'O Zeus, what fate hast thou ordained for me?'
- Oedipus in ‘Oedipus Rex’
'It will be enough if it is considered useful by those who wish to judge clearly both what has happened and what will come about again in the future, in the same or similar fashion, given the nature of man.'
-Thucydides
'I know you have an ego, I just don't know it is that big.'
-Vince McMahon to Donald Trump
When Oedipus, the tragic hero who was fated to murder his father and marry his mother, travelled to Thebes in an attempt to escape his dark fate (due to a misunderstanding that the parents who raised him were his biological parents), he has committed an amazing feat on the way. During his journey he encountered a Sphinx, an ancient monster that took the shape of a lion, yet having a human-like face. The Sphinx has come up with its own approach to torment people – it would ask challenging riddles to the travelers who wished to pass the place it was guarding, and whoever gave a wrong answer would be killed and disposed of by the monster. Judging from the body count so far, the level of the questions were certainly higher than those questions intending to raise one’s self-esteem on the Web. Oedipus has been given 2 riddles to solve, and the first one is very relevant to our topic here. The Sphinx asked:
What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon,
and three feet in the evening?
Oedipus, without hesitation, gave an answer of epic proportions – ‘Man’. The Sphinx, admitting its defeat, killed itself by rolling off the cliffs. Little did Oedipus know that, after passing this formidable obstacle towards his perceived success, this only served as the starting point of his tragic fate. I think what is more ironic is the fact that Oedipus was the only one who could solve the riddle of Man in the first place: as his story served as the testament of human condition. Only through the highs and lows would Oedipus appreciate what that meant to be a human.
Sophocles and Akira Kurosawa, through centuries apart, served a similar outlook on life and art. They both believed humanism was the approach that would inspire people to focus on a correct framework to understand and appreciate the mystery of life. And, the historical context they both found themselves in also contributed a lot to their work. Sophocles lived through the high points of Classical Athens, and through the Age of Pericles the democratic atmosphere encouraged various opinions to compete with each other, and there was always plenty of room for debate. Thus the rise of the art of the rhetoric from the Sophists, and given the intensity of the nomos-physis debate, ‘agon’ was a common element in many of Sophocles’ tragedies. Kurosawa, who lived his life throughout the 20th century, encountered the emergence of many schools of thinking. From the rational minds of Analytic Philosophy and Vienna School to the various schools of Continental Philosophy, the great master of cinema certainly has found a lot of inspirations from other art forms and thinkers – from Nietzsche, Freud, Gorky, Dostoyevsky and Brecht alike. Through the explorations of the conflicts among humanity, Kurosawa has strived to look for the common attributes for all of us, no matter how our social or historical circumstances might have shaped us.
Though Sophocles might never have intended, as in the case of Henrik Ibsen or Eugene O’Neill, to take a ‘psychological’ approach in his dramas, his surviving masterpieces told us a lot about human psychology. I have to admit, though, that Euripides was more committed to this aim; and Kurosawa has certainly tried very hard to achieve a psychological realism in many of his films. Sophocles was very gifted in characterization. The characters in his drama were never boring, and that reached a sophistication in the complexity of the tragic characters. In ‘Electra’, the story was focused on the psychological dispositions of Electra, her hatred towards her mother, and her conflicted feelings because the reunion with her younger brother Orestes. What is special about Sophoclean characters is that they are often likeable and admirable characters, and they have the potential and attributes to succeed and lead better lives. Oedipus, Antigone, Ajax, Philoctetes, Creon were all idealistic and individualistic characters, and they believed in reason, knowledge, and physical ability. They were always willing to give their best shots when challenges caught up with them, and they were willing to sacrifice, often at a high cost, for what they maintained. Yet the Sophoclean reversal of fortune would lead all these characters to misfortune too severe to serve as their mistakes. As Aristotle has pointed out, tragic characters were always flawed in the sense that their personalities would lead them to hamartia, the commitment of a single fatal mistake that would overturn their winning streaks. Oedipus might be very intelligent and resourceful by his era’s standard, yet his hubris, over-confidence and stubbornness were the combination of factors that led to his downfall. Antigone, who clearly had her personal traits inherited from her father Oedipus, was just as stubborn and inflexible when she transgressed the law to bury one of his outlawed brothers. Ajax, a great warrior, could not swallow the pride of being undermined by Odysseus, and committed suicide as a matter of honor. Even so for Creon : in his attempt to avoid shame and assert his own ruling power by punishing Antigone, he succeeded in angering the gods and led to the death of his family. The fierce individualism of the characters stood at odds with their social environment, and the facts that they did not compromise often resulted in tragic outcomes.
