‘Zorba’ Novelist Nikos Kazantzakis’ ‘Last Voyage’ to Japan Travels to the Big Screen
variety.comChristopher Vourlias At a time when he was both his country’s most celebrated novelist and a journalist struggling to make ends meet, “Zorba the Greek” author Nikos Kazantzakis set sail for Japan on a formative journey that would shape the latter half of his career – and ultimately lead to his untimely death.Based on the written account of his travels in the Far East, “Last Voyage,” by journalist and documentary filmmaker Aris Chatzistefanou, examines that journey while using it as a framework to explore how the period between the two World Wars shaped what would come to be known as the “Japanese Miracle.” Produced by Kyriakos Chatzistefanou for Moviementa Productions, the film premieres this week at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.
Greece’s greatest modern writer occupies a singular place in the country’s literary canon. But on his recent travels to Japan, Chatzistefanou was accompanied by “Japan-China: A Journal of Two Voyages,” one of Kazantzakis’ lesser-known travelogues, which was based on a visit to Asia in 1935. “I used it as a ‘Lonely Planet,’” said the director, who leafed through the book’s florid, descriptive passages of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples as he toured the country.It was Kazantzakis’ incisive readings of the geopolitical landscape and his harsh critiques of capitalism, however, that gripped the filmmaker, whose previous documentaries such as “Debtocracy” and “This Is Not a Coup” focused on political and economic crises roiling Greece and the Eurozone.The book sheds light on a formative period in the life and philosophical evolution of Kazantzakis, whose signature works – such as “Zorba the Greek” and “The Last Temptation of Christ” – still lay before him.
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