VENGEANCE IS MINE (74)

Directed by: Shohei Imamura (1979)

Starring: Ken Ogata, Mitsuko Baisho, Mayumi Ogawa

The Pitch: A study of a mass murderer, especially his last few weeks before being apprehended.

Theo Sez: The most consistent of the (few) Imamuras I've seen, without the disconcerting lurches in tone (until the very end - the surreal final vengeance - which is effective for that very reason) ; which is not to say it's remotely simple or one-dimensional, starting out as a fairly standard policier then spinning off into ever more perverse and tenebrous areas. The (anti-)hero's vengeance is essentially against prejudice, as set out in a childhood flashback (a throwaway line about Koreans in Japan makes the point that not much has changed), but it's also a revenge of the disenfranchised against the elite, which is why he steals money while on the run by impersonating pillars of the Establishment like lawyers and professors ; but the film also goes beyond him (often forgetting all about him) to explore a whole world of "animal feelings", defining its characters at least partly in sexual terms (the heroine runs a whorehouse, the father and daughter-in-law lust after each other, even the old woman "likes to peek") even as it emphasises the killer's sexual prowess - he's like everybody else, it implies, only more so, unable to suppress himself. Imamura's vision, even more starkly than in BALLAD OF NARAYAMA, is of human beings as rutting, predatory beasts - that his hero kills is unremarkable, only that he doesn't kill those he really hates (or who deserve it) is worth mentioning. A major work, epic in its bleakness, eerily visualised as a twilight world of brown and dun ; I should probably rate it higher - except that it takes a fair bit of patience to actually sit through.