ZERO

Winner Ecumenical Jury Prize, Berlin International Film Festival 2020

TRANSCRIPT / WRITTEN VERSION

ZERO VIDEO Q&A RECORDED ON 07/03/2023

IN CONVERSATION WITH DIRECTOR KAZUHIRO SODA (KS) AND DR. TONY TRACY (TT), HUSTON SCHOOL OF FILM AND DIGITAL MEDIA, UNIVERSITY OF GALWAY

TT: Soda-san very nice to meet you!

KS: Nice to meet you!

TT: Thank you so much for taking some time to speak to the East Asia Film Festival Ireland. Maybe we can begin with you just introducing yourself to the Irish audiences, and tell us a little bit about yourself.

KS: My name is Kazuhiro Soda and I’m the director of the film you just watched, ZERO. I’ve been making documentaries and I call them ‘observational series’ in the same method and style. 

I have ten commandments of filmmaking, ten rules to follow which include that I don’t do any research before shooting. I roll the camera and pay for the production myself, and so on. ZERO was also shot and edited in the same way as other films following the ten commandements. ZERO is a sequel to MENTAL which was made in 2008. 

TT: It’s worth saying to the audience that most of your films are probably now available to rent on your website.

KS: Yes, most of them are. But MENTAL is actually not available at the momen but I’m hoping that our sales agent will make it available to rent online soon.

TT: Can you tell us a little more about your background and formation?

KS: I was born and raised in Ashikaga which is located in Tochigi Prefecture, a small town an hour drive from Tokyo. I moved to Tokyo to attend Tokyo University to study religion. And after I graduated, I had this whim that maybe I’ve been wanted to make movies, and I moved to New York without knowing anybody there. I just had a suitcase, it was 1993, and I joined a film school there. I was only interested in fiction filmmaking at that time. I didn’t even take one single class of documentary. But then, when I was looking for a job after graduation, I accidentally joined a company which produced documentaries, and that’s how I got hooked with documentary filmmaking.

TT: There’s a lot to think about there. I was speaking about ZERO to someone yesterday, and I was trying to find the word to describe the mood of this film and suggested maybe ‘contemplative’ is the best word to express it. Maybe it’s too strong to link your religious studies background and the kind of films you make, but there seems to be a contemplative flavour to the work you do. Is that accurate? Is that a reflection of your personality? Or is that come from the material?

KS: Well, first of all, I’ve been curious and thinking about life and death since I was little actually. I have this question all the time so I’m keen on that aspect. Also, I call my films ‘observational’ because I think ‘observation’ is key to make good films. When I say ‘observation’, it doesn’t mean being distant as a third party, it actually means, ‘look and listen carefully’. The Japanese word ‘kansatsu’ for ‘observation’, is about looking and also understanding. So I think the word ‘contemplative’ is quite similar in a sense, in terms of the attitude or posture about how we deal with life.

TT: I really like that. I like the word ‘attitude’, that’s a good summary, a good translation I think, more than ‘contemplative’ – the attitude. And that seems to me, and again I hesitated to do this because I hate to be stereotyped myself, but that seems to me to be quite a Japanese characteristic, this notion of posture or attitude. A certain humility in face of life. 

KS: Yes, at least that is something that I tried to pursue. Especially because it is very hard these days, because of this fast pace, digital age, it’s really hard to stop, look and listen carefully, or attentively. We have no time to do that. That’s why I think we need to do it. We have to be kind of very conscious to do it. Otherwise, we are surrounded by so much information, we kind of drowning, we loose sight. So I’m trying to make movies which are kind of anecdotes, no ‘antidotes’ to that situation.

TT: I like the mistake of the word ‘anecdote’ here, it’s very useful because, as I said to you, I was trying to explain your film to somebody recently. When you try to describe a film, you immediately move towards a disposition of telling the story. And at the end of the description I gave, I thought this sounds too neat: It sounds like it’s got three acts but actually, it really doesn’t, but it also does. So the film is a kind of ‘observation’ but there’s also a shape as well. I’m quite interested in that idea of the shape of the film, how you maintain a tension between ‘antidote’ and ‘anecdote’. At the same time, having a posture and attitude but also, you have to tell a kind of a story for an audience that is truthful.

