255. Japanese director Takashi Koizumi’s film “Hakase no aishita sushiki” (The Professor and His Beloved Equation) (2006), based on an award-winning Japanese novel by Yoko Ogawa: Melding the magical world of numbers and mathematics with invisible eternal truths existing in the universe, for adults and school-going students alike

 

 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand,

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand,

And Eternity in an Hour

                       ---opening lines from William Blake’s poem 

                           “Auguries of Innocence”

Some people don’t like numbers or mathematics but many do. Whether you belong to either category, the 2003 Yomiuri-prize-winning novel by the Japanese lady Yoko Ogawa called The Housekeeper and the Professor (the English translation has been published by Picador) and Takashi Koizumi’s film The Professor and His Beloved Equation based on that novel lead you gently into the mystical world of numbers that have captivated great minds like Pythagoras and Descartes over the centuries. What Ogawa and Koizumi achieve is to make an average person look at numbers with respect and realize that numbers were not created by human beings—they existed in the universe, we humans merely discovered them and are beginning to comprehend a small segment of the universe as we know it today. Both the book and the film motivate all and sundry to learn mathematics without being intimidated by numbers and equations. Ultimately, the film suggests a beautiful equation is like nirvana or the bliss of cosmic understanding described by the lines of the American poet William Blake at the end of the film.

Schoolteacher 'Root' resembles the root sign

                                 

The mystical connection

The book and the film introduce a young male schoolteacher who is commonly known by the name “Root,” the mathematical symbol, ever since an elderly mathematics professor associated Root’s somewhat flat head and a stubborn tuft of hair to one side (when he was a lot younger) with that symbol. That professor’s memory was impaired following a brain damage caused by an accident, and subsequently could think clearly only for a slice of 80 minutes at a time before forgetting what had transpired before that. He, therefore, pins reminders on his jacket to jog his memory after each segment of clear recollection. For all practical purposes, the professor adopts Root as own child and gradually instils his love for numbers, mathematics, and baseball in the young boy. Root, in his turn on growing up, very gently infuses the same love for numbers and the mystical association between them to his school students.

The professor (Akira Terao) meets Root's mother

                            

How does the film generate unusual interest in the viewer for numbers and mathematics? An introductory conversation between the Professor and his new housekeeper begins with a question about her shoe size, which she answers happens to be 24 centimeters. He happily informs the perplexed young lady that 24 is a “noble” number and a factorial of 4. He then explains how a factorial is calculated, which is in this case 1x2x3x4. He then asks her phone number and is overjoyed because that happens to be the precise total of “prime” numbers up to one billion. Then, as the film progresses, the viewer learns about "perfect" numbers and “amicable pairs” of numbers such as 220 and 284 and why they are called that. All this is not fiction but scientific facts to entertain and instill curiosity in minds to know more. And who discovered the first pair? It was Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician, who lived in the 6^th century BC. Even this factoid is mentioned in the film. Then you learn about “transcendental” numbers and “imaginary” numbers later in the film. All facts, not fiction!

Young Root is 'adopted' by the professor

                                

And what is the “favorite equation” forming the title of the film? It is a variant of Euler’s equation now called “Euler’s identity.” It is an amazing fact that even today famous contemporary mathematicians call that particular equation/theorem of the Swiss mathematician (1707-83) to be the most elegant or beautiful theorem ever conceived. That is the connection to Blake’s poem ending the uplifting Japanese  film.

While Ms Ogawa has published over 50 books of fiction and non-fiction, in 2006 the year Koizumi released the film, the author brought out a book entitled An Introduction to the World’s Most Elegant Mathematics, in collaboration with mathematician Mashiko Fujihara. But who are the persons responsible for the film The Professor and His Beloved Equation? Director Koizumi was the assistant director to the late Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa on five of his final major films: Ran, Kagemusha, Dreams, Madadayo, and Rhapsody in August and was an uncredited assistant to the director on a sixth one Dersu Uzala. The Kurosawa connection to the Koizumi film continues. The cinematographer Shoji Ueda too was the cinematographer of five of those films, the actor Akira Terao (who plays the professor) was a lead actor in Ran and Madadayo, so too, actor Hisashi Ogawa (who plays the brief role of the housekeeper agent) is a stock Kurosawa actor. Even though Kurosawa had nothing to do with this film, his trusted collaborators were the principal contributors to The Professor and His Beloved Equation. Kurosawa would have been proud because the film apart from mathematics briefly introduces Japanese culture and the essentially Japanese Noh theatre to any uninitiated viewer as well.

 "...as difficult as proving the beauty of a star"

                          

While the film is essential viewing for those who love numbers (and their mystical attributes), mathematics, physics and metaphysics, it perpetuates a minor fallacy. While the film attributes the discovery of amicable numbers, after Pythagoras had discovered the first set, to the European mathematicians Fermat (1601-65) and Descartes (1596-1650). It now well known that the Iraqi mathematician Thabit ibn Qurra (826-901) had invented a method to discover them (ref: Wikipedia on Amicable Numbers). Several Arab mathematicians used that method between the 10th and 17^th centuries to discover more amicable numbers but the popular Western belief attributes the findings to Fermat and Descartes.

