UCSD Professor’s Portrait of Hiroshima Artists Is Among the Oscar Contenders

Most of the Oscar nominees sitting in the Shrine Auditorium for tonight’s 60th Academy Awards Presentations knew every step of the way their chances for a nomination. UC San Diego Professor John Dower, whose “Hellfire: A Journey From Hiroshima” is among the nominees for best documentary, didn’t even know he was eligible.

“Because the film was finished in 1986 and I was not involved in the practical end of distributing it, I thought it was eligible in 1986,” Dower said from his campus office last week. “So I was very surprised when I was told that it was nominated. It’s a great ritual to be a part of.”

“Hellfire,” made on a $150,000 budget of mostly grant money, is a portrait of Japanese artists Iri and Toshi Maruki, a husband and wife team who have collaborated on a series of murals depicting the atrocities and man-made disasters of the 20th Century.

Dower, who teaches history and Japanese studies, decided to make a film about the Marukis after visiting their home and gallery at the suggestion of a fellow professor.

“(The artists) were commemorating the bomb and Hiroshima,” Dower said. “I immediately encountered their art in its original form and walked through it in their gallery. All these people were there, and it was part of a living experience.

“They had one mural showing the Japanese custom of commemorating the dead by setting lanterns in the water, and the mural was there as people did this. You could see how art and life became one.”

“Hellfire,” Dower’s first and only film, won raves from critics and members of the film industry during the recent Academy Award screening period, and, although he is not competing in one of the “glamour” categories, Dower is certainly competing in one of the most respected.

For Dower, who has written several books on Japanese history and culture, the nomination was more a vindication than anything else.

“It’s nice to have rejected what others told us and not compromised in making the film,” he said. “It is a film of integrity, and it doesn’t look down on the audience. So it’s nice to get the attention. It says that perhaps you can make a film of complexity and nuance.”

The idea of making “Hellfire” came up between himself and writer John Junkerman.

“I was not the hands-on person, Junkerman was,” Dower said. “But it was a close collaboration. He’s younger than I am, but we both came out of the ‘60s and the anti-war movement.”

Dower said that because “Hellfire” was the first film for either of them, they received mostly discouragement from all sides. They were told they couldn’t have complexity and nuance in a film, and that art cannot be photographed. But they were able to do it all--at least to their satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of the documentary nominations committee.

“I used to be a book editor and designer,” Dower said. “As an old editor of words, I was very conscious of rewrite and style. Editing the film was crucial and fascinating. Film and visuals are not merely a way of illustrating words but rather a way of saying things that you cannot say with words.

“The danger of editing, though, is that the sheer beauty of a cut or move can overpower the thematic concern of the film. What you want is the perfect wedding of style and image.”

Dower digresses frequently in his discussion of film and the process to talk about the Marukis, whose impact he still feels. He said he was so moved by their work the first time he saw it that he wanted to find a way to share their vision.

“I wanted to make them known. The film shows their incredible intellectual journey from looking inward to looking outward. It shows their stylistic evolution. Theirs is the purest form of artistic collaboration. They would literally paint over each other.

“She paints with clear lines and he with broad washes. She would do details and he would wash right over it.”

Viewers of “Hellfire” are delighted by the personalities and backgrounds of Iri, 87, and Toshi, 75. Iri was trained in classical Oriental ink and water. Toshi, an illustrator of children’s books, was trained in Western oils.

Iri jokes in the film that “oil and water should repel,” yet their collaboration has been creative and constructive.

But it is the content of the Marukis’ work, more than the style or the personalities of the artists, that sets it off. As Toshi says in the film, “We paint dreadful, cruel scenes, but I want to paint them with kindness.”

Indeed they do. The grim beauty of the work serves as a compelling reminder of the human damage of the bomb, of the grotesque inhumanity of war, while affirming the beauty of the world.

“It is a fascinating film because it reaches so many people,” Dower said. “It is a terrible subject, yet it has incredible beauty. Some people come out overwhelmed by the terrible, but others come out elated. There is a real tension between the horror and the beauty.

“If you can grasp it, you can come out with hope and commitment. You can come out with a very positive sense to see that these people have taken the horror and made something positive.”

“Hellfire” has won some lesser-known awards, including the Marjorie Benton Peace Prize and the Asahi newspaper award for best film about art and culture. Regardless of whether the film wins the Oscar, the nomination has brought enormous attention to its subject and its makers and has increased the likelihood of greater exposure for the film.

Dower admits his excitement at being among the nominees who will await the news tonight, and he said he will “most certainly” make another film. But he can’t stray too far from the subject that got him here. More than anything, he said, he wanted “Hellfire” to expose the Marukis’ attempts to preserve, through art, the horror of Hiroshima.

“It is time to understand what happened,” he said. “It’s no way to go through life, sanitizing the past. The Marukis wanted to help people remember. They’re leaving something behind for the kids. I think it’s great.”