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.