I'm offering to help you accomplish what you can't on your own

 Remember MiniDV. You know. Camcorder verité.

• The Celebration (1998, Thomas Vinterberg)
• Julien Donkey-Boy (1999, Harmony Korine)
• Dancer in the Dark (2000, Lars von Trier) 
• Chuck & Buck (2000, Miguel Arteta)
• The Original Kings of Comedy (2000, Spike Lee)
• Bamboozled (2000, Spike Lee)
• 28 Days Later (2002, Danny Boyle)
• Personal Velocity (2002, Rebecca Miller)
• 24 Hour Party People (2002, Michael Winterbottom)
• Party Monster (2002)
• Visitor Q (2002, Takashi Miike)
• Scarlet Diva (2002, Asia Argento)
• Full Frontal (2002, Steven Soderbergh)
• Doppelganger (2003, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
• The Girl from Monday (2003, Hal Hartley)
• Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)

What an exclusive group. Worth delving further into are which of these were shot on what were distinctly referred to as either prosumer or consumer models. The prosumer rigs typically either Sony or Canon. Maybe some Panasonic?

Third act break. Seventy minutes in. HAYASAKI has completed the Artificial Body. He smokes a cigarette. But we know Hayasaki doesn’t smoke only his Double does. Then Hayasaki wielding a boulder bludgeons his Double. We know it’s his double lying there bloody because the Double whistles that tune but Hayasaki doesn’t.   
     Later Hayasaki pushes Kimishima over a cliff and afterwards when he gets in the van he whistles the tune. Hayasaki gets run over by a truck and dies. The Double rescues YUKA and tells her Forget about the past no revenge no memories which all makes perfect sense if you remember early in the film Yuka talking about her brother says if you see your exact double then you die. 
     Is it just me or did you expect Hayasaki to figure out a way to get rid of his Double? Is it because that’s what usually happens in movies of this genre? Is it because I thought embracing your Jungian shadow meant then you get rid of it? Is it because that’s what happens to the Palahniuk Fincher narrative device figment of Jack’s imagination? 
     That’s the dark twist in Doppelganger (2003, Kiyoshi Kurosawa). The self doesn’t integrate the shadow. The shadow integrates the self. Everything I thought I knew about my own morality flushed down the drain. This kind of genre subversion is everything.
 
If you think about the characters that populate the world of this film they’re all petty miserable nobodies stuck in intractable pursuits of capitalist mutually exploitative accomplishments for all the wrong reasons. Which is you know fun cause it’s exactly like real life. 
     An underlying theme in Doppelganger could be individualism vs conformity. We’re misdirected by everyone else treating the Double as if he’s despicable. But he’s adaptable. Hayasaki is inflexible. The narrative interrogates which way our perceptions lean in which of these two characters we identify with sympathize with empathize with root for.
     And what about Yuka? That first time the Double puts the moves on her I thought he was Hayasaki. Pretty sure the narrative wanted me to too. How do you feel about the way he comes onto her? What about that she comes back? What about how she seems to linger then recoil from Hayasaki’s subsequent advance? What do you think she means when she tells him It’s hard to tell if [he’s] a warm person or a cold person? What does Yuka mean by warm? Which is which?
 
Doppelganger is a prosumer MiniDV shot psychological thriller comedy tech espionage internal conflict predestined meaning of life road movie. It’s tone may seem light for a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film but it’s never disappointing. 

That guy who saw the future in his dreams

The meaning of Bright Future (2002, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is the red jellyfish is a metaphor for this period of time in the development of males somewhere between finishing high school and before maturing turning twenty-five. This same period is also exemplified by Nimura’s dreaming pattern arc. When he was young he used to dream happy dreams a lot. Now he has stopped dreaming. Then finally he is terrified by the dream he shows us on the path that he doesn’t know where it leads. 

     The film’s theme is concerned with intergenerational rifts between men. Bright Future is a proto mumblecore coming of age cosmic ghost feelgood elegiac tale about reconciliation between fathers and sons that celebrates it’s time to move forward.

