear reason for this trend is the fact that humanities, perhaps somewhat sadly, plays an ever smaller part in our increasingly capitalistic world, and so both the grants as well as our brightest students go to other faculties.

Another reason is what I would call the “democratisation of education”, as increasingly more people enrol to tertiary education simply because today’s society has come to expect that everyone and their grandmother has a diploma. Consequently, the average quality of the student material is constantly getting worse, as your students are not only more numbered but also less motivated than was the case when university education was something you went for primarily because of intellectual curiosity. And since your average student is less capable today than what was the case even ten or twenty years ago, you as a good teacher are forced to lower your own expectations and therefore the academic level of your classes. Or that, at least, is what I have personally observed and heard from other people in the academia.

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t think that higher education should be made available only for some sort of an elitist group, not at all. I just sometimes wonder if we are not pulling down our brightest minds while we are trying to push up the average population.

End of rant (for today). 😀

Hey Vili,

I didn’t mean to go so off-topic. The discussion of two-dimensionality squared connected me to art history, then to higher education and the humanities. This is the stuff clogging up the attic, so to speak. Obviously you’ve spent some time thinking along these lines. I am not flattering you when I note that you have acquired all those critical thinking skills we hope to see university students acquire. Your writing is always articulate and well-reasoned. (And, I will be the first to volunteer that my thinking is usually inarticulate and poorly-reasoned, although I am very interested in ideas, I’m just a painter!)

It’s interesting to hear your perspective on deconstructivist theory, and your own experiences with various teaching methodologies. Without contradicting your view that critical thinking tools are important, (I agree) I am just noting that the “culture” of the university has changed with the times in what it values and teaches as “standard” or “classic” texts.

I did say it wasn’t so handy to discover that students were under-exposed to the stories of ancient Greece when we were ready to embark on an adventure to the purported site of one of the great stories (Troy). I mean, they have to know something of the stories to care about visiting the site. (We were able to do some damage control by having a campfire storytelling session. In some ways that’s closer to how the stories were originally told anyway!)

I am not even saying that the readings that have replaced the classics are worse than the classics. They represent under-represented voices, minority viewpoints, and multi-cultural perspectives. It’s a different viewpoint, but then, it is a different world. In fact, if we look at the infiltration of western customs, dress, language and ideas into post-war Japan, we are seeing something similar-some loss of tradition, some loss of common cultural currency. Maybe that’s why that era is so fascinating to me.

I’m not sure if capitalism is the primary mover and shaker of these changes in the curriculum. You may be right, and perhaps the university will do away with everything except technical training. ( I think that Bloom argues the point that universities are becoming technical schools in “The Closing of the American Mind”. He is very unhappy about us losing our direct experience of the classics, in our focus on “careers”). But, I’m not sure our desire for inclusion comes from a bad place. In a way, it is the extension of our democratic feelings-that if all men are created equal-all men have a story to tell. Hearing out some of the stories is a way of respecting human life-in its variety and multiform experiences.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that students are dumber than they were, although you’ve also touched on the “expectation” of a degree and the careerist aspects of education as opposed to a love of learning, as well as the sheer numbers of students going through the university system. In the United States it is becoming increasingly costly for students to earn a degree. If anything, I am impressed by the intelligence and persistence of our young people, and delighted that so many do ultimately, deeply care about ideas. But, then I teach art classes, and, basically, “abandon hope all ye who enter here” might as well be painted over the sprung arch of the campus art building. Because a bachelor’s in art only qualifies one to ask, “You want fries with that?” It’s a non-career path, in most cases.

On teaching the humanities you said, “

In fact, I don’t think that it is necessarily the function of a humanist faculty to teach specific works, however big a part of the cultural and literary canon they may be.”

In the 1960’s when the established canon of classics was first challenged, the world “relevance” was much bandied-about, and was used as the litmus test of a text’s worth. “Is it relevant?” Now,we have focussed quite a bit on the nuts and bolts of critical thinking, but we have changed the standard texts-in part, to be more “inclusive” and “representative”.

So, where do we end up? It’s pretty hard to hold a conversation about “Yojimbo” in any depth or detail when one’s not seen it. And, that’s kinda where we are. (Not here, but in the university). The dialogue is not supported when your buddies don’t know the text. And, the lack of a shared text changes culture. That’s all I’m saying.

We are living in supremely interesting times.

This is indeed seriously going off-topic (my fault, really, I should be a bit more aggressive in forcing the “one topic, one thread — one thread, one topic” rule), so just a brief reply to one point: I didn’t mean to suggest that students as individuals are today dumber than they were before, but rather that because there tends to be more of them than earlier, the average level of proficiency is lower. I may be totally mistaken of course, and have either misinterpreted my own experiences and those of others with whom I have talked about this, or our experiences have simply not mirrored what is going on in the wider world.

As for the problem of a lack of shared texts, fortunately many of us now have the chance of getting a hold of Yojimbo (or The Iliad, Odyssey) relatively easily, so making these texts shared “on-demand”, so to speak, is not such a big problem as it perhaps used to be. Of course, this still isn’t true of every text out there — touching on what you noted earlier about us often coming into contact with or even liking only that which is marketed to us.

And one could of course also ask the question in what way this “on-demand” sourcing of texts has changed our culture and the way we process texts and information in general. I cannot speak for others, but with the whole world out there to discover, at least I have the nasty habit of sometimes going through, to quote the White Queen, “as many as six impossible things before breakfast”, but without really stopping to properly think and evaluate any of them. Information goes in one ear and out the other, and the poor brain has very little time to properly process it in between.

One reason why I wanted to set up the film club here is that we would at least have our shared texts “on-demand” at the same time, enabling us to have a proper and meaningful discussion of the movies that we all really love. I think that it has worked pretty well so far, although the problem of “in one ear and out the other” is still clearly present, simply because we only have one month for each movie.

A good example is this very thread which I started with an observation about Kurosawa’s two-dimensional presentation of Yojimbo, yet never really pursued (or perhaps even properly explained?) the idea, partly because I still lack the tools and information to do so. But perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on myself — The Story of Art is, after all, on its way!

And, considering that we only allow one month per movie in order to keep things going, I don’t think that our aim here really is so much to say anything final and conclusive about these movies but, as I have described it before, tear these works into pieces and see what we discover.

In any case, see how neatly I almost brought the discussion back to the topic here!? 😉

Finally, my “capitalism comment” was indeed an oversimplification of things, but I would like to maintain that it is at least a useful oversimplification. But I could probably have worded it better.

Ok, that was more than one point. 🙂 But there is much in what you write, Coco (and you write much (which is by no means a bad thing)), which gets me thinking. Even if I am not entirely sure if I am always directly responding to what you wrote, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t read your posts or thought about them.

Vili, I sincerely appreciate your gentlemanly approach to hosting an online film club. There are many little bits and pieces, and somewhere these things may sort out..back to this topic: The definition of isometric perspective as relative to a study of art history differs somewhat from the definition used in mathematics, but the visual presented here gives you an immediate visual sense of what we are talking about.

Here’s a site that is just plain fascinating, showing isometric drawings: screenshots It is a strange bunch of drawings, interesting in the subject matter, and the artist’s site has other interesting things, as well. (I’ve seen the car of Quang Duc in Vietnam…how odd to see the immolation in this context).

The whitehead illustration is particularly relevant: I think of all the low tables in Chinese paintings drawn at an angle, but without linear perspectival reduction in scale or distortion of shape, example here.

The last image illustrates the principle, and how art historians use it to refer to the spatial concepts in Asian (particularly traditional Chinese and Japanese) arts.