Since I intend to watch three of his films I thought I'd make a compendium post, not that im sure how many people would be interested in this.


Title: The Face of Another (Tanin No Kao)
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: (Sci-Fi), Psychological Drama
Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Author: Kôbô Abe
Language: Japanese
Release Date: 1966

“There are people who act like monsters, and monsters who act like people. Even monsters have their pleasures.”

Preface: A marriage between a philosophical poet and an experimental surrealist film maker, it is this combination that saw them release three thought provoking films across the span of four years, atmospheric and daring in their willing to push the boundaries of conventional cinema into avant-garde.

It is through the eyes of a desperate man and his curious psychiatrist that we observe the ultimate dangers of true anonymity, allowing for a fearlessness and assertive manner as a result of the complete absence of repercussion, the subject matter whilst abstract by modern terms no longer feels entirely ‘sci-fi,’ since the advent of the internet and its widespread commercial use, and particularly the anonymity it provides, the subject feels more relevant now than I expect it did over forty years ago. Demonstrating the paranoid and ultimately self-destructive behaviour, it predicts the death of all human morality, and given how many of his other character observations have since come true, it feels like a genuine scenario for the near future.

It is the legendary ‘Nakadai,’ known for his work with Kurosawa (Kagemusha, Ran), that takes the lead role, following a horrific accident that leaves his face irreparably scarred he is forced to hide his disfigurement. For a good portion of the film we fail to see the face of the lead character, shrouded in bandages, watching the disdain and distrust he faces in the presence of others; the audience too feels an odd disconnect, unable to identify any facial expressions we are left reliant on vocal expression adding to his shroud of mystery, simultaneously making his plight more difficult to empathise with yet easier to comprehend. Like Frankenstein’s monster, banished from society due to his unsightly appearance he returns to his mad scientist, not for his expertise but to creating a mask that will allow him to re-join the society that cast him out, but his new found anonymity transforms his character, gives him a freedom to do what he desires. Culminating in his dark plan to re-take his wife for himself, to seduce the woman incapable of looking beyond his disfigurement, once successful he becomes paranoid that she was too willing to look for love elsewhere, losing the last thing that he truly cared for.

In addition to this a side-plot emerges, aptly demonstrating Japan’s post-war paranoia; the mental patients flurrying for cover for fear of an air raid but it is not these that have suffered the most. Centering around the young woman from Nagasaki, startlingly beautiful yet horrifically burnt on one side, as she carefully strokes her hair to disguise her disfigurement, we are allowed to painfully join the dots of her past and her continued torment that prevents her from living freely, hiding more than just an external wound. And yet, despite this fascinating mini-story within the grander picture, beyond a fleeting thematic link there is nothing linking the two plotlines, pieced together in a manner that takes us a moment to adjust to the new settings, overall acting detrimentally to the film. As a short additional complementary story this would have worked far better, or even some manner of combining this point he wanted to raise within the overarching main story rather than this muddled, randomly cut together result.

The many scenes shot in absolute silence allow you to shut out all other senses and focus on the stark imagery presented, their minimalist manner evoking thoughts as to the characters development only to find ourselves suddenly re-immersed in lavish music, creating a welcoming shock to the senses. The dialogue displays the author’s poetic abilities superbly, many lines simply beautiful in the thought that has gone into their phrasing and the subtitles detracting nothing from the impact of the suggestions gone into the words, and yet they remain one of its greatest flaws. The entire film reeks of pretentiousness; not without a point to make, but at no point will they make their meaning clear. Combine this with the overt metaphors placed wherever possible, from the hair immersed in water in the back of the scientists office (no idea) to the wife who spends her time polishing gems (using something rough to create something beautiful perhaps?), the result feels too obscure and confusing to really extrapolate the directors intention.