 

Before I could articulate it I instantly knew was hyped exhilarated thrilled with the ending and before my brain could catch up I just knew those rowdy jd’s with the white shirts out of nowhere sublime this is the ending headscratcher applause inducing long take leading shot with that pop song as the end title credits roll on tell us these are the jellyfish. Of course they are. 

     The irony about the red jellyfish is Mamoru’s dad’s arc at first the dad has no desire interest in them then he develops a caring curiosity fascination so far as he has to go to one which of course is fatal venomous. Cut to he’s now a ghost and has made up with his son Mamoru who neither ever connected bonded with in life now to spend eternity at peace together. That’s some heavy only the Japanese could muster sentiment.

     Why does Mamoru ruin the shrimp brine buckets? I think it’s because foreshadowing the same thing his dad is going to say Nimura needs to face reality. I think it’s kind of this reveal that all along the point was to raise the red jellyfish pet and acclimate it to the freshwater so it could leave home through the canals of Japan to the ocean. Again the three phases motif of the developmental process.

 

Bright Future advocates juvenile delinquency it says the rebellious phase is essential for growth. This is phase two. Temporary. Then you gotta move on or it’s prison or dreaming.Their boss is so lame. The way he wants to ingratiate himself into their lives and hire them on permanent status keep them at that same job evokes an existential dead end. So they each independently of one another spontaneously react by deciding to murder him. We know it’s Mamoru who gets there first and also ends up killing the boss’s daughter. 

     At that café when Arita talks to his other son Mamoru’s brother that kid’s attitude shows why being rebellious running wild rumspringa break is healthy through how this snotty twerp weasel is so unbearably obnoxious the way he talks to his father is more brutal than any murder torture assault scene elsewhere in a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film. It takes a while to get there but the balance in Bright Future is sympathy for the elders as well. The image system at work this time will be the junk in the repair shop. That’s old people in our society. All those lines of dialogue about how they’re not garbage they’re better made than the worthless stuff in stores nowadays. This film is about finding the value in the overlooked youth and elderly lost in modern society. It’s about those with no future and those with a bright future.

     And if I wanna go for one of my patented way out there readings could be what if Mamoru had a plan from the beginning to raise the red jellyfish to get Nimura to mature into a man and to get his father Arita to learn his own value and that same red jellyfish that the dad touches is the same one that Mamoru gave Nimura so that he and his father could acclimate to being able to relate to one another in a meaningful way on the other side. The dad’s arc is appreciating his reality and standing up to Arita. That’s what a father is. That’s what he was lacking. 

 

Okay what about the look of Bright Future. It’s HD I want to guess a CineAlta who else was shooting on that at this time. Episode II – Attack of the Clones (George Lucas) was also shot the same year as Bright Future 2002. Rodriguez. I wanna say parts of Ali (2001, Michael Mann) but definitely Collateral (2004).

     Dude the close-ups of the jellyfish in the aquarium in HD is easily evidence for a strong case of HD over film that level of detail and this is coming from someone who’s a loyalist to film. But also wait what there’s mixed in shots of MiniDV how fun is that. Again I been trying to describe Kurosawa’s shots of urban Japan cramped geometrically intricate compositions with powerlines telephone wires houses streets junk and in this it’s exceptionally well captured with the CineAlta.

     Disorganized tacked on rant this was released the year after Ichi the Killer (2001, Takashi Miike) and how is Tadanobu Asano in both if not the coolest the coolest costumes of any Japanese actor or anywhere else ever. Dude is legend.

It's so easy to hang yourself

If Cure (1997, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) hypnotizes you Pulse (2001, Kurosawa) gets you to do suicide.

