Shohei Imamura’s film is technically a true-crime story, documenting the capture (and flashbacking through the crimes) of a sociopathic lowlife in the mid-sixties. Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is something of a smiling cipher, who seems one thing in early scenes, a stonefaced whackjob, then emerges from scene to scene in ever complicating fashion–coming across as something of a naif, then a dumb thug, then a slick con man, and so on–and by the end of the film I hadn’t some simple narrative of his motivations but a rich, unsettling, and ambiguous portrait which never quite explains or resolves his actions.
Worse–or, aesthetically, better–the film’s portrait of the contemporary Japanese social milieu is equally unsettling. Enokizu’s violence and rage is echoed everywhere, from the brutality of the WWII army to the deep class anger to the omnipresent misogyny and male-to-female violence which permeates every aspect of the Japan he inhabits. The film sidesteps neat sociology as adeptly as it evades neat psychology, and I’m still mulling over its portrait of killer and culture. (And I’d be interested to tie this into the discussion regarding Battle Royale posted below, or to much earlier conversations which picked up on Takashi Miike or Takeshi Kitano.)
Plus the film is gorgeous. Its cinematography and compositions are unflashy yet precisely ordered, often beautiful. The opening shots, of a small convoy of small police cars, headlights blazing, rolling through an early-evening darkness with flakes of snow falling–establishes exactly the kind of eerie discomfort which suffuses every scene. The film’s more atmosphere than thriller, its formal precision almost a way of containing its energies. Yet I was always completely engrossed.
I’ve seen but one other Imamura film (the less bleak, even hopeful The Eel, which also dealt with homicide and misogyny and rage, but followed the culprit into a life and context which changes him, for the better), and found it equally compelling, and hard to pin down. This film is also a very intriguing predecessor to Memories of Murder and Zodiac, both of which–in terms of aesthetic, tone, and narrative–seem to owe Imamura a big debt. Highly recommended.