KS: You always find a story if you look and listen carefully, because life is tough, it’s really tough to live. Everybody has drama. For example, for Dr. Yamamoto even to offer me a cup of tea is a big challenge. And usually, that kind of struggle is ignored or just cut. I think probably most filmmakers would have cut this scene out, because they think there isn’t any story in it. But for me, even the way he tried to offer me tea, is a story. I see some drama in it. Or (the scene) to visit the cemetery, it’s no picnic for Yamamoto and Yoshiko. For me, it might be easy at the moment, but for them no. To me, it looks like a rock climbing scene. If you don’t look and listen carefully, then you just probably don’t notice that kind of challenges. The key is always, look and listen carefully, and find. And make a discovery.

TT: I would like to establish for the audience as you said at the beginning, that this film is not a sequel per se but it develops from your film MENTAL. So, could you just quickly explain to us about that first film, and what it was?

KS: MENTAL is a film about a small clinic called, ’Chorale Okayama’. It’s a small clinic that Dr. Yamamoto and his patients established themselves. The film is basically about the patients. I was only interested in the patients at that time. There are all kind of psychological or mental disorders they have, but it’s only an out-patient clinic. We decided to shoot/film them, telling them, ‘we won’t use any mosaics or blurry facts to cover their faces, so please be aware of that…’. So 80 to 90% of the patients we spoke to, didn’t want to be in the film, and so only 10% to 20% said yes, and that’s how we made the film. 

And at that time, I wasn’t interested in Dr. Yamamoto at all because my main concern were the patients. But then, I learned that gradually Dr. Yamamoto is so respected and relied upon by all the patients. And also I learned, he was one of the pioneers who unlocked the mental hospitals in the 1960s. Back then, all the mental hospitals were locked, from outside the patient rooms you know, meaning they couldn’t get out of their rooms with their own will. He was the one (Dr. Yamamoto) who started unlocking the doors. 

So Kiyoko – my wife and producer –, Kiyoko and I became very interested in making a documentary on Dr. Yamamoto. But we didn’t move on this for ten years. And finally in 2018, a patient who appeared in MENTAL, texted me saying that Dr. Yamamoto is retiring next month. ‘Aren’t you making a movie? That would be the last chance to make a documentary about Dr. Yamamoto’. So that’s how we started filming ZERO. 

TT: So you had it in mind for quite a long time?

KS: yes, yes, yes, yes…

TT: In a strange way, if you believe in the universe and the right timing, the timing, it needed to wait ten years in a way. 

KS: Yeah… I’d like to think that way. But the fact is that, I was quite busy with making other films…

TT: MENTAL is a very powerful film. There’s lots of interesting things about it, but one of the most memorable scenes and one of the most amazing scenes I think in documentary cinema, is the interview with the woman in the short stay facility. I don’t want to say too much about it in case people haven’t seen it. She’s a very unwell woman and she has a terrible tragic past. I actually paused the film after I watched it because it’s truly incredible. In that scene you seemed to interview her, I think, a bit more. Whereas in this film (ZERO) it feels you’re a little bit more distant… Is that true, or has that changed, or was it simply the material? I was also a little bit concerned about the ethics of that earlier scene as it’s so personal.

KS: Right, well, she’s actually the one who texted me. 

TT: Ah, really!

KS: Yeah, to make a sequel. Actually, because I don’t do any research before shooting usually, I don’t know anything about the characters when we start shooting. I think, when I shot MENTAL, I met her five minutes before shooting that scene. I had no idea about what kind of person she is, what kind of trauma she has and, I had no idea. I was all along with her in the room, and I had no choice but to kind of have some conversation. That’s how it happens and so, I’m always like you know, my observations always participant observations you know, I’m observing the world which includes myself. And so, I’m ok with having my presence in the film. Although, I don’t proactively try to get something out of the interviewee, you know, I allow myself to have some natural human conversation. It’s like an extension of human relationship. And that’s how it happens in MENTAL. And for ZERO, I didn’t really prohibit myself to be engaged with other people but it came naturally the way it happened. And so, that’s why Dr. Yamamoto offered me some sake, of course you know I participated…

TT: I was very impressed, you said you couldn’t drink and drive…

KS: (laugh) It’s very strict in Japan. You could be a criminal if you do that. 

