Within the field of cinema, the screen where endless images and fantasies are continuously projected, it is extremely difficult to bring the dimension of subjectivity to life and create characters that fluidly succeed to slip through the spectator’s fingers of understanding.
To create a cinematic plane where the subject’s struggle with his own subjectivity can be echoed – where what escapes the imaginary can loudly reverberate, the director must find a way to frustrate the spectator’s swift interpretative acts. With Desert of Namibia, Yoko Yamanaka proves that she is more than capable to craft an evocative piece that will deeply resonate deeply with young adults. Skilfully, she transforms the silent gaps between signifiers into echoes of what cannot be said and how this unsaid speaks via acting-outs, acts addressed to the Other who does not know how to answer.
Given the finesse by which Yoko Yamanaka explores the contemporary space of inter-subjective silence and subjective alienation – alienation from one’s own desire, it is not surprising that the International Federation of Film Critics awarded her at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, making her the youngest female director ever to receive such award. In the analysis that follows, we will delve deeper into certain threads of Yoko Yamanaka’s masterpiece and investigate how she stages the irreducible tension between subject and the Other – i.e. the societal as well as the male Other.
To make headway in our analysis and start unfurl the main threads of Desert Of Namibia, it is essential that we analyse Yamanaka’s opening sequence very carefully. The meeting between Kana Miyama (Yumi Kawai), the protagonist of the narrative, and her friend Ichika (-) introduces two important elements to the spectator: the puzzling nature of certain suicides and the misrecognition that structures the field of imaginary interactions (Narra-note 1).
At the same time as the girls are conversing, a man shares his critique of the Japanese societal field to his younger colleagues. He does not only state that Japan is doomed due to the low birth rate and the increase in poverty, but also laments how life-style have changed: subjects either sacrifice all their subjectivity by working all the time or refuse to commit themselves to the societal field – i.e. the demands of the Other – by not working at all. His signifiers reverberate the unrefutably truth that the societal field, the Other, has a profound effect the subject’s process of coming-into-being as subject.
Yamanaka elaborates these three elements – the puzzling nature of certain acts, the misrecognition that marks the interactional field, and the profound impact of the Other on subjectivity – by offering the spectator a fragmentary glance at Kana’s subjective trajectory and inviting him to read Kana’s subjectivity as well as the societal space that surrounds her and in which she tries to establish/stabilize herself as subject. Yamanaka’s thoughtful concatenation of fragmentary glances give rise to an irreducible sense of vagueness and thwarts the spectator’s attempt to get a definite grasp on Kana’s subjective position. The composition of conversational shreds and the glimpses of gestures, carefully sewn together with the thread of silence, confront the spectator with the very fact that Kana is not defined by what she consciously does and says, but by what remains unsaid and how her repressed truth finds its echo in her acts and signifiers.
The dimension of the unsaid is intrinsically linked with the societal field that surrounds the subject. Yamanaka frames Tokyo as a space that deafens subjectivity. The oppressive liveliness of the city – the excess of clashing sounds and the societal haste evoked by this auditive tumult – betrays the presence of subjective silence.
This silence resounds in the interactions our characters have with each other. By crafting naturalistic conversational structures and rhythms, Yamanaka succeeds in underlining that, within the contemporary societal field, interactions are unable to escape the claws of the imaginary; Speech is organized around ideal images – ideal egos – and dictated by the demand to share pleasure. Friends merely exchange empty speech. The gushes of verbal violence within the societal field are function of the image – seducing or shaming it – and subjects obtain some pleasure by chasing socially embedded ideal images – girls lasering their pubic hair away.
Within a societal field that promotes the ‘imaginarization’ of social bonds, it is not that surprising that Kana is able to gain pleasure by organizing two boyfriends around her (Narra-note 2). Yet, one day, Shin Hayashi (Daichi Kaneko) asks her to break up with Honda (Kanichiro), whom she lives together with, and undo the symptomatic constellation that has stabilized her for so long. Yet, what will the subjective price be for overturning her symptomatic organisation? And, can Kana, in a state of confusing subjective turmoil, find the path to the signifier and someone who listens with his/her third ear?
The many silences between Kana and Shin echo the unsettling absence of an inter-subjective dynamic – a dynamic that might give birth to symbolic love. With shared pleasure dissipating, the spatial silence between them becomes a persecutory presence that reverberate the inter-subjective nothingness and the deflated state of Kana’s ego. Sadly, Kana cannot bear such frustrating silence, this disquieting quietness that hollows her out and puts her desirability radically into question. What started as a liberating flight into shared pleasure slowly transforms into a tragedy of disillusionment, misrecognition, and failed encounters.
The tragedy of Desert of Namibia is one of desire, of a desire that escapes the grasp of its female subject and the male others who romantically interact with her (Narra-note 2, psycho-note 1). Kana’s silences, signifiers and acts sketch out a misrecognized subjective void where desire fails to find its echo and thus cannot make itself heard.
