A documentary about the Kazantzakis of the 1930s is by itself a ticking bomb, which nobody wants to have blow up in his hands. How do you present a man that then declared to be “charmed by the face of Franco” and noted that “Mussolini is perhaps much greater than we have been accustomed to thinking up to now”? Yet the same man who would write that four were the deciding steps in his assent: “Jesus, Buddha, Lenin, Ulysses”. Perhaps the best way is to let him recount his story . To be “exposed” politically, but also to expose his literary genius.
This documentary, based on his book “Travels: Japan, China”, is poised on that exact thin line between myth and reporting. For about a year we followed Kazantzakis’ footsteps on his two big trips to Japan, in 1935 and in 1957. We documented the monuments he visited and which have remained unchanged in time and war, but also the cities and neighborhoods that changed impressively. We imagined him heading towards the brothels of Yoshiwara district, sat not on a “ricksha” but an Uber. We saw him predict the shift of the international geopolitical chessboard towards East Asia, but also hush about the rise of fascism soaring in front of his eyes. Abandon Buddhism for Epaphus (god of touch), but never finding materialism.
Or, as Varnalis wrote about him: “because even if his work is mostly negative, it has two great virtues, that save it from any ruin: freedom of conscience and prideof freedom” Aris Chatzistefanou