Between Cinema and Literature

It was 1990, the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, and face to face we were about to encounter two of the most emblematic figures of both universal cinema and literature. Thus, between cinema and literature, we would witness one of the most memorable conversations of recent times.

The Los Angeles Times commissioned Gabriel García Márquez to interview the Japanese genius, film director Akira Kurosawa.

Writer and director met in Tokyo. Akira was still in the middle of filming his penultimate movie “Rhapsody in August.” The interview, conducted as a conversation, was framed for posterity by the inquiring responses that emerged about such relevant topics as the physical, spiritual, and historical consequences of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki in 1945.

And the absurdity of how the United States finances a machinery of forgetfulness in Japan, turning a deaf ear to apologizing before the world. This theme is largely addressed because of the subject matter encompassed by the film “Rhapsody in August.”

But to get there, Gabo begins by talking about what ultimately brings us together here: cinema and its composition with literature. He touches on topics about screenplay writing, adaptations of literary works, and the great difficulties this represents.

Let’s enjoy this friendly conversation between the most prolific minds of the 20th century.

Gabriel García Márquez: I don’t want this conversation between friends to be like a press interview, but I’m very curious to know many things about you and your work. To begin with, I’m interested in knowing how you write your scripts. First, because I myself am a screenwriter. And second, because you’ve made stupendous adaptations of great literary works, and I have many doubts about the adaptations that have been made or could be made of mine.

Akira Kurosawa: When I conceive an original idea that I’d like to turn into a script, I lock myself in a hotel with paper and pencil. At that point, I have a general idea of the plot, and I know more or less how it’s going to end. If I don’t know what scene to start with, I follow the current of ideas that emerge naturally.

García Márquez: What comes to your mind first: an idea or an image?

Kurosawa: I can’t explain it very well. I think everything starts with various scattered images. On the contrary, I know that screenwriters here in Japan first create a global vision of the script sequence, organizing it by scenes, and after systematizing the plot, they begin to write. But I don’t think that’s the right way to do it, since we are not God.

García Márquez: Has your method been this intuitive when adapting Gorky or Shakespeare or Dostoevsky?

Kurosawa: Directors who make adapted films don’t realize that it’s very difficult to transmit literary images to the audience through cinematographic images. For example, in adapting a detective novel where a body was found by the train tracks, a young director insisted that a certain location corresponded perfectly to the one in the book.

“You’re wrong,” I told him. “The problem is that you’ve already read the novel and you know that a body was found beside the tracks. But for people who haven’t read it, there’s nothing special about the place.” That young director was captivated by the magical power of literature without realizing that cinematographic images must be expressed differently.

García Márquez: Do you remember any image from real life that you consider impossible to express in cinema?

Kurosawa: Yes. That of a mining town called Ilidachi, where I worked as an assistant director when I was very young. The director had declared at first sight that the atmosphere was magnificent and strange, and that’s why we filmed there. But the images showed only an ordinary town. They lacked something we knew: that working conditions in the town were very dangerous, and that the miners’ wives and children lived in eternal fear for their safety. When one looks at the town, one confuses the landscape with that feeling, and perceives it as stranger than it really is. But the camera doesn’t see it with the same eyes.

García Márquez: The truth is I know very few novelists who have been satisfied with the adaptation of their books to screen. What experience have you had with your adaptations?

Kurosawa: Allow me, first, a question: Have you seen my film Red Beard (Akahige, 1965)?

García Márquez: I’ve seen it six times in 20 years and have talked about it with my children almost every day, until they were able to see it. So it’s not only one of the most beloved films by my family and me, it’s also one of my favorites in all of cinema history.

Kurosawa: Red Beard constitutes a reference point in my evolution. All my films that precede it are different from those that follow. It was the end of one stage and the beginning of another.

García Márquez: That’s obvious. On the other hand, within the same film, there are two scenes that are extreme in relation to the totality of your work, and both are unforgettable; one is the praying mantis episode, and the other is the karate fight in the hospital courtyard.

Kurosawa: Yes, but what I wanted to say is that the book’s author, Shuguro Yamamoto, had always opposed having his novels made into films. He made an exception with Red Beard because I insisted with implacable obstinacy until I succeeded. However, after finishing watching the film, he looked at me and said: “Well, it’s more interesting than my novel.”

García Márquez: I wonder, why did he like it so much?

Kurosawa: Because he had a clear awareness of cinema’s inherent characteristics. The only thing he asked of me was to be very careful with the protagonist, a complete failure of a woman, from his perspective. But the curious thing is that the idea of a failed woman wasn’t explicitly in his novel.

García Márquez: Maybe he thought it was. It’s something that often happens to us novelists.

Kurosawa: That’s right. In fact, when seeing films based on their books, some authors say: “That part of my novel is well portrayed.” But in reality they’re referring to something that was added by the director. I understand what they’re saying, since they can see clearly expressed on screen, by pure intuition on the director’s part, something they would have wanted to write but hadn’t been able to.

García Márquez: It’s a known fact: “Poets are the mixers of poisons.” But, to return to your current film, will the typhoon be the most difficult thing to film?

Kurosawa: No. The most difficult was working with animals. The water snakes, the ants devouring roses. Domesticated snakes are too accustomed to people, they don’t flee by instinct, and behave like eels. The solution consisted of capturing a huge wild snake, which kept trying with all its might to escape, and it was really terrifying.

