Profound Desires of the Gods

Set on the fictional island of Kurage which, as an islander sings throughout the film, is said to have been forged by discarded objects thrown by incestuous brother and sister gods, Imamura’s final fiction film for almost a decade builds upon many of the obsessions that characterised his work throughout the 60s, namely the clash between the primitive and the civilized.

At the heart of the film sits both the Futori family, outcast from the rest of the islands inhabitants due a variety of indiscretions, ranging from incest to infidelity, improper fishing practices to mental instability, and Kariya, a Tokyo engineer sent to the island to oversee the opening of a Sugar manufacturing facility.

From its lush tropical forests to its shining turquoise seas, all captured in mesmerising technicolor, Kurage appears to be an island paradise. However under its paradisiacal surface Kariya quickly discovers that the island is not only teeming with the animals and insects Imamura regularly trains his camera upon - but also with deep rooted superstitions, privation, and duplicities. Despite his attempts to complete his work, Kariya finds himself engulfed by the primal urges of the Futori family, and as the months pass under the beating sun, he slowly finds himself drawn into their way of life.

Profound Desires of the Gods expands the obsessions that had animated the first decade of Imamura’s work to his largest canvas yet and in the island of Kurage (Okinawa in reality) he finds the means to examine the entire strata of a society from its messy familial dramas to its political machinations. However, the film is by no means an exercise in intellectual study, whilst Imamura’s famous anthropological outlook is ever-present, its blood, flesh, and feeling that sits at its heart. A history of Japan made myth, Imamura traces the evolution of a nation from the agrarian to the industrial, the primitive to the modern, but all the while taking great pains to remind us that no matter how things change our foundations are as desirous and ritualistic as ever.

Profound Desires of the Gods (神々の深き欲望), dir. Shōhei Imamura, Japan 1968, Japanese with English subtitles, 175 min.