Photographer W. Eugene Smith travels to Japan to document the effects of
a ruthless chemical company's pollution.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Andrew Levitas
Starring: Johnny Depp, Minami, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ryo Kase, Jun Kunimura, Bill Nighy, Katherine
Jenkins
After decades of hiding himself beneath heavy make-up and playing a variety
of fantastical characters in an attempt to escape his pretty boy reputation,
it's easy to forget just what a good actor Johnny Depp can be when
he's playing a regular human being. In director Andrew Levitas's
Minamata, Depp gets to play a human for a change, even if the make-up and
prosthetics are thickly applied for him to do so.
Depp plays the photo-journalist W. Eugene Smith, who was famous for his
pictorials in Life magazine, none more so than his 1971 images of the
effects of chemical pollution on the residents of the Japanese town that
lends Levitas's film its title.
An alcoholic troublemaking renegade, Smith is just the sort of character
Depp is attracted to. Here we see Depp deliver something halfway between his
outlandish portrayal of gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson in
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and his more relaxed
performance of the same character in The Rum Diaries. He's something of a contradictory figure - a narcissist who admittedly
blames himself for his problems. His editor at Life, Robert Hayes (Bill Nighy), reluctantly puts up with his antics because he knows he's the best
photographer he's ever worked with.
That's why Hayes indulges Smith's request to travel to Minamata to document
the chaos caused by Chisso, a chemical company that employs most of the
town's residents while poisoning the local water with its toxic dumping. The
pollution has led to children being born with deformities, an affliction
that will come to be known as "Minamata disease."
In Japan, Smith struggles to maintain a state of sobriety, haunted by his wartime memories
of the last time he "visited" the country. Trying to keep him afloat is
local activist Aileen (Minami), who is falling in love with him in
the process. The pair would later wed after the events of the film, but the
movie fails to convince us of why this pretty young woman would fall for
this liver-spotted, self-centred jerk.
Minamata never quite decides if it's a biopic of Smith or an
environmental thriller, and it never fully satisfies as either. Little time
is devoted to the residents of the toxic titular town, who are largely
background characters. What time we spend in Smith's company doesn't exactly
enamour us to the shutterbug, and any charm he possesses probably has more
to do with Depp's movie star charisma than the character as written.
I have to profess an ignorance regarding Minamata's subject before watching the movie, and it's strange that it took 50
years for this story to reach the screen. While you'll probably learn more
from a Wikipedia article on the subject, Minamata makes for a
passable entry point for an education on the horrors committed by Chisso in
the name of profit.
Minamata is in UK/ROI cinemas and on
Digital from August 13th.
