MINAMATA : Tuesday 8th June 2021.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'MINAMATA' at my local independent movie theatre earlier this week. This US and UK Co-Produced drama film is Directed and Co-Produced by Andrew Levitas who has sixteen Actor credits to his name, twenty as Producer, three as Writer and two as Director, with his previous film making offering being 2014's 'Lullaby' which starred Garrett Hedlund, Richard Jenkins, Anne Archer, Amy Adams, Terrence Howard and Jennifer Hudson. Based on the book of the same name by Eugene Smith and Aileen Mioko Smith, the film saw its World Premier screening at the Berlin International Film Festival back in late February 2020, was released in the US in early February this year, here in Australia last week and not in the UK until early August. It has so far generated mixed or average Reviews. 

Eugene Smith, here portrayed by Johnny Depp who also Co-Produces, was an American photojournalist who lived from 1918 until 1978 and has been described as 'perhaps the single most important American photographer in the development of the editorial photo essay'. His major photo essays include World War II photographs, the dedication of an American country doctor and a nurse midwife, the clinic of Dr Schweitzer in French Equatorial Africa, the city of Pittsburgh, and the pollution which damaged the health of the residents of Minamata in Japan.

The film opens up with Gene Smith, living in his rented New York apartment, processing black and white photographic images in his make shift dark room. It is 1971, he's at a low ebb in his life, he's drunk, smokes like a chimney, in debt, hasn't seen his children in years, is compelled to sell his photographic gear and accept an endorsement deal from a photographic film maker even though he has never taken a colour photo, ever, preferring the 35mm black and white medium which has been the mainstay of his career. 

He resorts to snapping away at the locals in his neighbourhood through cuts outs in his blacked out windows, until one day Aileen (Minami), a Japanese woman comes knocking on his door. She is hoping that the famous photographer will be able to assist her in raising awareness of mercury poisoning in the small Japanese town of Minamata, at the hands of chemical manufacturing giant Chisso Corporation that is dumping its toxic chemical by-products directly in to the local water supply. She hands him an envelope, and asks him to take a look.

At first Gene is dismissive, but then later that night when he can't sleep he studies the photographs and scant newspaper articles that Aileen left him earlier in the day, and is convinced that there's a story in there that needs to be told on a worldwide scale and that he should take up the job. He pitches the idea to Robert Hayes (Bill Nighy) the Editor of Life Magazine, and although the pair have worked together for the past twenty-five years, their relationship it seems is on the brink of collapse due to Gene's lack of responsibility and reliability and the mounting pressure on Hayes to keep his magazine relevant with the ever increasing emergence of television. Any way, Hayes, commits to Gene that he can fly to Japan and investigate the matter further, but not to leave him hanging and to report back with photographic evidence within two weeks when the next deadline is up.

Upon arriving in Minamata, Gene and Aileen are almost straightaway confronted with evidence of chemical poisoning - in the bent arms and legs, gnarled hands and deformed facial features of many of the children and adults they come across. Whilst Gene is out with his camera snapping away it quickly becomes apparent that many of the locals don't want to be photographed - probably out of fear of reprisal from the corporate Chisso organisation, on whom many of them are either directly or indirectly dependent for jobs. Later Gene, Aileen and local organiser Mitsuo Yamazaki (Hiroyuki Sanada) gain access to the local hospital where they secretly infiltrate the wards and research labs where many of Chisso Corp. patients are being treated for mercury, and whatever else, poisoning. Whilst there, Gene, with permission from the patients, takes photographs of deformed limbs and faces. 

Later, during a protest staged outside the main entry to the Chisso manufacturing plant, Gene is invited in by the CEO of the company Junichi Nojima (Jun Kunimura) for a tour of the facility and an explanation of exactly what they do there - heavily sanitised of course! Towards the end of the tour, and on an upper catwalk away from prying eyes and ears Nojima hands Gene an envelope containing US$50K to hand over all of his negatives, forget the plight of the locals, and head back to New York no further questions asked by either party. Needless to say Gene tells him in no uncertain terms to go forth and multiply!