TT: I thought it was very brave. You’re a filmmaker and you might think well, if you have a little alcohol, things are gone a go a little bit easier here, but you, ‘No, I can’t drink and drive’. But actually, you know, it’s funny because it was very revealing because then he (Dr. Yamamoto) says, ‘Hmm – and he thinks about it for a minute – and then he said, ‘Then we get you a taxi’. And so, what I like about this kind of banal small moment is that, he really wants you to stay with him, and he knows you don’t want to but then, he creates a solution for you, and that’s exactly the way he is as a doctor. 

KS: Yes, for him nothing is impossible actually. And also, you know…I was kind of pleasantly surprised that he insisted because I had the feeling that maybe I’m a burden, I’d invaded their personal space, I had been shooting all day long and Dr Yamamoto and also Yoshiko-san, they want to entertain me…which is quite a lot of work for them. And so, actually, I was planning to visit their house many more times when I was thinking about the project. But while shooting, I felt maybe today will be the last time to visit them, because if I keep visiting them with a camera, I might be too much burden you know, to their lives. So I was quite concern about, in how much I’m kind of invading their territory, and being a nuisance also of some sort. 

TT: I remember when I watched that sequence, it feels very long, and not very dramatic. Another filmmaker might say, ‘Oh God, this is a waste, this is not really what this film is about.’ But there’s just something very special about it - the difficulty of making a cup of tea, the dishes are not clean, and somehow this helps us know this man and his life more. You have a kind of patience with non-dramatic stuff, or you’ve an extraordinary kind of faith in ordinary things. 

KS: Yes, and I also believe that ordinary things are what kind of make our lives, you know. It’s not the special occasions that really make our lives, it’s everyday moments. Every day, we are spending our time, and how we spend our time will kind of create or determine what kind of life we have. I think documentary films usually focus on a special occasion or special moment, or special event or incidents. But I’m trying to do the opposite you know, I’m trying to find the drama in everyday life, in everyday moment that we usually neglect and don’t pay attention to. 

TT: I know you’ve spoken in a little bit about Frederick Wiseman in other interviews. And one of the things which strikes me is, that MENTAL is kind of Wisemanesque in that it’s based around an institution, whereas this film is different. It’s the same subject but it’s a different version, that it is maybe more Soda-san that Wiseman.

KS: (laugh) Yes, I think so. I was really heavily influenced by Frederick Wiseman when I started my own films. And actually MENTAL was the first film I was trying to make. And we prepared filming gears and everything to make MENTAL. 

But then, I learned the news that a friend of mine was running for elections, and it was around the same time when we were shooting MENTAL, so we decided to shoot both. And then, we finished the election film called CAMPAIGN first. That’s why CAMPAIGN became my first film, but MENTAL was actually the first project I envisioned as a filmmaker. And back then, I was really influenced by Frederick Wiseman. But I knew my films will be different, will gradually go further away from Wiseman, because we are very different human beings and, we have very different backgrounds. And so, yeah, I think that was my starting point but these days people are surprised that I’m influenced by Wiseman….

TT: In this film (ZERO) I was really struck by – the banality of the doctor office. It’s a very old, rather untidy and it’s really ordinary, you know, not a scene of an institution, just kind of functional. But all of these people come into this tiny space and you have all of the world, the whole of human life in this very ordinary little space. I suppose, you chose deliberately to keep it much smaller. But then, you do something else which I’m interested in. You have a lot of zoom-ins as well. Can you just explain that to me a little bit? I was interested in that idea.

