“Hokusai, impressions of the rising sun”: our criticism of the documentary

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COn the factory for Hokusai’s life (1760-1849) is not easy. Consequently, First of all because the designer died at the canonical age of 88. Meanwhile, which he has never stopped moving (at least ninety times!), Or changing his name during his artistic evolution and that his curriculum vitae has a coland’s look. Consequently, Another difficulty, and not the least, there is no photo known to him and very few documents representing him. Furthermore, To evoke the existence of the author of Thirty-six views of Mount “hokusai, impressions rising sun”: our Fuji. Who has revolutionized the history of the Japanese print and deeply marked the gaze of the Monet, Degas, Cézanne and other Van Gogh, the biographers generally use subterfuges. Historical reconstructions in costumes. voiceover reading extracts from texts or reported quotes, testimonies of specialists and art historians are among the most frequent expedients.

Lise Baron. the director, chose an original and more complex path, that of the story with images with a single (and invisible) narrator and a tailor -made partition. His documentary is based solely on the master’s drawings. paintings and prints, as well as little -known archive films, captured in Japan at the very end of the 19th century, fifty years after his disappearance. A daring bias which. by following step by step the chronology of “Old crazy drawing”, As he was nicknamed himself, did not elude the gray areas and endeavors to explain the zigs “hokusai, impressions rising sun”: our and the Zags. If the narrative sometimes purrs a little. one can only praise the finesse of this immersion in the heart of the images where, like an insect taken in amber, life continues to throb.