A few days later undercover of darkness Gene's makeshift dark room which had been set up by Yamazaki as a near replication of his home dark room back in New York, is torched and all of his prints and negatives are burned to the ground. At that Gene rebels against Aileen and Hayes back in New York whom he calls in a drunken stupor in the dead of night, wakes from his sleep and tells him that he can't carry on, that's he's had enough and that all his images have been destroyed. However, 24 hours later, he returns and asks the gathered locals to help him so that he can help them. He asks them for unrestricted access to their homes and their families to take photographs of their deformed sons and daughters and family members yet done with the utmost respect, care and integrity. They all agree with a unanimous show of hands. 

Come the day of a shareholders meeting at Chisso and some 500 protesters are gathered outside the main gates of the chemical plant, with about fifty having infiltrated the main building and lie in wait outside the meeting room to confront Nojima in the hope of making him see sense and agree to financial compensation. 

Outside the main gates, things escalate quickly as protesters and security guards clash. In the ensuing melee Gene and Aileen become separated and Gene is man handled to within the factory gates and is then punched repeatedly to the face, kicked to the stomach and his hands trodden on. He falls in a heap on the ground. Meanwhile, inside the meeting room, the gathered protesters speak their mind some of which recount their own personal stories of the impact of the mass chemical poisoning which has inflicted their children. Nojima is speechless. After reaching an impasse, Nojima excuses himself to consult with his Financial Manager as to the possibility of monetary compensation, but returns saying there are no funds available and that's the end of it. 

Gene later comes round in a hospital bed with bandages wrapped around both arms and hands and across his head covering one eye. A man enters the room whom Gene recognises as the man who beat him to the ground earlier. While trying to shield himself from the possibility of another attack, the man thrusts into his hands a thick package which upon inspection reveals to contain all the negatives and many of the prints believed to have been destroyed when his dark room was torched. Discharging himself from his hospital bed, he and Aileen go back to Minamata and take what is regarded as the centrepiece photograph of Gene's photo essay into exposing Minamata Disease 'Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath' depicting the severe deformation of a child in her mother's arms in a traditional Japanese bath together after the child was exposed to the effects of Chisso's contamination of the water supply. 

Gene sends his collection of black and white photographs to Hayes at Life Magazine just in time to meet the deadline, and the magazine goes to print with his stark images for all the world to see. A copy lands on Nojima's desk, who then finally relents and agrees that his company must pay compensation. In a final scene, the protesters are seen outside a court building rejoicing that they won their case against Chisso, but stating that while the battle was won, the war was not yet over. Afterwards Gene and Aileen were married. Gene died in mid-October 1978 with his injuries sustained in the factory attack being a contributing factor to his passing. 

Johnny Depp is barely recognisable in his portrayal of William Eugene Smith with his grey beard, grey hair, facial blood spots and his gaunt expression brought about by a doubtless poor diet and excessive alcohol and cigarette consumption, but he is right on cue with his performance and about as far removed from any character he has played in quite some time. This is hardly an uplifting film, but neither is its subject matter which Director Levitas plays it as he sees it without too much nuance, subtlety or care for what the viewer may think of the bent contorted bodies seen on screen, or the corporate giant waging a war of denial against the locals over its 34 year long pollution of the water supply. Instead this is clearly a passion project for the Director who himself rose through the art world as a painter, sculptor, and photographer and who here has crafted a story that needs to be told which is at times an emotional heart felt film that pays tribute to Smith and the victims of this tragedy while still being as highly relevant today as it was fifty years ago. And to this end, during the closing credits we are reminded, by way of stills photographs, of the all too many acts of negligent pollution by governments and corporations that have impacted populations around our fragile planet throughout very recent history.

'MINAMATA' warrants four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-