The philosophy behind a straight line

                                

The Professor and His Beloved Equation may not be widely known as an important film, which it is. When it does get further traction cineastes who don’t read books are likely to recall the film and not the book on which it is based. How many Andrei Tarkovsky fans attribute even a fraction of the brilliance of his films Solaris and Stalker to Stanislaw Lem and the Strugatsky brothers, respectively? Only a few demarcate a film and its source material.

 

P.S.  The Professor and His Beloved Equation won the best director award at Fajr film festival in Iran and an award for its music at the Mainichi Film Concours in Japan.

96. Japanese maestro Mikio Naruse’s "Yama na Oto" (Sound of the Mountain/The Echo) (1954): Underlining profound Asian sensibilities

Mikio Naruse’s cinema will appeal to many as it hits sensitive spots in the hearts and the minds of the viewer without resorting to the impressive tools of modern cinema, specifically special effects, stylized camerawork and use of sound and music, which contemporary film directors fall back on to mesmerize audiences. Naruse’s cinema is unpretentious, recalling the works of Satyajit Ray. Most cinema lovers forget the trio of Japanese masters who contributed a great deal to world cinema--Kurosawa, Ozu and Naruse. Unfortunately, Naruse was the least exposed of the trio to Indian and western audiences but he enjoyed domestic recognition. Decades later, critics are rediscovering Naruse.

The story line of Yama na Oto might not make audiences of the Western world sit up. That is because the concept of strong women characters holding families together is never a selling theme in the Americas and Europe.

This Naruse film is all about family values. The male head of the father is concerned about his son who is leading a wayward life after marriage. He is equally concerned about his daughter with two children of her own who is struggling to keep her marriage from falling apart. While most western audiences and audiences in Westernized Japan might accept this changing male attitude, tradition and values are important for the old man and a considerable cross section of Japanese society even today. The relationship of a woman towards her parents-in-law is another aspect etched out with care in this film. Here, the daughter-in-law is devoted to her parents to a fault and the parents-in-law reciprocate that by showering love and respect for her. However, the underlying tension that Naruse builds up is between a wayward husband and a dutiful, smiling wife, efficient and gracious to all who encounter her.

This Naruse film is also paean to the virtues of being an intelligent woman, sensitive to all family members who depend on her. At the same time, this is not a doll toiling away in the kitchen but a person who can take incredible mature decisions by herself without consulting others of whether she should procreate within a bad marriage or continue to hold the marriage and defy the wishes of her doting parents-in-law.

For cineastes who loved Kurosawa’s Ikuru, the final shot of Naruse’s Yama na Oto would strike a chord as father and daughter-in-law walk away, almost hand in hand from the camera. The camera makes you realize ironically that they are two remrakable individuals who in another life would have made a great couple, if they were not separated by age. (In Ikuru, it was the tragedy of a single, lonely individual captured in a bleak winter. Both images invite comparison and contrast.) Human relationships can be truly wonderful when one gets to appreciate the moral strengths of individuals that often lie hidden as though their real faces were behind a Noh (Japanese theater form) mask. This, incidentally, is a subject of conversation in the film Yama na Oto. A mature worldly face can change into an angelic childish face with the aid of a mask. Somehow the final shot of Yama na Oto made me recall the the end of the somewhat contemporary 1997 French film Nettoyage à sec (Dry cleaning) where the relationship of a married couple is examined through a cathartic finale, using Occidental values of cinema. Even Lars von Trier's The Anti-Christ does the same. But these examples of Occidental cinema rely on sex and violence to communicate with the viewer--a necessity which Naruse consciously rejects.

It is this aspect that the erudite American film critic Susan Sontag found most interesting in this film. Not the Noh mask but the performance of the lead actress is what she found amazing. Sontag found the performance of the Setsuko Hara in this film one of the finest performances ever on screen. If you see this film, you will concur with Sontag, as the lady is able to transform from a childlike angelic personality into a strong-willed modern woman. She not only surprises her on-screen father-in-law but the audience who never expect the events that follow. Naruse and Hara are truly amazing as they weave magic.

Naguse’s peer Akira Kurosawa once stated “(In the films of Naruse,) a flow of shots that looks calm and ordinary at first glance reveals itself to be like a deep river with a quiet surface disguising a fast-raging current.” To some the film might remain as a great adaptation of a popular Nobel Prize winning Yasunari Kawabata's novel, which I have not read. But to others like me it is true cinema, the images, the acting and direction, which in combination makes the film a treat to watch.

I do wish that TV channels and DVD stores make films of Naruse, Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Kurosawa more accessible to viewers worldwide. Here’s a film on sex and marriage without any sex on screen. Here’s a film on character and morals. Here’s a film on true heroism—the story of an ordinary housewife, not a swashbuckling hero on horseback! Even in black and white, this 1954 film for me will remain a major work of cinema.