KS: Well, what I’m trying to do when I’m making films is that I’m trying to recreate my experience. And you know, when I’m shooting, I’m always having two modes. One mode is that first mode is, I’m observational. I’m just observing, look and listen carefully while rolling the camera. And when I notice something, I switch to the second mode which is I’m trying to interpret, translate my discovery to the cinematic language. For example, when I’m shooting the consultation between Dr. Yamamoto and his patients, let’s say I notice the patient’s hand is like, kind of nervously moving. Then, if I stay wide with the camera, then I cannot translate my finding to the cinematic language, so I decided to zoom-in. So, you know, we are doing it in our daily life all the time. When you notice something, we are mentally zooming-in to that kind of stuff. So I’m trying to recreate that kind of stuff, you know, with the camera.

TT: Yes, that’s great, thanks. The other thing I felt about the film was, it’s full of wisdom. Maybe you can tell us where the title of the film comes from. 

KS: Well, the very first scene of the film ZERO which lasts about four minutes  without any breaks, is a continuous shot. Dr Yamamoto was talking about reducing yourself to ‘zero’ or putting yourself to ‘zero’. And that was I thought a key word to his philosophy and also his attitude, or how he deals with your life, how he helps his patients and also how he helps himself. You know, when you think about his situation, he’s getting older, he’s retiring and he has a sick wife, and he has to take care of her. And there are things he cannot do anymore. You know, it’s pretty tough. And I think he is trying to survive these situations (his situations) by telling him (his patient) well, reduce yourself to ‘zero’. And so I thought it was a key word and yeah, the English title ZERO comes from that.

TT: I think it means, the meaning of it is you know, reduce your ego, get your ego out of your life in a sense, accept…

KS: Yes, accept, accept as it is, which is actually the spirit of observational filmmaking too… because I try not to manipulate the situation, you know. I try to accept whatever happens, which is difficult because we have ego and as a filmmaker we have things like, ‘wish list’. Like you know, I want to shot this kind of scene; I wish this would happen; I wish Dr. Yamamoto would have said something like that; whatever these wishes we have. But you know, when I was making TV documentaries, I was kind of trying to force the situation to kind of happen in the way I wished. Like by directing the interviewees, to say something like, ‘I want’. I want this comment so I’m trying to manipulate my question to get this answer. But that’s really counterproductive and also unnatural. And also it doesn’t really work, it makes your documentary kind of predictable you know, it’s within your imagination. I want to break that, I want to see something I’ve never expected or I’ve never kind of even imagined. So in order to do that, you kind of have to reduce your ego to accept whatever happens. And so to me, the more incontrollable the situation becomes, the better.

TT: That’s very beautiful. It has a very particular and specific meaning in the film, in application to this film which is about dementia. Because dementia is a kind of a reduction to zero, you know a kind of taking away, a subtraction. And so, this philosophy that the film he articulates to the patients, is something he needs to take on in a sense because his wife has also… And this happens I don’t know, halfway through the film, but certainly the film takes a new direction at one point. And this beautiful, very childlike woman is introduced, and it treats her also with patience. But then you do something interesting which is, you go to her friend to ask her to tell us. And also you have some footage of her. I wonder about that because it’s incredibly sad and quite difficult to watch, I suppose. But also I suppose, there’s a danger for you as a filmmaker that you might patronise, or you might be insulting to her now. Do you know what I mean about introducing these other perspectives ?