Kurosawa’s characters also had to confront the social structure they resided in, and they had to find a balance in their individual aspirations and the demands from society. His earlier work, like ‘Sanshiro Sugata’, ‘The Most Beautiful’, and ‘Sanshiro Sugata : Part 2’, already had hints of stressing individual excellence. The characters were keen practitioners of their chosen crafts, and through their hard work they tried to stick close to the ideals they believed in, like Bushido, Japanese values and patriotism. The insistence of traditional values were still very evident in later works like ‘Seven Samurai’ and ‘Red Beard’, and with an additional humanistic touch. Yet it is crucial to note that Kurosawa’s first works, made in the early 1940s, were shaped by the historical context of World War II, and while he might likely be unintentional, these films served as propaganda for Japan in those years. Indeed before Kurosawa became known in international cinema, he has made a number of films that fell in the genre of Film Noir, and those films reflected the state of post-war Japan, which was still slowly recovering from their wrong political choices and still had a lot to sort out. Other than showing a humanistic perspective in his later famous work, Kurosawa kept on returning to films that portrayed a gritty realism regarding the current status, rather than relying on a simple-minded idealistic outlook regarding the future.
'The daughter shows her father’s temper- fierce,
Defiant; she will not yield to any storm.'
-Chorus’ comment on Antigone, 'Antigone'
Sophocles and Kurosawa were both masters of conflicts. Through their respective crafts in their art forms, they orchestrated brilliant and memorable conflicts that would motivate the audience to ask more questions and defend their own perspectives. The conflicts often originated from the individual, where he would be stubborn to uphold his beliefs even if that came at odds to his surroundings or were already considered outdated by current standard. Philoctetes, a warrior who were fierce and observed the old school heroic honor, was injured and stranded. His physical agony was only augmented by his acrimony towards Odysseus, who was more cunning and smarter at diplomatic strategies. Ajax, another old-school hero, was just as disgusted because his achievement was not equated with his reward, and Odysseus turned out to get all the praise. Yet the issue of individualism was not only related to old-timers that refused to change: that also raised further implications regarding the relationships of individual and the State. Antigone believed that she has fulfilled her duties as an individual, yet her act was transgressive towards the community she belonged to. Part of Oedipus’ misfortunes originated from his firm commitment to solve the problems of the plague in Thebes, which ironically originated from the injustice of him unknowingly killing Laius, his biological father. When Oedipus was investigating his personal history throughout ‘Oedipus Rex’, the distinction between a personal endeavor and communal interest became blurred.
Kurosawa’s characters were also placed in conflicts, yet it was not merely in a melodramatic sense. It was often the individual impacting the group dynamics and led to a threat to the cohesion of teamwork. The filmmaker often employed Toshiro Mifune to play this archetype. The famous rant of Mifune’s character at the other samurais in ‘Seven Samurai’, insinuating the group was so displaced and did not understand the other people in the poverty-stricken village, suggested that he was an intuitive person. The members of the Samurai team would have to find a consensus to work well as a team, and eventually Mifune’s character has found the way to contribute to the group. Specifically, Kurosawa stressed the teacher-apprentice relationships, and was willing to play twist to this old idea. In ‘Stray Dogs’, Mifune’s hot-headed young detective came as a stark contrast to the calm and analytical old detective. The young cop had to learn through this collaboration through occasional clashes of approaches with the old cop. Eventually when the old cop was injured, the young cop would need the courage the finish the job alone. As Kurosawa’s cinema evolved, the relationship became bi-directional, the teachers could also get insights of life from the young ones. In films like ‘The Hidden Fortress’, ‘High and Low’ and ‘Red Beard’, gritty insights could be acquired from those one would perceive as less-experienced or a lower social standing, which might stand as some surprise for the individuals of a higher standing.
Nor could I think that a decree of yours-
A man –could override the laws of Heaven
Unwritten and unchanging. Not of today
Or yesterday is their authority;
They are eternal; no man saw their birth.