At a certain point in the narrative, the spectator is confronted with the following riddle: Kana’s urge to watch videos of the Namibian desert (i.e. of animals drinking from an artificial puddle of water in the middle of the desert). This puzzling act, which is introduced as a singular signifier in the narrative, demands interpretation. The spectator must assume that these videos reflect something of Kana’s subjectivity back to her – she is the still water from which certain ‘male’ animals want to drink. These videos do not merely symbolize, in a soothing manner, the unverbalized tension that exists between her, her libidinal objects, and the societal Other, but represent her as chained subject, as a subject whose subjective silence pervades the societal field.
What plays an incredibly important role in bringing the thematical depth of Yamanaka’s narrative to life is the performance of Yumi Kawai. With much emotional nuance, Kawai brings the three-dimensionality of her character – i.e. the fact that she radically misrecognizes her desire – to the fore. Through her bodily performance, she grants the spectator a glance at the suffering that arises from being unable to find a way to grasp her desire and bring into play in the societal field via the signifier.
The composition of Desert of Namibia, shot in a square format, relies heavily on subtle shaky framing – the camera-tremble marks static shots to a lesser or greater extent. By richly utilizing this compositional decoration, Yamanaka lures the spectator into giving the fictional narrative an anchor-in-reality. To put it differently, by elegantly shaking the frame, Yamanaka invites the spectator to assume that the fictional reality of the protagonist – this flat ‘imaginarized’ filmic reality – is continuous with their own lived reality and infuse their own subjective position within the Other into the trajectory of the protagonist, hereby heightening the potentiality of the narrative to affect the moviegoer in a profound way.
Yamanaka also integrates a lot of long takes in her composition, hereby inviting the spectator to fully immerse himself into her narrative’s atmosphere – the harmonious coalescing of visual elements and diegetic sounds – of the framed narrative space. Yet, what truly brings the atmosphere of the various narrative spaces alive, grabbing the spectator’s attention and arousing his engrossment into the narrative, are the soundscapes. Yoko Yamanaka fully exploits the sound-design to give scenes either a satisfying but oppressive richness or a sensible but strained stillness.
The spectator, having read our analysis up until now, will have no qualms in accepting that Yamanaka’s focus on sound is deeply thematical motivated. Her choice to grant the sounds of the city (e.g. The busy streets, the excess of sound within a host-club) a nearly oppressive presence and create recurring contrasts between this aural excess with the sensible quietness of other narrative spaces does merely echo Kana’s subjective silence, but evokes that her silence is mainly function of the oppressive presence of the Other and his demands – i.e. be silent (about your suffering) and enjoy (alcohol, desserts, the smartphone screen, … etc). The stillness that lingers within the apartments, the quietness that permeates the morning and evening streets, and the repression of full speech by the never-ending cacophony of city-sounds, emphasize that Kana fails to grasp the void, the desire, that animates her comportment within her romantic interactions – she acts her desire out, yet without understanding.
Desert of Namibia proves that her debut Amiko (2017) was no fluke. While many years have passed since her debut, these years of refining her skill and creatively exploring her own position within the Other she was born in have enabled her to deliver a cinematic masterpiece of subjectivity. Yamanaka, by expertly exploiting imagery and sound, does not only bring the spectator into contact with the void that ails the contemporary subject, but lets him fleetingly experience it or re-discover its presence within himself.
Notes
Narra-note 1: Ichika failed to realize that Chiaki’s call was an appeal to the Other, an attempt to make the Other hear one’s suffering without using full speech.
Ichika did not realize she was addressed as Other and, conversely, failed to answer Chiaki from that position. Chiaki, on the other hand, failed to address her chosen Other with subjective speech, speech that signals the presence of suffering.
Narra-note 2: We do have to note that both Kana’s relationships seem to ‘satisfy’ the same desire in a different shape. While her relationship with Honda pleases her desire by turning him into a caring motherly presence in a fatherly shape, her relationship with Hayashi seeks to please the same desire by sharing pleasure (e.g. alcoholic, sexual).
It is thus not surprising that, when pleasure disappear from their interactions, Kana starts questioning Hayashi to determine whether he (sexually) desires her or not.
Narra-note 3: After their first conflict, Shin does succeed in addressing Kana with his subjectivity – expressing his fear of losing himself as ego, yet Kana remains silent. Yet, does Kana establishes herself as a quiet receiver or a silent refuser of this speech? Will this sudden burst of subjective speech cause Shin to change or will it quietly die out and leave the frail imaginary relational dynamic unchanged?
The injury Kana sustains due to this conflict is utilized by her to force her boyfriend to turn himself into a caring motherly presence in a fatherly shape.
Psycho-note 1: The spectator will ultimately come to understand thatKana’s desire is the desire to feel desired. Yet, as she fails to vocalize the call of this desire, as she is alienated from the subjective truth, cannot but perform all kinds of acting-outs, all kinds of brutal appeals – verbal and physical – to an Other who fails to hear what she does not say.
General-note 1: Our analysis allows the spectator to fully grasp the subjective importance of the final signifier Kana verbalizes in Yamanaka’s finale. Without giving too much away, this signifier inaugurates a change in Kana’s position with respect to her own subject, to her subjectivity.