KS: Actually, I wanted to portrait Yoshiko-san as a whole person. That’s why I used those scenes and also the flashbacks. So actually, I didn’t have any like concern about that. But the thing is, that scene with Yoshiko’s friend, I didn’t really plan on shooting it, actually. When I started filming, when I shot, it was the fifth day of the shooting I remember. A journalist wanted to interview me. He’s a local journalist. He always interviews me for every films. We have became good friends, and he wanted to ask me what kind of film I was making. And I told him, ‘Well, it’s just the fifth day of shooting and I don’t know anything about it, so I can’t really tell you anything.’ He insisted, ‘Please, tell me what you shot so far?’. ‘All right!’. Then over dinner, I spoke. ‘Ok, I shot this, I shot that, blah blah blah blah blah blah…’ And then I realised. ‘Ah, I think I have a film already!’. After so five days, I told Dr. Yamamoto, ‘Actually, I think I have shot everything. I think, I’m done.’ And then he said, he was very surprised, because I shot like for two years for MENTAL, and only for five days for ZERO. He was very surprised. And then he suggested, ‘Maybe you want to shot one more (day). I want to take you to Yoshiko’s friend’, which never happened before, he has never suggested anything before. But for the very first time, he suggested. It was his suggestion to visit Yoshiko’s friend. And I said, ‘Of course, if you want to, I’d like to film that.’ And that’s how it happened. And I was really happy, and also a little bit ashamed that without that scene, I thought I was finished.  Because I found that scene to be very very important for the film, and I was trying to wrap it up without it.

TT: That’s wonderful. Because it did, you know strangely, it did feel like a staged scene you know, compared to (other scenes). 

KS: (laugh) Yeah, yeah…

TT: It was almost, it felt exactly the opposite of what you just said, which was like, ‘Oh we need another scene, we don’t have enough! You know, maybe we can get her friend or something, you know…’

KS: (laugh) Yeah, because it was Dr. Yamamoto’s intention, you know. Like, he created the scene in a sense. So, I think he wanted a scene where we get to know more about Yoshiko-san, and that was his intention. I didn’t know anything about it but…

TT: He’s so clever, you’re so right. That’s exactly what he wanted. He wanted us to understand the totality of her identity, that’s so interesting. And also, for me personally, I thought it gave a great portrait of friendship which is a beautiful thing. And also, the weird idea that she was the most intelligent in the couple. And now we are making a film about the man who sort of survive, almost by accident in a sense. 

KS: (laugh) Right, right… And it also accidentally shows like unequal power structure between man and woman in Japanese society. Especially, in the older generation, it was so automatic, that he husband becomes somebody who works outside, and the wife you know, stays at the household and raises their kids. It was so automatic back then. And also, you know, the relationship between Dr. Yamamoto’s mother and Yoshiko-san, it’s really typical Japanese patriarchal.

TT: We are running out of time, so I want to ask you one or two more quick questions. One is about age and Japan. So there’s this film and there’s another film, INLAND SEA, and maybe others. I haven’t seen PEACE for instance. But age is a theme, maybe I don’t know an accidental theme, but it seems to be a way of you talking about your own/home country, in really interesting ways. What is specific about the theme of age in Japan, do you think?

KS: Well, it’s a super aged society! And also, as I said before, I’ve been really interested in death and ageing from the very beginning of my life you know, since I was little. So, I have this kind of point of view, it’s built in. It’s a built-in point of view for me. And also, it’s not an ageing society, it’s already an aged society. So, yeah I’m surrounded by older people. Now I live in Ushimado which is where we shot INLAND SEA and OYSTER FACTORY. Most of the residents here are older than 80 years old, and also Kiyoko and I are probably the youngest of the neighbourhood. So, yeah, and it’s a huge social problem too, you know. We don’t have children, you know. How can we maintain, how can we sustain this Japanese society? It’s a big big question mark and nobody has figured it out. So, it’s a personal interest and also a society’s problem and yeah, so that’s probably why. 

TT: I suppose what you’re saying is, it’s unavoidable in a sense as a theme.

KS: (laugh) Yes, exactly, that’s a good word ‘unavoidable’. Yeah, it’s everywhere.

TT: One of the problems in Western society is kind of ageism as they call it, you know that there’s a kind of. But in a society that is aged already you know, is there more tolerance. Is there a different attitude towards age, do you think?

KS: No, I don’t think so. Sometimes it’s even really hostile to older people… It’s not everybody, but in the younger generation, they have this image that resources and money are being spent for older people, and they are the one who are supporting them, which is a very distorted world view, but you know. There are younger generations who are kind of angry about the fact that they are the ones who are paying taxes to support the elderly, which is inaccurate in itself because elderly people have worked and paid taxes, and their social security and pension and everything. But you know, there are propagandas like that.  