 

Pulse is a cyber horror depression core chainletter existential plague postmodern postapocalyptic snuff film that makes me feel an overwhelming emotional impact immediately and maybe more so than any other film. That emotion is heavy paralyzing hopeless drowning depression. The thing is irl I am so full of too much surplus of joy excitement energy this kind of thing is like so fun I rewatch Pulse on the reg more than any other Kiyoshi Kurosawa one it’s my jam. Balances me out. Or as Nicole Kidman might say suicidal thoughts feel good in a place like this.
     Okay enough messing around what I care about more than anything is what is going on with Pulse? Let’s try to list analyze its rules. It seems like

•     you log on
•        a ghost in a shroud dials you up and kills itself
•       you see what they call a reflection on your pc monitor that shows you on screen looking at you on screen looking at you on screen 
•        your distorted electronic anguished voice moans the word help
•        you may put on a shroud and kill yourself leave a dark smudge for flashes loved ones can see you
•        someone living seals the door into the spot you offed yourself with red duct tape
•        if someone living enters this forbidden room you can chainletter make them kill themselves too then they will be immortal e-dead loneliness or you can do same online to others as well

Does that seem right? I haven’t searched for any online explanations yet. Just because I love this film and wanted to stubbornly try all by myself. My first biggest obvious question was always what is the purpose meaning behind sealing off the forbidden room with red tape. I think I figured it out as I just described so that means though the midpoint you know that flashback expository sequence with Shô Aikawa is he traps the ghost in that shipping yard office with red tape but when it gets torn down the reveal is it’s like patient zero first to open the circuit using the broadband to travel online and chainletter spread the plague death wants to make everyone immortal through eternal loneliness instead of going to hell worse trapping them in their own isolation. But the red tape could also serve as a warning to the living to stay away from these internet people who have crossed over. Personally I’d to think the red tape doesn’t even trap the e-ghosts at all because they're already so lonely and isolated it doesn’t need to it's only a spiritually condemned warning sign where they reside.

     What about that Harue hug? Who what does she hug? Okay if there is one not laugh but just something I can’t help but always I have a morbid sense of humor when Kawashima is in that computer lab and she overhears comes up to this stranger and is like what was that you said about a website that asks if you want to see a ghost. Just the tonal contrast between her bright chipper demeanor and this dark weird topic.
 

As always with Kurosawa the thing that anchors this drama is the characters. Another thing that makes Pulse so scary is the way it’s the beginning of the internet. The way Kawashima first reads the instructions is so asmr hypnotic sustained suspense and his visits to Harue in the computer lab are perfectly sold as everyday that’s how he gets you everytime. 
     But the score in this thing. Within the first minute when that thing drags you down I instantly want to kill myself give up on life curl up in a ball and hide give up it’s so oppressively aggressively downer misanthropic emotional underscoring. And the glitchy electronic static deteriorating debilitating soundscape concoction wraps its nasty lurking swells around you constricting continually is delight.
     The drab dismal patina and high contrast murky shadows is despair visualized. The narrative arc perfectly follows Shiguéhiko Hasumi design start slow build resolution while being so conducive for the character arc of Harue going subtly from bright and happy optimistic to reveal she had this death depression drive within her the whole time is scary because if you think in real life maybe probably definitely some of the people most affected by depression suicidal self harm you wouldn’t have guessed.
 
My completely esoteric subjective way off not in a million years as usual meta easter egg take is why is the great Kôji Yakusho captain of the ocean liner bookending the narrative? Because all these sad whiny doomed souls are being sucked into the lame internet but his ship is cinema and nothing can stop it and it’s how we will all move forward our hopes our dreams the progress the very future of civilization can count on it.

Expansion of the unconscious self

How does Kiyoshi Kurosawa always manage to make the characters so believable? The worlds they inhabit seem so authentic familiar practical found. The homes the cramped Japanese urban environs rural green splendor. The way invariably a married couple share a meal and split a beer with each other. This is the cornerstone of suspense. 

Séance (2000, Kurosawa) stands out at this point chronologically going through the director’s filmography for being standard genre. Suspense. Don’t get me wrong I revere his transcendental formally experimental monumental wholly unique unto himself abstract doom existential art films but every time I watch Séance it’s like oh the one I don’t really have to think about what it all means.

     The engine that drives the narrative JUNCO the quintessential Kurosawa protagonist upper middle class citizen who hits the ceiling midlife crisis turns existential isolation crisis depression that in Séance huge moral disaster she tries to capitalize on exploit a child ghost for professional gain you can guess how that ends. Great touch here at the narrative midpoint there’s this two-shot facing on Junco and her husband where he’s in the foreground and she’s slightly beyond him in the background he in focus she out of focus soft on a different plane that says exactly what the film’s theme is visually. 

