W. Eugene Smith was internationally known for his striking and intimate images, from his photographs on the Pacific front of World War II, where he was seriously injured, to his reportage on a midwife in rural South Carolina. Smith's most important and influential work, however, was his final photo essay, taken during a three-year stay in the Japanese coastal town of Minamata.
Based on the true story, the cinematic narrative of MINAMATA begins in 1971 New York, where W. Eugene Smith (played by Johnny Depp) has withdrawn from society after his days as a photojournalist during World War II. But an assignment from Life magazine editor Robert Hayes (played by Bill Nighy) sends him to the Japanese coastal town of Minamata, whose residents are ravaged by mercury poisoning - the result of decades of industrial negligence by the Chisso Corporation.
There, Smith immerses himself in the village community and documents their efforts to live with the Minamata disease. With his camera, Smith follows the residents' passionate campaign for recognition of their plight by Chisso and the Japanese government.
Tomoko in Her Bath
It was Smith's images of the human dimension of the disaster that helped them succeed and also became a life-changing experience for the photographer.
One photograph had a greater impact than all the others: "Tomoko in Her Bath", taken in December 1971, shows a mother bathing her daughter, who is suffering from Minamata disease. This black-and-white image is not only considered Smith's most significant photograph, but its unsparing revelation of the physical effects of the disease on people also drew international attention to the Minamata Movement campaign.
Smith, who was already suffering from his war injuries, was so badly injured by the Chisso factory guard during a confrontation at the corporation's factory that he suffered fainting spells and temporarily went blind in one eye as a result.
"I've long been a fan of Gene Smith," said Andrew Levitas, director of Minamata,
Levitas and the production team travelled to Minamata in September 2018. "We met with some of the surviving victims and their families".
The choice of lead actor fell on Johnny Depp, who fell victim to Cancel Culture due to allegations of domestic violence even before the film premiered, which is why MINAMTA was also shown in the US only two years late and in very few cinemas.
The actor was already familiar with Smith before filming: "For many years I had been fascinated by him," says Depp. "I knew Mary Ellen Mark very well. Like him, she was a photographer at Magnum for a while and knew W. Eugene Smith. She told me he was a kind of curmudgeonly but highly sensitive bohemian, a hard-nosed war photographer who had seen it all."
Gene and Johnny
Andrew Levitas: "Gene was a tragic, troubled man. His editor described him as the most difficult photographer LIFE magazine ever had, and Johnny brings out all these qualities at just the right moments. His Gene may not be an exact, word-for-word print of Gene Smith, but he is the soul of Gene Smith."
Given the sensitive subject matter and the fact that the film is based on real events that are still relevant today, authenticity was paramount in the production. "It is important because if you don't feel like you are really there, it takes away from the message," says Levitas. "It helped that we had a huge amount of reference photos and videos. We had the entire archive of Gene and his wife Aileen Smith. The Center for Creative Photography in Arizona was also an invaluable resource in making the film, providing original contact sheets, negatives and footage from Gene's darkroom in Minamata. There was such a wealth of material that we were able to compile 400-page dossiers of reference material for each of the actors during production preparations," he said.
The production was also supported by W. Eugene Smith's wife Aileen, who was regularly present on set. However, as Minamata itself has changed drastically since the 1970s (it is now a very modern-looking eco-town), only a small part of the film could be shot on location. "It took a little while, but I think we were very lucky to find something very similar," says Levitas. "The topographical features on location were a great fit, and we only had to recreate a bar on the beach, a boathouse and Eugene Smith's darkroom." The attention to detail also extended to Eugene and Aileen, whose clothing was meticulously recreated from photographs. "Eugene always wore this rumpled shirt with all these pockets," says the costume designer. "The only piece of clothing that wasn't recreated was Eugene's glasses. They were old - from the 60s, to be exact. They were glasses he wore before that time, because the ones he wore in the 70s didn't really look good on Johnny. So we used glasses that Eugene really wore, but just at a different time."
The production's strict sense of authenticity also informs Minamata's visual style. "I built the film to be shot entirely from Gene's point of view," says Levitas. "We are inside Gene's head and see the unfolding events through his lens. He's one of the greatest photographers of all time, a man who had the images in his head even before he picked up the camera."
The production even tracked down Smith's customs forms to find the exact cameras and lenses he brought to Minamata. "Johnny and I spent countless hours talking about where Gene's mind would be at any given moment: what was happening, what was going on, and building the whole backstory," says Levitas.
A Warning to the World
When W. Eugene Smith and Aileen Mioko Smith published their photo essay as a book in 1975, it was subtitled "A Warning to the World". The makers of Minamata hope that their film will also be seen in this way.
"The moment this film captures contributed to the birth of the modern environmental movement," Levitas says. "But this kind of thing continues to happen. We live in a world where human protection is being pushed back everywhere. We're at a low point, and maybe we can have the same impact with this film as W. Eugene Smith did back then with his photographs."
But, the director stresses, "This is not a cautionary film. I hope it is exciting and entertaining and does visual justice to what Gene did. And what he did was to find the most difficult moments and show light, love and humanity in them. That's an incredibly difficult thing to do. But if you can see the world your way, it's still a beautiful place even in the darkest moments. Life is a gift and a blessing, and W. Eugene Smith expresses that in his paintings. I think that's part of what I hope we've achieved visually with the film." Since the beginning of April, the film has also been available here in the original English-language version on DVD.