Film – Conflagration

Imported 35mm Print. Known as Ichikawa’s favorite of his own films, Conflagration is the pinnacle of the many acclaimed literary adaptations he and his wife Natto Wada worked on together. Based on Yukio Mishima’s novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, the film involves the spiritual and psychological breakdown of an introverted, troubled youth named Goichi (Raizo Ichikawa), whose desire for pure beauty leads him to Kyoto’s Shukaku temple, where he becomes an apprentice to the priest. Haunted by the trauma of his father’s death, Goichi is unable to reconcile the sacred beauty of the temple with postwar reality, and his absolutist ideals become increasingly distorted until they lead to destruction. Ichikawa’s stark, poignant film is unforgettably rendered in stunning black and white by cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa.

Dir. Kon Ichikawa, 1958, 99 min., 35mm, b/w, in Japanese with English subtitles. With Raizo Ichikawa, Tatsuya Nakadai, Ganjiro Nakamura.