Category: Cinema

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #384: Shohei Ima­mu­ra’s Vengeance is Mine.

This film was much more graph­ic than I expect­ed it to be. It also has some great sex scenes. I’ll get into what I mean by great a bit lat­er. The film is based around an actu­al Japan­ese ser­i­al killer whose ear­ly life and strict Catholic upbring­ing seem to be the main motives that dri­ve him to his wild­ness. The Catholic aspects aren’t promi­nent, but are still quite impor­tant. Their unique­ly Japan­ese expo­si­tion was a bit rem­i­nis­cent of Shusaku Endo’s Silence, but that might be con­fir­ma­tion bias since those are the only two things I know about that are Japan­ese and Catholic. Basi­cal­ly what I mean by “unique­ly Japan­ese expo­si­tion” is that their Catholi­cism is more Bud­dhist than in the West. This might seem obvi­ous, but it is this com­bi­na­tion that enables the ser­i­al killer Iwao Enok­izu’s father to accept the suf­fer­ing that he goes through so read­i­ly.

This accep­tance, at least from the film’s point of view, is what gives Iwao an ear­ly rebel­lious­ness to what he sees as his father’s cow­ardice. The film’s con­ti­nu­ity con­tin­u­al­ly shifts between the past, the fur­ther past and the present to con­struct a tale instead of the more doc­u­men­tary feel that a lin­ear plot would have exhib­it­ed. Ima­mu­ra seems to have been metic­u­lous in his arrange­ments; we learn of Iwao’s crim­i­nal abil­i­ties over and over again before we final­ly see them inac­tion, yet they are still star­tling even then. Iwao’s mon­stros­i­ty high­lights the dark desires in all of the oth­er char­ac­ters as well. The result is the filmic equiv­a­lent of a mass Con­fes­sion, all sins exposed, but with a bit­ter [Bud­dhist] lack of abso­lu­tion. There are attempts at atone­ment, but no for­give­ness.

The sex scenes are the best exam­ple of the dark desires, and the film is full of them. There are two par­tic­u­lar­ly hot ones: the first between Iwao’s father and Iwao’s wife in a hot spring dur­ing the rain [they basi­cal­ly just grope each oth­er before guilt over­whelms] and the sec­ond between Iwao and his last lover; he talks about his mur­ders while they get it on, and that real­ly turns on his lover. I say these scenes are hot because their obvi­ous pas­sions have a dan­ger­ous emo­tion­al gris­tle; a hint at the dark thing that sits next to each of their souls.

Iwao’s cru­el­ty is so fun­da­men­tal that even the tiny strug­gles of his good nature become twist­ed by cun­ning and mal­ice. At times he impro­vis­es excel­lent haiku that are extreme­ly sur­pris­ing in their con­text. There are reaf­fir­ma­tions that he loves his moth­er through­out his crim­i­nal life, and at times he makes small ges­tures to a sick old woman who reminds him of her. But, he uses these ges­tures to get into the pants of the wom­an’s daugh­ter, and mus­cles into their lives. It turns out that the old woman killed her hus­band many years ago, so she becomes an inter­est­ing men­tor to Iwao. Through her ques­tion­ing, we learn that Iwao has­n’t killed the per­son he wants to, and it is fair­ly easy to guess that this is his father. The fore­shad­ow­ing and guilt-wear­ing res­ig­na­tion comes hard and fast toward the end of the film, for all par­ties. There is lit­tle, if any­thing, light about this film, but for those who like to take unflinch­ing looks at their own weak­ness and where it could lead, it is a great resource.

• Cri­te­ri­on Essay by Michael Atkin­son
• Movie Mar­tyr Review
• Mid­night Eye review
• DVD Times review [good stills]
• Jasper Sharp review
• Shohei Ima­mu­ra inter­viewed about the film: Part 1, Part 2.