Blood is Dry

BLOOD IS DRY
CHI WA KAWAITERU
Japan
1960
87 Min
Black and White
Japanese
DIR Yoshishige Yoshida
PROD Takeshi Sasaki
SCR Yoshishige Yoshida
DP Toichiro Narushima
CAST Keiji Sada, Kaneko Iwasaki, Shinichirô Mikami, Mari Yoshimura, Yuuko Kashiwagi, Masao Oda, Asao Sano
ED Yoshi Sugihara
MUSIC Hikaru Hayashi
SOUND Toshio Tanaka
My Rating : 5/5 (Great Movie)



Blood is Dry is one of those rare films from the new wave era that rise above mere rebellion against tradition and use of novel camera techniques to tell us a story that is socially relevant and hard hitting. It is also an indicator of how quickly the Japanese emerged out of the post war scenario and started highlighting problems of the modern era.
The most interesting part of this movie though is the reinterpretation of the protagonists of the classic novel “Don Quixote” by Miguel De Cervantes. For those who haven’t read this book, Don Quixote was Cervantes’ attempt to ridicule the countless stories of chivalry of knight errants that were extremely popular in the romantic era of literature. Don Quixote is hence a naive idealist who wants to live the adventures of his favorite knight errants in an era where they were irrelevant. Sancho Panza is a good for nothing and stupid sycophant who follows Don Quixote as his squire in this pointless exercise of living a dream which he believes would help him get riches and recognition.
In this movie Kiguchi is a modern day Don Quixote and Ikuyo is Sancho Panza. Just like Don Quixote, Kiguchi is an idealist who believes in his ability to make a difference to society because he thinks people trust him. Ikuyo, a good hearted but naive co-worker save’s Kiguchi from an attempt to suicide due to a mass lay off of employees and tags along with him when he recognizes the impact that Kiguchi’s suicide attempt has had on his popularity due to an ad campaign. Kiguchi is utilised by Nonaka(an ad executive) in the ad campaign that helps her company’s sales to sky rocket. But to her dismay Kiguchi isn’t a puppet as she had thought him to be. He takes his popularity too seriously and decides to work on his own for the betterment of the people of Japan. This does not go down well with the paparazzi and they try to defame him and his wife in every possible way by raising a scandal. Kiguchi refuses to give up though and in the end goes down as a real hero. It is ironical though that the person who was till recently the face of an insurance company has no value in the end and hence he comes down crashing to the ground like the huge advertisement board in the end.
This film is a critique on the modern society that doesn’t value people who truly want to do something for the world. Such people are scorned, ridiculed and defamed until they have to take the ultimate step. These people are ironically hailed as martyrs in death but very soon they are forgotten in this consumerist world where you are valued only if you “sell”.