-Antigone to Creon, 'Antigone'
‘ True law is the tight reason in agreement with Nature;
it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting(;)’
-Cicero
Sophocles effectively placed the nomos-physis debate in a dramatic context. The distinction between factors from the natural world and factors from human conventions was important because that governed human behavior and clarified the knowledge humans needed for mastering and controlling the world. The textbook example of this issue is of course ‘Antigone’. It is contentious to see that, in a legal perspective, both Antigone and Creon have transgressed some laws. By breaking Creon’s decree and burying Polyneices, the outlawed brother, Antigone has violated a positive law – as it was originated from a human convention (nomos). Yet Creon, possessing political power, has violated a natural law in this case, as the burial was a demand from the Divine (physis). Thus Sophocles intended the two characters to be mirror-images of each other, and the tragic conflict led to losses for everyone involved.
Kurosawa, on the other hand, stressed a fundamental Japanese issue – the Giri-Ninjo conflict. While not exactly the same as the ancient Greek contention, there seemed to have some overlapping humanistic aspects. The Japanese concept concerned the conflict between obligation (Ninjo) and personal emotions and inclinations (Giri) that found their impacts on the human condition. The samurai culture, stressed by the code of Bushido, demanded the commitment of the samurai to his clan, as a form of duty to his superiors. Thus the code of the ethics dictates the warrior to withdraw his personal inclinations and focus, in a rather inflexible way, on his duty. While the early Kurosawa samurai films stressed the positive aspect of this ethical approach, the filmmaker started to question if the distinction was really that clear-cut, and if the inflexibility would have any dehumanizing effects. Films like ‘Yojmbo’ and ‘Sanjuro’, which would eventually influence Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western, has already overturned the traditional image of heroic samurai, where the hero was as concerned with self-interest as with his ethical code. Since Masaki Kobayashi’s ‘Harakiri’ and his later work ‘Samurai Rebellion’, the skeptical outlook has been picked up by the young directors of the Japanese New Wave, and samurai films from Hideo Gosha, Kihachi Okamoto and Masahiro Shinoda served the cynical and revisionist approaches. Even a contemporary film like ‘High and Low’ explored the giri-ninjo conflict : the protagonist, a self-made business, needed to choose between saving the child from a kidnapper, yet the ransom would prove instrumental for him to win the power struggle in his company. Kurosawa has tried hard to stress that it was not necessarily the protagonist’s obligation to help the child, yet the filmmaker re-asserted our hope by letting the protagonist to sacrifice his own business and helped the kid instead, redeeming his humanity. The notion of benevolence and humanity, coined by the Japanese term ‘jingi’, was what Kurosawa believed to be universal, and not constrained by any context.
Oedipus and Antigone
Yet even if we have the wisdom to sort out all the differences, Sophocles felt the need to remain the audience of the limitations of human action. Especially in an era when religion and rituals were so prominent in the life of ancient Greece, the three great tragedians were all forward-thinking in the sense that they tried to shift the focus of the issues to a more secular dimension. Sophocles, through the words in his tragedies, often contrasted the difference of human and gods. The fact that humans are not perfect, and are not timeless as the Divine, means that we cannot afford to make mistakes mindlessly. The tragedian stressed that not only we had to be morally responsible for our actions, we also had to appreciate that we had a limited understanding of knowledge. While we cannot ignore the action of fate and chance – that is why no one should blame Oedipus for his crime, because it was meant to be fatalistic. Nevertheless, Sophocles maintained that Oedipus should still be responsible for the choices he has made, which correlated with the hero’s (flawed) character. The old saying ‘Character determines fate’ may just be too idealistic. It would be more fair to say that one’s character will have significant impact on one’s life experience, as that can lead to different life trajectories throughout one’s life. Whether the ending is fated or not is irrelevant in this aspect. Indeed in ‘Oedipus Rex’, the whole story was full of suspense, as anyone who knew the myth would have anticipated the ending. It is just how Oedipus would eventually learn the truth. In the story, information was often mere illusions or misleading : the oracle’s speech was misread; conflicting facts were all around; and all form of mis-information abound (their version of ‘fake news’). To put in a Freudian term, the ultimate irony was that while Oedipus possessed the intelligence to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx (conscious), he failed to understand about himself (unconscious) and his personal history.
Sophocles’ characters, like Antigone, Ajax, and Oedipus, also did not understand the Divine. They could not understand why the actions they felt right did not lead to justice but only tons of misfortune. The notion, even more pronounced in Euripides’ tragedies, was remarkably modern and secular. That challenged not only the polytheistic outlook of the Homeric universe and pointed towards a pantheistic worldview, but also questioned the latter worldview, of whether cosmic justice was possible at all. Sophocles’ own rationalism suggested that the universe was rational and harmonious, yet the limitations of human understanding would lead to many of life’s mysteries. Humans have to understand their limitations, so that they can prevent the demoralizing effects of doing something beyond their control.
