Alienation and loneliness: thoughts on "Silent City"

      Japan. 

A true paradox. A simmering vista of subways, railway lines, over-crowded trains, somber faced salarymen trudging towards work. Kimonos and Sakura blooms, Kabuki masks and Sumo wrestlers, sushi and sake.A fetishistic society with a unique mix of stringent tradition and obsession with perfection, as well as an uber-modern fixation with Manga and technology. A Janus-faced culture that has the Zen Buddha on one side, and the seedy, tantalizing, neon lit alleys full of bizarre possibilities on the other.

       And precisely for these reasons, an object of desire for those who seek the unconventional, the different, the alien. Believe me, there are those who just wanna live on the fringes of their own societies, and hence look for solace in the sense of utter alienation and awe that other cultures evoke in them. In the very essence of that alienation is the lurking security of acceptance and association. 

And that's what we see in Threes Anna's strikingly visual tale of a young Dutch woman, Rosa, who comes to the ever jostling metropolis that is Tokyo, teeming with people and trains and lives, to learn the exquisite art of filleting fish, only to be overwhelmed by the sheer force of alienation and loneliness that threatens to engulf her, in this "Silent City".  

Her mentor, her "Sensei", is Master Kon, a world famous fish chef who, apart from being a wizard with his knife in filleting a variety of fish, also possesses the magical art of attracting fish to his open hands. Rosa is simply awed by his talents, yet there is something, an intangible wall between her and Master Kon, and the very essence of understanding fish, that bothers her throughout.

At first, she slowly lets the Tokyo rush sink into her.She gets a place of her own, and very tenderly cares for a bonsai plant with just one leaf. She attends classes, where everyone speaks only Japanese, but she is content to just observe and fillet small fish, wishing to get promoted soon to bigger fish and later to really cook fish. In order to sustain herself, she takes up a job as a call girl to entertain the salarymen in a nightclub. Although not very keen on this idea, she at least has a source of income now.

Gradually though, things begin to get fuzzy. She came to Tokyo, leaving behind her comfort zone, to accept and embrace this culture. To understand perfection; to learn it from this demi God of fish. But something seems amiss. Master Kon's standards are high, and his reticent attitude begins to gnaw at her psyche. So much so that she begins to have disturbing visions of herself with fish. She constantly feels under water, at one with the fish, trying to feel under their skin, communicate with them, but failing each time. 

One particular scene that in a way brings together all the elements of  Rosa's utter desperation in this alien city is on a night that she escapes from a customer's house after a rape attempt. Desperate to bury her sorrow in the company of one kindred spirit, she comes across a makeshift cardboard box house that she has seen many times before on the streetside. She opens a flap, enters inside the box, to see a man heating soup on a small stove inside. No words are exchanged, but he offers her a bowl of soup, and for some reason, all the months of despair, the harsh loneliness, the complete absence of human compassion, rather even human companionship....culminate, and she finally emerges happy and content.

In a metaphoric sense, she is now part of the immense sea that is Tokyo, She, who was about to drown in this immense deluge, learns how to swim with the fish.

She goes back to her school, and is able to finally communicate with the fish. She now understands her art. She is finally......the fish under water.

A great movie. Silent City.

P.S. In the same trend, I also simply loved " Ramen Girl"with the late Britanny Murphy ( may she rest in peace) portraying the role of the American who decides to master the art of Ramen noodle making, and after a series of mishaps, finally triumphs.

More stuff on Japan that I intend to write about is on " Lost in Translation", "The Japanese Wife" and Pico Iyer's travelogue cum memoir, "The Lady and the Monk".