Therefore, it played its role very well. As for the ants, it was a matter of getting them to climb a rosebush in single file until they reached a rose. They were reluctant for a long time, until we made a honey trail on the stem, and the ants climbed up. Actually, we had many difficulties, but it was worth it, because I learned a lot about them.

García Márquez: Yes, I’ve seen that. But what kind of film is this that’s likely to have problems with both ants and typhoons? What’s the plot?

Kurosawa: It’s very difficult to summarize in a few words.

García Márquez: Does someone kill someone?

Kurosawa: No. It’s simply about an old woman from Nagasaki who survived the atomic bomb and whose grandchildren came to visit her last summer.

I haven’t filmed surprisingly realistic scenes that would be unbearable to watch and would explain the horror of the drama by themselves. What I’d like to convey is the type of wounds the atomic bomb left in our people’s hearts, and how they slowly began to heal.

I remember the day of the attack clearly, and even now, I still can’t believe it could have happened in the real world. But worst of all is that the Japanese have already forgotten it.

García Márquez: What does this historical amnesia mean for Japan’s future, for the Japanese people’s identity?

Kurosawa: The Japanese don’t speak about it explicitly. Our politicians, in particular, are silent out of fear of the United States. It’s possible they’ve accepted Truman’s explanation that he resorted to the atomic bomb only to accelerate the end of World War II. Even so, for us, the war continues.

The complete death toll for Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been officially published at 230,000. But in reality, there were more than half a million dead. And even now, there are still 2,700 patients in the Atomic Bomb Hospital waiting to die from radiation’s aftereffects after 45 years of agony. In other words, the atomic bomb is still killing Japanese people.

García Márquez: The most rational explanation seems to be that the United States hurried to end the war with the bomb for fear that the Soviets would take Japan before they did.

Kurosawa: Yes, but why did they do it in a city inhabited only by civilians who had nothing to do with the war? There were military concentrations that were, in fact, prepared for war.

García Márquez: They didn’t fall on the Imperial Palace either, which must have been a very vulnerable place in the heart of Tokyo. And I think all this is explained by the fact that they wanted to leave political power and military power intact in order to carry out a quick negotiation without having to share the spoils with their allies. It’s something no other country has ever experienced in all human history. Now then: Would Japan have surrendered without the atomic bomb? Would it be the same Japan it is today?

Kurosawa: It’s hard to say. The people who survived Nagasaki don’t want to remember their experience, because most of them, in order to survive, had to abandon their parents, their children, their brothers and sisters. They still can’t stop feeling guilty.

Subsequently, the American forces that occupied the country for six years influenced by various means the acceleration of forgetting, and the Japanese government has collaborated with them. I would even dare to be willing to understand all this as part of the inevitable tragedy generated by war. But I think that, at least, the country that dropped the bomb should apologize to the Japanese people. Until that happens, this drama won’t end.

García Márquez: To that magnitude? Couldn’t the misfortune be compensated by a long era of happiness?

Kurosawa: The atomic bomb constituted the starting point of the Cold War and the arms race, and marked the beginning of the process of creating and using nuclear energy. Happiness will never be possible due to such origins.

García Márquez: I see. Nuclear energy was born as a cursed force, and a force born under a curse is a perfect theme for Kurosawa. But what worries me is that maybe you’re not condemning nuclear energy itself, but the way it was used from the beginning. Electricity is still a good thing, despite the electric chair.

Kurosawa: It’s not the same. I think nuclear energy is beyond the control possibilities that can be established by human beings. In case of an error in handling nuclear energy, the immediate disaster would be immense and radioactivity would remain for hundreds of generations. On the other hand, when water is boiling, it’s enough to let it cool for it to stop being dangerous. Let’s stop using elements that continue boiling for hundreds of thousands of years.

García Márquez: I owe a great measure of my own faith in humanity to Kurosawa’s films. But I also understand your position in view of the terrible injustice of using the atomic bomb only against the civilian population and the conspiracy of Japanese and Americans to make Japan forget. But it seems equally unfair to me that nuclear energy should always be considered cursed without considering that it could perform a great non-military service for humanity. There’s a confusion of feelings due to the irritation you feel because you know Japan has forgotten and because the culprit, that is, the United States, doesn’t acknowledge its guilt or render the Japanese the apologies they deserve.

Kurosawa: Human beings will be more human when they realize there are aspects of reality they cannot manipulate. I don’t believe we have the right to generate children without anuses, or eight-legged horses, as is happening in Chernobyl. But now I think this conversation has become too serious and that wasn’t my intention.

García Márquez: We’ve done the right thing. When a topic is as serious as this, one can’t help but discuss it seriously. Does the film you’re in the process of finishing shed any light on your thoughts on this matter?

Kurosawa: Not directly. I was a young journalist when the bomb fell and I wanted to write articles about what had happened, but it was absolutely forbidden until the end of the occupation. Now, to make this film, I set out to research and study the subject and I know much more than I did then. But if I had expressed my thoughts directly in the film, it couldn’t have been shown in today’s Japan, or anywhere else.

García Márquez: Do you think it might be possible to publish the transcript of this dialogue?

Kurosawa: I have no objection. Quite the opposite. This is a matter on which many people in the world should give their opinion without restrictions of any kind.

García Márquez: Thank you very much. After all, I think if I were Japanese I would be as inflexible as you are on this topic. And in any case, I understand it. No war is good for anyone.

Kurosawa: That’s so. The problem is that when filming begins, even Christ and the angels become military chiefs of the staff.