     The simplicity of ghost design in Séance is so rad. To begin with the costume design in this world only ghosts are allowed to wear primary colors. The rude arrogant businessman dining whose ghost mistress appears in that red dress with her eyes blurred and the almost laughable low budge greenscreened out legs dolly floating works because it’s uncanny how little it tries to in spite of nay because of the notion we get for the first time Kurosawa has vfx and is playing around. And the way the narrative takes its time with the eight year old kidnapping girl ghost for so long not anything too over the top horror she just won’t leave them alone.

     The point I keep returning to in Kurosawa it’s horror but what is truly unsettling gets under my skin is the stuff that terror of the ordinary real world creeping into my mind. In the case of Séance how Junco wants be famous so bad her own life loses all value to her. It’s so pathetic tragic relatable empathy inducing slight gigantic morally modest profound. But yeah also so fun the ghost synth traditional classic horror scary and all the wind howling thunderstorm effects the punch is above all how effective the domestic drama foundation conducive to everything proves.

The deluge that follows the denouement of Séance we’re left to figure out is an example of what I consider the most effective kind. Like a Greek tragedy. Like balancing an algebraic equation. That twist. Faustian comeuppance through domestic melodrama couched in a genre flick. Because Junco wants too desperately to be a famous medium she is possessed by the kidnapping girl ghost who forces her as a vessel to what we are not shown confess to the police. And we know that means the husband is probably going to prison or worse I don’t know if Japan has the death penalty but also Junco herself obviously. So she’ll get the notoriety she wants from the gods the wrong kind. Man this stuff is what I live for.

Office space

You can’t wake up if you don’t go to sleep. What’s up with this movie though for real? Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s secret weapon is he hypnotizes you while simultaneously placing you in a world that demands you to wonder what’s happened? Why do his films feel this way? Somewhere between what they mean to our spirit mind emotions and senses sense of humor sense of cinema sense of narrative lies the little candy.

 

Barren Illusion (1999, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) just might be his slowest film and that’s saying a lot. In fact that’s likely its most distinctive feature it’s an example of slow cinema if you consider that a thing. It’s also so far as I can tell the only Kurosawa movie without a score. 

     Speaking of sound design though it does utilize his characteristic drone mesmerizing technique. The bar with ominous ambient repetitive mechanized duct construct sound aurally supports a general repetition motif to be found throughout Barren Illusion. You know the way in the first few minutes the stranger girl being hit on in the bar tells the stranger guy to disappear then the safe thieves scene they tell the guy to disappear then the guy in his flat scene he disappears. 

     The girl in this thing has definitely got this I don’t know crinkle ASMR leitmotif. Right? When she’s in the music rehearsal space flat the way the sound effect foley of her eating each chip slowly flows into the way the sound of her taking that recycling out similarly crinkles the way she opens the parcel with the dried leaves same.

 

Barren Illusion feels otherworldly because the guy and girl seem like they’re in purgatory and it does everything it can formally to enhance this troubling premonitorily uneasy abstraction cinematically through its form so well because Kurosawa manipulates each element of his toolkit with everything at his disposal he’s mastered so well. When they disappear it’s as though they’re visually physically stuck between this world and the next. When the girl confronts the barrier we don’t see because before the camera flips to reveal her pov and talks about going over to the other side when we are shown it’s the beach and that skeleton corpse shores up says it all. Also when she tries to buy a plane ticket to get out they ignore her because she can’t leave here.

     My favorite sequence that tells me what Barren Illusion is essentially is when the girl plays with that slice of bread in bed then cut to she’s a jumper match cut to toast pop but wait the dust spores outside her window link to the following shot with the guy and the dust becoming this midpoint whole big part of the film. My point is on top of being purgatory Barren Illusion is experimental.

