1001 Nights Cast

Déjà vu. The exhaustion of cinema.

Jo Ha Kyu. The natural principle of Beginning, Middle building, building, End. Denouement, fade, retreat.

Caught in a tidal rip, waves keep throwing up the Middle, tossing details up in the fold of a king tide.

‘Look at this!’ roar the waves.

‘House Burning.
Lover waking.
Fish leaping.
Pair of eyes filling up’

The tide throws up moments, playing on the underbelly of large waves.

‘Look at This!
Smoky Departure Lounge.
Soaked Glove.
Empty Car.
Mouth in an O.’

In Japan, master Shinto priests say that everything contains Jo Ha Kyu. You can feel it. You can count it.

It is illustrated by the simplest of events. A house burns. There is the initial fizz of a match, the quiet lick of flame, building to the symphony of crackle, roar and splintering of windows to the silence of smoke and ash.

In a movie, set in a hotel room, a man does up his tie in the mirror, looking back towards the bed and says, ‘I don’t know what it is honey, I got this terrible déjà vu and you’re wrapped up in it.’

Déjà vu is usually a personal rush of mercury through your blood, turning your skin cold, tongue dry, rendering whoever you are as a statue or a player.

‘You are wrapped up in something fishy’, he says, through the mirror.

‘What?’ she laughs, rolling over to smoke on her back.

‘Ah, something I can’t explain. God damn it. I wanna stop this echo in my head.’

‘Oh Jimmy! You sound like a Jack Rabbit.’

He startles. ‘There. You are right on it.’ His eyes narrow.

‘What?’ she grins.

‘No-one has ever called me a Jack Rabbit, except once.’

‘When?’

‘Years ago.’

‘And just right now, like I did.’

‘I have been right here, now, before.’

‘Oh my jumpy Jack Rabbit.’

‘Stop. Ssshh. What year is it?’

‘1956.’

‘I remember.’

The principle of Jo Ha Kyu is much more comforting than the terrible principle of repetition. For example: Gloves grip a white throat. A struggle and bird-like resistance. Snap. The natural release of the head back, laying the body gently on a hotel bed, strip the gloves and throw them out a window into the wet night, pull back to the open, lighted window, past rain.

Later that night, the same man and woman from the hotel are seen out at dinner. His eyes look kinda glazed and rocky as he reads his menu. She coyly knocks at his legs with hers to the rat a tat tat of the piano.

A plate arrives that contains a perfect dead animal, designed to look vibrantly alive. Mr Sumitomo delivers both plates in a whirl, his regular polished dance of elegance, ‘Here.’ Rising from each plate, cast in blue and black rice, is the perfect S of a trout, a fish, mouth open, eyes like candy, as if perched on the lip of a wave. ‘Voila!’ says the Japanese chef.

Winking to the camera, Mr Sumitomo skips back through the crowded Bebop atmosphere of smoke, piano and lacquered couples in his scene set in a restaurant. Tapping the three buttery lamps that lead to the main kitchen, down the velvet hall he says to screen, ‘Jo,’ (opening his mouth in comic emphasis). He slides like Gene Kelly to the next lamp on the wall ‘Ha!’ hard nod of his sharp head, comic ripple of eyebrows up as far as they will go and a kick of his slippers, he finishes the number by prowling like a tiger towards the last lamp, his face drops to a faux gloom, bringing himself close, light under his chin, he says, ‘Kyu. The End. Have you ever seen this movie before?’