戦慄せしめよ 「Senritsu seshimeyo」
Release Date: January 29th, 2022
Duration: 89 mins.
Director: Toshiaki Toyoda
Writer: Toshiaki Toyoda
Starring: Kiyohiko Shibukawa,
Toshiaki Toyoda is not a filmmaker one can pigeonhole. While his early work consists of hard-as-nails narrative features like Pornostar (1998), Blue Spring (2001), and 9 Souls (2003), lately, he has worked on diverse array of documentaries and music movies as well as more mainstream features.
In 2018, he released Planetist, a documentary about the Ogasawara Islands and the artists who drift onto them, and star-packed inspirational drama The Miracle of Crybaby Shottan. 2020 saw him team up with the band Seppuku Pistols and host a musical concert and release connected film The Day of Destruction.
Once again he surprises with the visually stunning Shiver, a music movie that covers the world-famous drumming ensemble Kodo and their boneshaking Taiko music. Far from being a straight recording of a concert, this is an “experience” that he makes transcend time and space as he uses staging and dynamic camerawork and editing to inject mysticism and sci-fi into the film.
The setting is the small island of Sado, an hour by boat from the coast of Niigata Prefecture. The season is winter. Once a penal colony, it is now home to stunning landscapes, the remnants of gold mines, a sake brewing industry, protected wildlife, and art.
Sado has been a place that has been a home to artists, whether against their will as in the case of exiled Noh theatre actor/writer Zeami in the 15th Century, or as a cradle of experimentation as with taiko group Ondekoza (subject of the same-named film by Tai Kato) in the 70s.
Kodo came into being in 1981 and, like Ondekoza, took up the sort of percussive music that might ordinarily be heard at a festival, experimented with it and made it fit for performance on a concert stage – you can see more about Kodo in Full Circle, Michael Palin’s wonderful 1990s travel documentary.
Toyoda’s involvement with the Kodo troupe began when electro artist and composer Koshiro Hino and his team asked the director to record his collaboration with them. Hino had previously been contacted by a member of Kodo to do a residency, and so, over the course of one month in the winter of 2020 (during a record-breaking snowstorm, no less), Toyoda filmed a number of staged performances involving the musicians.
Free from having to create a regular narrative, Toyoda uses Sado’s sublime landscape, long history, and varied culture as a smorgasbord of visual references for audiences to explore while a deluge of percussive sounds of various tones and intensities pour out of the speakers.
Each performance has a precision feel to the way it has been recorded and edited as every cut and close-up moves with the music. Once finished, there is a break and change in location and then the next performance.
From a gymnasium to a waterfall, we are taken to different settings. Toyoda manipulates the space even more as he directs the viewers’ gaze to Hino and the other performers in action. He highlights their athleticism, their shared rhythm and finely honed synchronicity, and their skill and their intense physicality and musical skill with full shots and he cuts to the rhythm of each piece. It is impressive to watch, as with a marching band or a sports team working together perfectly.
So, claps, drum strikes, foot stomps, the clattering of woodblocks, shouts, grunts, heavy breaths and a medley of other percussive techniques are deployed and editing ties us into the flow of their use. A succession of close-ups from different angles on performers or a roving camera that slowly dollies in on a singer.
This film flows and so it is easy to get caught in a current of energy from the visuals while the music washes over you. Toyoda truly highlights the skills of the performer while also keeping the viewing experience engaging.
There is a lot of movement on offer but sometimes there will be longer passages caught in a single take from a fixed camera where one can marvel at the endurance of the taiko drummers striking big drums. There will also be cutaways to passages filmed with Toyoda’s loyal actor Kiyohiko Shibukawa, dressed in old-timey costume and wearing a mask, as he performs dramatic acting/dance segments to go with the music
Yes, the sublime landscape of Sado forms a beautiful and dramatic backdrop that visually dazzles. The sight of a big drum in front of a waterfall and the performers hammering away at it is impressive and the sight of snow falling on grey outcroppings and fast-flowing rivers or waves crashing upon cliffs is dramatic.
The collective effect of these techniques is to be both visually dazzling while also stretching the frontiers of time and space through what is referenced. The island and its ancient rough-hewn primal landscape plays a prominent part while the various costumes and manmade locations reference different layers of history. Thus there are nods to Shintoism through Kiyohiko Shibukawa dressed in traditional clothes and it evokes old folklore to punch up the feeling of spiritualism.
It also takes the film to a level of science fiction in the final performance as Buddhist and Jizo Statues, taiko drummers and a light show surround a rocky monolith that emits light in a weird Close Encounters of the Third Kind concert.
Each performance caught on film feels different but the intensity of the whole experience grows. While I initially watched half-heartedly and mentally made a checklist of different elements, I soon found myself absorbed into the flow of the film and left in awe at the synchronicity achieved by performers. I became enraptured by the events on screen. I marvelled at how the film conveyed the intense skill of the performers. While I think this would be even more impressive in a cinema where the screen and speakers are bigger, having the chance to watch in any capacity it is great.
Check it out at Japan Film Festival +.