     That’s why I’m so obsessed with Kiyoshi Kurosawa that elusive what every filmgoer filmmaker seeks. Doing something with the cinematic language we haven’t seen yet. Nor heard nor felt for that matter. Maybe I’m wrong but I like calling this one purgatory. Because why else when the girl goes jumper or she gets Rodney Kingged does she seemingly reset? Speaking of purgatory she’s a postal worker what other shorthand in our modern society is there for purgatory? 

     Is that a ten minute scene of them bouncing a ball back and forth or does it just feel that long? Also something I don’t think other slow cinema films do or have done yet that Barren Illusion does is it plays out as a silent film. Oh and yeah this is probably a throw away idea I’ll reconsider useless later but for now could the couple in this be ghosts? Because of the scene where the couple get a dog then later on there’s a quick scene with the dog catchers outside taking it to the pound and the guy standing there can’t do anything about it. Or maybe it’s just another purgatory thing. They feel like ghosts. Or as part of this loose disaffected youth trilogy the question returns to haunt us did I ever exist?

Restore the rules of the world

How can one think about Charisma (1999, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) without trying to decipher its meaning? Let’s start with some basics. Kôji Yakusho plays YABUIKE. What do we know about Yabuike?

     He’s a cop who’s so over his workload he just sits alone in an empty room avoiding it. Then there’s this standoff between a gunman and his hostage a parliament member. Yabuike arrives on the scene only to walk away from it because of his conflicting morals. Then the guy shoots the hostage and the cops rain down on him with gunfire. Yabuike walking away shows us he didn’t want either to have to die. But specifically why would someone have to shoot and kill the other guy because the hostage holds a post in the government.

     Charisma literally from the Greek means God’s grace. At the end of Charisma the poacher puts a gun to JINBO’s head and Yabuike is so over it he raises his weapon to shoot the guy who even starts to say something like if you do you’re gonna make me kill the hostage but Yabuike doesn’t hesitate for a second. And both the hostage and because it was a nonlethal wound the poacher live. This is the crucial final test of Yabuike’s character after all he’s gone through. And the moral discussion throughout Charisma is despite the reality that nature is made up of forces that want to live and forces that want to kill is it possible through the grace of God to allow both to exist? I’ll let you think about Yabuike’s conclusion.

 

But really the big question what’s up with the tree? On another level I think the tree could be charisma along the lines of winning hearts and minds charm wisdom someone adept at rhetoric persuasion politics cunning. A leader. Which is why we see two sides battling over it. And the way it’s told through these characterizations is what’s so wonderful.

     First there’s bureaucracy. They work in the forest and I guess rig the tree with speedrail. Then there’s the zealot who they all know violently protects the tree. The zealot or protector KIRIYAMA funny we learn was a patient in a now defunct sanatorium in the forest. And the way Yabuike wanders into the abandoned sanitarium unbeknownst to him to sleep there and in the middle of the night Kiriyama returns his gun and badge he mutters he’s taking Yabuike’s soul. I don’t think there are any throw away lines in this film. Think about that later. 

     The opposing side is the ecology professor Jinbo. She tells Yabuike the guy who used to run the sanitarium brought Charisma the tree from the continent and it’s not what everyone thinks it produces a harmful toxin and is killing all the other trees in the forest. Of course we later find out it’s actually she who’s poisoning the forest as a means to make her claims credible. 

     What happens next I take as none of this matters because a stronger force armed invade and kill the tree. No one can stop them. And what’s the image resulting from the aftermath? Mushroom cloud. Nuclear holocaust. 

 

But despite neither Kiriyama nor Jinbo believing him Yabuike begins nursing a new Charisma. The final act of the narrative. As fate would have it through chance events Kiriyama absconds with stolen cash so he doesn’t care about the tree at all anymore or the forest for that matter. In a scathing portrayal he even tries to buy his way into the poachers.

     When the leader of the poachers takes control of the new Charisma everything is in place to set up the standoff mentioned earlier. I see the ending as Yabuike giving up on thinking he can single handedly end highest levels of political corruption all he can do is be average and do his average job so he gives the sprout to Jinbo while admitting he really doesn’t care what she does with it. 

