Written by Kôbô Abe
IMDB
Hiroshi Teshigahara mixes archival documentary footage into this tale of murder, unions and ghosts. Two deserters and one’s young son go from job to job, they start a new job and end up getting a map to a workplace, which turns out to be a set-up for a murder. Is the set-up meant for another man, the doppelganger of the father of the boy?
It’s really hard to completely give an explanation of this film. It is very symbolic and I’m not even quite sure I completely understood it. I watched the video essay on the Criterion DVD and it explained some things that I would not have thought about otherwise. Who is the assassin? It is never explained. Is he an agent of fate? Who hired him? Is he just a psychopath serial killer? When he turns the union boss and leader of those who left the union against each other and they murder each other, he remarks that it was just as he had planned.
The ending is bizarre, but it seems to be keeping in the tradition of oddball Japanese films. The young boy is running away from the ghost town. What is he running toward? The video essay suggests that he is running toward a troubled future. I can get behind that. The ending is up for interpretation, but it isn’t bad like some (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”).
This movie is a masterpiece. It seems important without being pretentious. The film is shot magnificently. I would recommend watching it just to see how the shots are framed. This is a movie that is probably not going to be fully understood on a first viewing. I am already wanting to watch it a second time and I just finished watching it a few minutes ago and put it in my mailbox to send back to Netflix.
9/10
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