What is most disturbing in UNITED RED ARMY is Wakamatsu’s film does not comply with any rule nor any code and obeys no other system than his: a total liberty of speech and action, which made him produce and direct UNITED RED ARMY the guerrilla way, i.e. by financing the film all by himself, by having his own house blown up for the film purpose, by mortgaging his movie theatre –he owns one in Nagoya–, by supervising production management, editing, through distribution and exhibition in Japan.
The film is 190 minutes long (screams, cries and protests from those who have decided that a film more than 2 hours long was definitely bad for their health), mixes unexpected genres (documentary, action feature, political lampoon, a flavour of terror) and above all does not butter up the audience –no identification is possible– while drawing its strength and legitimacy in History itself since Wakamatsu made it a point of honour to describe real historical facts. Novices should not worry: “I think there is non consequence in being aware or not of Japan’s situation at the time to understand what is going on, Wakamatsu explains; besides, the first part made of archive footage and comments from the time places the action in its historical background. The starting point is the fact that students were the targets of political power and police repression.”
What is additionally unprecedented –but which the non Japanese audience is not necessarily aware of– is that the Asama events the films refers to, which traumatized Japan in the early 1970s and have had a tremendous impact on the political history of the country and on an international scale as well, are told for the first time from the inside. There have been indeed at least three other films on the same subject told from the point of view of the police, which persuaded the former-yakuza-turned-filmmaker he should make a film –based on his long conversations with Kunio Bando (one of the Asama hostage-taker still in on the run) –, “to restore the truth and pass it on to future generations.” By doing so, Wakamatsu was neither on the side of the students nor on the one of the police of course. Still, he points out the young people were ready to die. “Those who don’t understand that some people are ready to die when they enjoy a comfortable situation, without ever having to fight for it, have no right to judge them.”, he adds. After a pause, he resumes: “Unfortunately, they ended up reproducing among themselves what the state made them undergo. Victims and attackers were in the same logic and the revolutionaries ended up yielding to the logic of absolute power. It should be repeated over and over again: power kills. If there is a message in my film, it is that one.”
Françoise Duru
Watch United Red Army international trailer:
View also the Interview with Koji Wakamatsu