     So everything’s settled. Tied up in a bow for us. We got our answer. Don’t even try to get involved when it comes to high stakes politically motivated action. Right. That’s what Yabuike did and in the end it was what’s right for him. Now he can go back to being a cop. Oh except for what follows is the end of civilization as we know it into a lake of fire oops. 

Fish farm dude ranch milk bar

I don’t know the land means a lot to me. Connective. There’s something there. Siblings fighting over it. Estranged mom returns the son near her as she hangs linens bedsheets bright washed on the clothesline to dry outdoors. Is it possible for everyone to be back together again? Does fate bring the motorist back to prevent YUKATA from finding a way to make his own happiness by destroying what he’s built on the land? Thinking about how Yukata acts like FUJIMORI dumping hazmat there isn’t a big deal.

 

License to Live (1998, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a tender mumblecore existential comedy about youth the theme of which seems to be leave the past behind you and pour your kindness and heart into the here and now wherever you are because it’ll be gone before you know it and those who cross your path and yourself the mutual exchange interactions will be all you have left once they or you are gone. 

     This film sets itself apart as cinema early on if you consider how generic the premise of someone waking up from a coma after ten years could otherwise be handled. Dude the way Kôji Yakusho plays Fujimori sitting in that hospital room when Yukata asks him about all these major news historic events and to each his lackadaisical response is always like yeah so what who cares whatever type reactions. I think it’s kind of punk. Current events are so boring. Hey can’t I laugh this is a comedy? 

     I wanna say the motorist sets up one of the most often recurring themes running throughout Kurosawa’s films that is something like old people being selfish stubborn in conflict with youth feeling stifled like it prevents any meaningful connection genuine sincere reciprocity of existing in harmony with one another. And what his youth do in reaction to all of it. License to Live feels like it belongs in a loose mumblecore disaffected youth trilogy along with Barren Illusion (1999, Kurosawa) and Bright Future (2002, Kurosawa).

This dates from the Cambrian Period 550 million years ago it's called a Eurasian King's Eyes

You know how there’s that line the math teacher asks the students in Serpent’s Path (1998, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) now what happens when we add dualism? I think that’s a joke about Eyes of the Spider (1998, Kurosawa). As heavy as the moralizing and confronting those who contribute to the lowest depravities in society is in Serpent’s Path we now see all that turned on its head and get its complete opposite Eyes of the Spider.

 

Eyes of the Spider is this heartwarming tender set amid rural splendor slow peaceful quiet meditation comedy that allows us to empathize with a man whose young daughter was killed along the path he follows in life after his albeit pretty quickly handled revenge shooting the man responsible. This is also one of the most indicative examples of just when you think you’ve hit lower tier Kiyoshi Kurosawa you are proven to have been too hasty to judgement.

     But think about Serpent’s Path for a second. This time around in Eyes of the Spider our everyman again Shô Aikawa plays a character with the exact same name NAOMI NIIJIMA is now the protagonist we follow. After he gets recruited by an old high school friend into the yakuza their first job finds them trying to verify the identity of a target and it’s so easy it’s funny what does Niijima do? He checks the man’s license. This is hilarious if you remember how hard this was in Serpent’s Path. But so yeah in the same sequence the boss asks Niijima to shoot the man and Niijima hesitates for a second then the boss says no problem and does it himself. Ultimately the biggest difference is the yakuza IWAMATU just wants to be buddies with Niijima.

     The dramatic conflict turns out to be a higher ranking yakuza played by Ren Ôsugi implores Niijima to supply him with info reporting on Iwamatu who later turns out to be breaking the rules dealing with the head of the Kinsai Family. But okay the old dude Ren Ôsugi plays is this kind rock collector who spends all his time hunting for precious stones in the mountains. Drastic tonal shift from Serpent’s Kiss this film makes it okay for us to love these dudes. The yakuza in Eyes of the Spider is this aimless hijinks workplace comedy.

 

So much happens in the last few minutes. Spanning time. And while normally I would have thought about how I was taught a passive protagonist is poor writing this exception proves the rule. It’s profound how Niijima just deals with the hand life deals him over and over again. 