TT: I think this is common and would become more common everywhere. It becomes a kind of false truth. It’s a kind of perspective that takes on the quality of truth, as people gets more and more selfish. This leads me towards the end to ask you I suppose, because this exact theme is a nice segue to Ozu and to Tokyo Story, because this is what Tokyo Story is all about, the Ozu’s great post-war film. In some respects, I feel your film is almost like a bookend to Tokyo Story, or the post-war moment. It’s Japan now, fifty years later, these are the last generations of the post-war period… What influence on your work has Ozu in particular, or this classical Japanese cinema that we know in the West. I’m thinking also of Ikiru (To Live) maybe, and Kurosawa. Has that been an influence on your work?

KS: Huge influence, yeah. Particularly, I’m surprised you mentioned Ozu’s Tokyo Story because I watched it probably more than 50 times you know, over time. He was the reason I kind of got interested in filmmaking. It’s one of the reasons at least. Because you know, when I was studying religion, I was interested in the theme of death, and I studied like funeral ceremonies… I went to Bali to study how funeral ceremonies are conducted in Bali in Indonesia, for example. I was interested in the matter, the issue of death. But religious studies is basically science in a sense. You have to prove something. But it’s impossible to prove something about death or life, you know. All you can do is express. You can express about life and death but you can’t really proof anything about it. That’s where I think it came in, when I watched Tokyo Story it was really about life and death and how we deal with it. It’s not proving anything but it’s really, it came… I was so touched by how life was depicted by Ozu. So, I think, oh wow this film is like a great way to deal with this kind of subject or theme… So yeah I think subconsciously, I think it had an enormous impact and was part of the reason for me becoming a filmmaker.

TT: Also perhaps the influence of the ‘pillow shot’ in Ozu. In Ozu, just for people who don’t know, there is often a random shot of wires or a balloon and you do this too. I just want to finish by asking you about this because I’m sure people are always a little bit surprised by the small shots of school kids, or cats, or people cycling bicycles.

KS: Yes definitely, it has some sort of the same structure. For example, the students you’re talking about, the middle-schoolers. I mean, first of all, they are funny and they are cute. Also, I realise it was when Dr. Yamamoto and Yoshiko met, I mean around that age, they met as middle-schoolers. So when I watched them, these boys and girls, like being shy to each other but they are kind of having fun, probably that’s around the age, Dr Yamamoto and Yoshiko-san, they kind of met in the classroom, and they mingle together and that’s how they were, you know. So, at least for me it was a reason, really a good reason to put it in the film. 

TT: And the cats?

KS: Yes, cats! I mean we love cats, so when I see a cat on the streets, I have to shoot, I have to shoot them. And that cat was so magnificent, and also I realised that probably he was getting older too. He was sick too. But he has a dignity and so, yeah again I thought he was a parallel to Dr Yamamoto and Yoshiko-san. 

TT: That’s beautiful. And then finally, there was one other film I would like to reference and that is is Modern Times (Chaplin). It struck me that although its very different ZERO kind of ends like Modern Times. In the end it’s this couple and this kind of intimacy, and also the kind of recognition, misrecognition. You know the idea, that she doesn’t see him in Modern Times and he recognised her, and so on. So there’s a very interesting kind of parallel in that last scene.

KS: Yes, yes, definitely! I mean I didn’t ask them to have their hands, I mean, hands in hands, no. It was naturally happening and to me it was kind of really touching when I was shooting. You know, they both needed each other to support. You know Dr Yamamoto was also in need of help, and Yoshiko-san was in need of help. So they all have to kind of support each other. And it was so metaphorical I thought about life. And when I shot that last shot, I knew it was going to be the last shot of the film you know, immediately. Yeah, so actually I edited the last scene first. It was the first scene I edited. And I constructed everything towards the last scene, to build up towards the last scene and the last shot. And, so the last shot was probably the most important shot of the film. 

TT: Well, that seems a good way to stop our conversation. So Soda-san, thank you so very very much…

KS: Thank you Tony-san…

END