In the case of Kurosawa's cinema, illusions often led to the obliviousness of the characters towards the hidden aspects of the harsh reality. In 'High and Low', the characters perceived themselves as members of different social classes, without realizing the more universal issues they all had to face as humans. The film's cynical attitude suggested that the categorizations were often that black-and-white, and any generalizations would lead to less understanding of ourselves. Even in an ancient setting of ‘Kagemusha’ the distinction between illusion and reality could become muddled up : the 'shadow' became confused about his performance as the warlord and started to feel real emotion for the members of the house, as if the illusion, instrumental to deceive the enemies, has mixed up with reality.
Kurosawa’s cinematic universe were often a godless one, and bad things and injustice could happen. In ‘Rashomon’, the Film-Norish atmosphere alluded to Nietzschean perspectivism, and in the end there was not even an objective reality to tell us what has happened. In ‘Throne of Blood’, inspired by Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’, the protagonist was submitted to evil spirits and led to lethal choices. In ‘Ran’, inspired by ‘King Lear’, chaos has become the norm and the dark side of human nature has eliminated all sort of moral compasses and familial ties that bound humans together. Even in films like ‘The Lower Depths’, ‘The Idiot’, and ‘The Bad Sleeps Well’, the outlook was pessimistic and the hero might not win in the end, giving the viewers cautionary tales regarding our deficiencies. It turned out like ‘Rashomon’ was the most optimistic film here, as it encouraged the viewer to commit to his own conscience and moral compass without worrying a more metaphysical angle.
It is often the case things can be understood more clearly when they are reflected retrospectively, and Sophocles had given his Oedipus an opportunity to do so. ‘Oedipus at Colonus’, which was Sophocles’ last work, summarized Oedipus’ life and also the dramatist’s own long-held beliefs. Oedipus, now blind and wandering around as a beggar, was often accompanied by Antigone, and they arrived at Oedipus. The play has an episodic structure and Oedipus met a few of his old friends and accomplices, each having different motivations. Throughout the play Oedipus had a great chance to reflect upon his life experience, and through all the turbulent changes and losses he came to appreciate the impermanence of life, a theme that was explored in particular by Japanese filmmakers like Ozu and Naruse. Through the ups and downs of his life, Oedipus came to the conclusion that, while he had to be responsible for his actions due to his flawed character, fate also had a part in his misfortunes. It should be noted that Oedipus was not attempting to pass over the responsibilities – if he was so, he would not have blinded himself as a punishment in the first place (he might say the conclusions were ‘rigged’, for example). Now he was asking for a redemption and he had the ability to see the big picture of life, and appreciated that he had to take in and accept everything, and knowing his own limitations. Oedipus died peacefully at the end, reflecting Sophocles’ fulfilment of his work when he died at the old age.
The Kurosawa film ‘Ikiru’ served a similar theme. The protagonist has always been busy with his work, and has ignored many things around him. Not until he was diagnosed with terminal cancer that he started to assess his whole life. After some bout of depression and procrastination, he was finally committed to live the life the fullest for his final days. Moments before his death, he was playing on a swing and singing his favourite song, and he died with a peace of mind. Both Sophocles and Kurosawa did not shy from the ultimate limitations of humanity – death. Yet they wanted us to live with a positive attitude until the inevitable came, so that the potential of humanity could be fulfilled.
'But in your stormy voyage I am glad
To share the danger, travelling at your side.'
-Ismene expressing her wish to share the crime with Antigone 'Antigone'
Concluding Remarks
Sophocles and Kurosawa were not interested in gods; because they cared about humans. Through the chronicles of what humanity can achieve – and cannot achieve – they recorded the legacy of the human condition, and the universal concerns that draws us all closer. The wisdom and inspirations from these great artists represent the most priceless asset of our existence!
by Ed Law
Conatus Classics
Sophocles plays mentioned : Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Electra, Ajax, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus
Kurosawa films mentioned : Sanshiro Sugata, The Most Beautiful, Sanshiro Sugata Part 2, The Lower Depths, The Idiot, Stray Dogs, Rashomon, Ikiru, Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, The Bad Sleeps Well, High and Low, Red Beard, Kagemusha, Ran