     When his dead daughter Mitsuko appears at their home as a ghost he just denies it and says there’s nothing there. In any other movie that would be played up for its dramatic or horror impact potential. And when he and we see that dude in the wheelchair in the span of such a short runtime oh how he and we have changed the way we think about things. Zen existentialism. Flow through life like water. Be in harmony with your surroundings what a punch. Now we’ve all been transported back to a state of childlike innocence and wonder at how beautiful it is to be alive. 

What happens next? The clue is analytical theorem

Building on my take of Kurosawa’s previous film I read Serpent’s Path (1998, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) as a condemnation of depravity calling out the smallest cog in the machine the distribution of evil a lowly salesman is made accountable for and found guilty of contributing the worst overall whereby he’s led under false pretenses through an intricate trap that twists his own twisted morality back on himself. Its thesis is that only an innocent child has the sincerity to discern right from wrong yet none other than an innocent child is the one society is most affected by upon those transgressing said laws. I also kinda see it as dismantling the yakuza genre through directly confronting us its audience.

     The allegory in Serpent’s Path is the nastiest sfuff to be put on camera is perpetrated by the one selling it. This hits so hard with me because I’ve often pondered the nature of how just thinking about that this kinda stuff exists what disturbs me more than the acts themselves is that someone would film it. I never even thought to consider the culpability of someone who sells it. Beyond disturbing I now gotta agree someone marketing finding a clientel for said offensive taboo criminal contraband materials is too scary. More than that the way the MIYASHITA character is depicted oblivious in denial that he’s even done anything wrong. The chilling part of it all is that addressing all this is real life.

 

But the fun of it all is Shô Aikawa as NÎJIMA. The first time I saw Serpent’s Path he felt like this symbolizing embodiment of justice. As in the faulty legal system indiscriminately punishing not necessarily those who committed the crime but close enough. Somebody’s gotta pay. 

     Obviously though the twist ending is set up the first lines in the movie. Are you sure it’s the guy? It doesn’t matter they’re all connected. Miyashita laughs. Then at the end to Miyashita you were all in the same business right? The idea of the serpent’s path could refer to this grand tragedy very moralizing inevitable cause and effect tale of Miyashita making the wrong choice and paying for it. And Niijima is charismatic cool icon of countless yakuza films as against type teacher detached aloof yet driven his dialogue so revealing when he says in answer to the reason he’s doing all this I just wanted to try something like this.

     Then there’s the great image system wheels of justice Niijima constantly spinning that chamber. Also you ever notice when theyr’e playing darts that gag hearing Otsuki moaning off screen suggests though he’s obviously not really like he’s getting hit with the darts. Like he’s part of their game. Which he is. Which it turns out everyone is. And another weird image system thing is every time I see this you can’t help but notice that table of arts and crafts in the math classroom with funerary wreaths being assembled. And finally definitely not funny how do I wash this out of my brain the filthy slide swing set and chair with stirrups in the abandoned warehouse is the uh stuff that nightmares are made of. 

 

Finally there’s the way Serpent’s Path deglamorizes the yakuza genre. Like how Miyashita is having so much fun thrilled bloodthirsty bent on revenge giddy until he’s not. Once Niijima and we know Niijima intricately planned this whole thing gets Miyashita to shoot someone he doesn’t think any of this is as fun anymore. Nor do we. He becomes just this pathetic wretch loser. We realize we’re into something more now.

     The coolest most effective memorable scene in Serpent’s Path is when Miyashita crashes the classroom and right when he’s lulled into thinking he’s going to get what he’s come after. His reward. And by thanking the teacher they’re like friends or something. Like his dignity is intact. Like he’s in a place he can appreciate the child prodigy and her goodness. But no. He can’t. When he’s confronted by her outside that shot. The way his whole demeanor changes. And the blaring overwhelming sound of the el train behind them drowns us until it cuts to silence. Kiyoshi Kurosawa again here manages to make him accountable for what he’s done. And us too.

