The Sea is Watching

Sometimes we know that great works left unfinished at an artist's death were struggled over during the artist's final hours, with every last burst of creativity going into them; the possible conclusion to these works tantalizes us, because we feel there must be something powerful that was drawing the creative spirit onward even as the artist's strength failed and finally was spent. "The Sea is Watching" was made by director Kei Kumai from an Akira Kurosawa script that the master never got to film; upon hearing that, the idea of Kurosawa placing the last words down on paper as he expired may enter your mind and send you scurrying off to the movie theater to see just what was on his mind.

Scratch that idea. "The Sea is Watching" was an early script, and it oozes sentimentality of the most unsympathizable kind. The main character is O-Shin (Nagiko Tono), and she's a geisha in some indeterminate pre-Matthew Perry period. Despite the fact that she has been trained in every nuance of entertaining men and having sex for money, she still seems to believe that the motive of every strapping young lad who walks through the door is to fall in love with her. She reciprocates by falling for them. A couple recurrences of this and you've pretty much got the movie.

Tono has to make her lip quiver constantly due to the overwhelming power of some inscrutable emotion, whether it's naive joy, wounded egotism, or squalling adolescent anxiety. When the script puts Tono in a situation that would cause O-Shin to feel real extreme emotions, accordingly, Tono has no choice but to severely overplay whatever she's feeling. It's impossible to sympathize with a character this evidently stupid and emotionally volatile, especially when she has no other discernible qualities.

Kumai does make "The Sea is Watching" extraordinary visual fare; the richness of the images, especially the real-life (not specially effected) storm of the film's closing chapter, occasionally overwhelms the higher critical faculties. The silk kimonos and painted faces and closeup shots of handcrafted furnishings certainly will give visual sybarites their money's worth. But Kumai succumbs too often (which is to say, almost every time) to the lure of the script's broad-brush pathos, so that even his fine naturalistic pacing is ultimately overwhelmed by the burden of histrionic sappiness. Kumai also allows composer Teizo Matsumura to inflict heavy damage upon the film with, among other things, an indescribably inane trumpet tune which ruins many moments that might otherwise have been affecting.

So: no final masterwork from Kurosawa here, just some juvenilia that would better have remained unrealized. You'll have to go to some of the rest of the AFI Silver's "Kurosawa in Color" series to see the true capabilities of his genius; fortunately, "Ran," "Kagemusha," "Dreams," and "Madadayo," among others, are there to testify to that. I saw "High and Low" Sunday and I still can't get it out of my head! But I'm pretty sure "The Sea is Watching" will find a watery grave in the ocean of my thoughts as soon as I type the period at the end of this sentence.

Attractive Man Count: 1, just barely.

Attractive Woman Count: 3.

Hey, I wish it was better too Lindemann

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