There is little question in my mind the capabilities of this pairing, the sheer potential for radical thought-provoking existential philosophizing, captured on film by a man able to think outside of the box to suit his purpose, and certainly for a film of this age the effects hold up startlingly well, brought to life through the actors over the limited capabilities of the era. There is a poetic style prevalent to this artistic vision, but unfortunately it stumbles on the – rather major – hurdle of coherency; there is simply too much pretentiousness, unnecessarily dressing up an already fascinating story, and trying to make known all the points there are to raise whilst never really addressing them properly. Certainly not a bad film by any means, and almost impossible to truly classify, it simply fails to live up to expectations.

Title: The Pitfall (Otoshiana)
Rating: 4/5
Genre: Drama, Crime
Starring: Hisashi Igawa, Sumie Sasaki, Sen Yano
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Author: Kôbô Abe
Language: Japanese
Release Date: 1962

“Being invisible might have been useful when I was alive, but this is unbearable”

Preface: A marriage between a philosophical poet and an experimental surrealist film maker, it is this combination that saw them release three thought provoking films across the span of four years, atmospheric and daring in their willing to push the boundaries of conventional cinema into avant-garde.

Another impossible to classify film; a weird dramatic – almost documentary – political thriller with ghosts with a seemingly endless variety of points injected into this film to the point of bursting, perhaps slightly shakily exploring the boundaries between the social class and warning of the dangers of those in a position of power, deviously plotting to manipulate the situation to his liking. Tackling the declining coal mining industry and the difficulties many workers faced when looking for work, the demeaning conditions that led many to lose their lives for minimal pay, overseen by cruel men without care for those beneath them, this is one of those films that defy convention and stray well into the glories of obscurity.

Opening with the young miner (Igawa) and his child struggling to look for work, traveling far to find another overseer willing to take him on, it isn’t long before he finds work once more. Interspersing documentary footage with his tale, blurring fact with fiction, he quickly becomes noticed by a mysterious figure, told to meet him near an abandoned mine amidst a town of ghosts only to be betrayed and brutally murdered. Rising as the dead he seeks the reason for his demise, becoming ensnared in a feud between look-a-like union leader (Yano) and a rival union, the manipulations of the assailant and the sole woman (Sasake) living in the desolate town layering a web of lies, the truth becoming ever more distorted through the deceit of others.

The comparisons to the works of David Lynch (Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive) are easy enough to observe, particularly of note in the unusual fashion the story meanders from a simple tale of the working class to an observation of the dead, ghosts walking the land forced to endure the torture of life without impact on their surroundings. The plot thickening further as we become encapsulated by the mystery of the two feuding miner’s unions, the site manager dividing the two mines to fight amongst each other rather than uniting against him; its not just the story itself that has an unusual aimlessness about it, but there’s an indefinable purpose told through the sequence of eccentric scenes that on the surface are intriguing but are ultimately bizarre; the short scene of a boy skinning a frog, or the extensive footage of the miners torment as he drags his body through the sand standing out as examples.

And yet the dialogue felt anything if not forthright, demonstrating clarity of each of the characters desires, feelings and emotions, aptly performed we can quickly come to terms with their stance and piece them into the ever widening puzzle of betrayal and manipulation, but like the great works of ‘Tennessee Williams’ (Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Glass Menagerie) or ‘John Steinbeck’ (Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men), there is a definite sub-text to each word being carefully chosen, an additional intention by the director made apparent by the specific phrasing used, a moral waiting to be extrapolated from the story, assisted by one of the most obscure soundtracks I’ve ever heard utilised. Avant-Jazz of the most eclectic kind, ranging from complete silence to sudden and short loud bangs and knocks, or a rapid technical chaos of piano sporadically and unpredictably distributed throughout its two hour run time.