 

4/5/2026 4/8/2026 Plaza Theatre

Atlanta, GA

People like to think a crime has some meaning but most of them don't

The dualism inherent in movies for me is popcorn vs cinema. Commerce/art. I need both to live. Though distinct from one another that isn’t to say either is better or worse. Sick after consuming garbage I yearn for sustenance. You can only watch elevated transcendental form for so long until the monotony becomes unbearable and you need to restore balance with rousing spectacle instant gratification you don’t have to think about. 

     When I think of the 90s I lived it I think of serial killers. The Silence of the Lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme) and Seven (1995, David Fincher). As far as they were what’s new. Awards. Box office. Cultural. But there’s also something especially looking back I find distasteful. The only thing that really bothers me. Depravity. 

 

I take the meaning of the title of the movie Cure (1997, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) to refer to the antidote to depravity. Or what I find far worse. People who like to watch it. The first way Kurosawa does this is to deglamorize the killings. 

     Notice how of all five of the murderers the three we are shown none of which exemplify this as much as the cop. Probably one of the most memorable discussed scenes in Cure. That wide static daytime ext and the way it happens so mundane without in any way being stylized. None of the murders in Cure have any motive until it’s programmed into them. Cure dismantles the serial killer juggernaut sensation of the 90s which preceded it. We aren’t lured into following the narrative to find out why they did it because we already know why. And it’s nothing special.

     Yet we still get to follow the procedural. So what is it we are trying to solve? That’s just it we aren’t. Popcorn would have us solve the mystery. But Cure as cinema instead forces us to realize we’ve been hypnotized and have to snap out of it. 

 

I’m gonna skip to the end and come right out with it when TAKABE murders MAMIYA I don’t think it’s because he’s to carry on the Mesmer legacy taken over from Mamiya. He's too perfect new lease on life to be. I think Takabe does it because he realizes Mamiya is a hoax. Powerless. Mamiya is depravity enticing Takabe to find his true self telling him that by freeing him he will get to hear his true secret. But Takabe doesn’t buy it. And when he asks Mamiya if he remembers now it’s because they’re both divested themselves of their mutual interest in the illusion that led up to this point. There never was a secret. It was only a means to pull people down the rabbit hole. Into the abyss. This is real life now. Mostly I feel this because afterwards Takabe isn't in the same lost condition Mamiya was always in plus didn't Mamiya have to read like a thousand books to get that way. 

     Mamiya is the media. He’s empty. He uses manipulation psychology tricks to get people to believe they suffer from unfair plights that they’re only way out of is to take it out on others. And he’s so cool. Seriously. That shaggy mop thin moustache stoner gen X slacker baggy Aran sweater Cobain disaffected charm sincere ASMR hypnotizing sound design accompanying cozy doom is the reason I can’t stop watching this movie. Over and over again. Mamiya is cure is cinema is the greatest thing any movie could ever do. Hypnotize its audience. Suspension of disbelief. Put your stupid phone away and pay attention. 

 

Likewise the wife of Takabe is also a depiction of another type of problem which arises from popcorn. Hollow shallow meaningless entertainment with no redeeming value. The first scene in the movie when FUMIE is asked what the book she read is about is repeated later on. And when the doctor asks about the book she has no recollection of ever having read it. Just like after you watch a big budget Hollywood movie and take away absolutely nothing from it. 

     And when Fumie gets lost on that bridge in that signature Kurosawa high wide ext with the overpowering sound of wind that’s like us getting lost in a movie. Like she losing our grasp on reality is proof that we have crossed over into the power of cinema. But when she does a load of laundry yet the washer is empty or serves a steak that isn’t cooked we can see this as the media causing one to lose touch with reality despite not actually hurting anyone. When the doctor at the sanatorium tells Takabe he looks sicker than his wife it’s because she’s able to live her meaningless life while remaining healthy. Unlike him.

 

The dualism in Cure is it pathologizes our sickness allowing us to indulge in it while curing us of it. It warns us of the perilous rabbit hole while tempting us to jump in. And I did. I have. A notion I have is that both Mamiya and Fumie suffer from memory loss is because they and we can’t remember anything before Cure because the other fifteen movies Kurosawa made up until now no longer matter.