What a delightful film. Kaneto Shindo’ Onibaba (1964) is a Japanese horror film like no other I have ever seen. It is a film that is sure of itself, so sure that it takes its time becoming a horror movie. For more than the first hour of its 101 minute run-time Onibaba plays out as a drama, one that addresses both personal and political themes. The film concerns the lives of three peasant farmers caught up in a power struggle between medieval Samurai war lords, and the ways in which this lust for power is reflected in their own fleshly temptations.
The demon of the title does not make an appearance onscreen until late in the film, but ominous dialogue regarding retribution for sins foreshadows his coming. The film begins with the ambush of two wounded soldiers searching for shelter amongst a seemingly endless field of reeds. The wounded warriors are killed by a mother and daughter-and-law team who often supplement their meager living by selling the armor of soldiers they kill, having dumped many of their bodies into a deep pit hidden in the high overgrowth. Though these women profit from murder they find no fault in their actions.
The pair awaits the return of the man who connects them as he has been commissioned into the fighting. When a local farmer returns from the battles having escaped from almost certain death, he informs them that their loved one has himself died. Here is where I feel that an American film would begin to descend into heavy-handed melodrama, but even as the farmer and the younger woman begin to engage in a sexual affair, Shindo keeps his filmic cool. He portrays the relationship (and the sex) frankly, displaying the rift it creates between the two women. The mother-in-law fears being forever abandoned and begins to warn her daughter of the tortures reserved in hell for the lustful.
What makes the film great is that Shindo allows the elements of the human drama to play out here before he switches gear into horror. Jason Voorhees would have decapitated four horny teens by now. The story turns when a mysteriously masked warlord lost in the reeds implores the mother to show him to the road to Kyoto. The rest of Onibaba should be seen, and my description would do it little justice. I’ll tease it further only by saying that the twist you’ll see coming is only the beginning of its wonderful final scene.
It’s important to mention that much of the horror technique employed by the film’s final act appears to be constructed through make-up, but is actually the result of the nuclear fallout in Japan. Taking this into account, it should be noted that Onibaba was making a bold political statement upon its initial release.
Grade: 3.5 Hats Off
0 comments:
Post a Comment