I’m not going to lie, I know I didn’t understand everything he was trying to get across with one viewing; the significance of enigmatic man in white against the dirty background perhaps more than a simple division of status, behaving as a sort of ‘Grim Reaper’ handing out death with little plausible reason for doing so; the feud between the ‘old pit’ and the ‘new pit’ perhaps hinting at a futile war – not that war is ever anything but – between followers of the new and old testament; the small mute child viewing all like an oddly omnipotent traveler, watching everything unfold. But behind this existential meaning is another layer, showing the corruption of capitalism, those in power manipulating situations for their own benefit (or amusement), and of the mystery of death, the ghosts desperately searching for a reason for their untimely demise that will never become apparent. Despite some slight confusion, there is a point to be made here and whilst difficult to extract, is undeniably on show for the smart man to piece together.

Title: Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna) - Director’s Cut
Rating: 5/5
Genre: Drama, Horror, Romance
Starring: Eiji Okada, Kyôko Kishida
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Author: Kôbô Abe
Language: Japanese
Release Date: 1964

Preface: A marriage between a philosophical poet and an experimental surrealist film maker, it is this combination that saw them release three thought provoking films across the span of four years, atmospheric and daring in their willing to push the boundaries of conventional cinema into avant-garde.

“Are you shovelling sand to live, or living to shovel sand?”

Unlike what you might expect, this is not a meager tale of an elderly woman curiously fashioning a life amongst the dunes, there is far more at work in this film than a simple intrigue. Opening with the rolling dunes, gently washing across the landscape with the wind, it is the entomologist (insect collector) searching amongst the sands that quickly becomes the focus of this tale, exploring for so long that he unwittingly misses the last bus back to civilization. Offered a place to stay by a curious inhabitant, he is taken to the house of a lonely young woman who cares for him until morning and it is only at this point that he realises that the ladder he used to descend to the house has been raised leaving him trapped with her.

Making every attempt to evade definition, the horror of being trapped and tortured by the sand walls that surround you, like a predator stalking its prey they slowly cave in towards you, taunting and teasing you, forcing you to suffer before it’ll finally but inevitably strike unusually contrasted by the obvious dramatic tensions between the two main characters. The male having been trapped in such a situation garnering the obvious sympathy as the perceived victim, but the woman he suffers along side with is not only a slave to the circumstances as well, but as we quickly learn lost her husband and child to the sand resulting in a swaying empathy, demanding we ask who the real victim is, and the only answer I can concede is that neither are. Through the hopelessness of their own existence, an almost perverse observation from the third entity in their presence, watching them in their isolation gives way to an absurd romance that actually didn’t feel too far from the recently reviewed ‘Last Tango in Paris.’

Much time is spent defining the nature of the sand, the sticky manner it’ll cling to the skin, the many times you see them shaking clothes to remove as much as possible, slowly dwindling as they both gradually become accustomed to it, the stark yet oddly elegant figure of the naked woman coated in the material that both plagues and defines her existence, and the many animals that survive amongst the unrelenting dunes. The cinematography in this regard is absolutely spectacular, only perhaps ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ comes close to portraying such a vivid entity, animating the inanimate. The obsession with textures; the waves of sand cascading down, the gentle rising of the damp moisture providing them with their water supply, constantly shifting and changing its form lending it a realistic feel of life, and the careful use of the single oil lantern giving limited light, lending an almost theatrical feel to the proceedings.

The Avant-Jazz soundtrack is back too, but this time feels more poignant; his purpose is made more readily apparent and gives no better demonstration of how he has refined and honed his talent since ‘the pitfall’ than that opening scene, the man slowly walking through the sand lending an ominous tone to otherwise simple footage, creating the knowledge that whilst all feels calm something terrible is just a short way into the distance, and perhaps lightly mocking that fact. The dialogue itself does nothing to counteract this fact, sparingly used to illustrate arguments and situations between the two characters that cannot be portrayed using their physicality. It is in particular the woman, despite her comparative simple-mindedness (especially when put in contrast to the scholarly man who came traveling from Tokyo), offers a valuable insight having come from an entirely foreign background, perceiving life in an altogether unique manner, and most importantly that despite the obvious apparent differences, our purpose and reasoning for the manner of existence aren’t all that different.

The entire film is a large metaphor for the manner in which we rationalise things, the two people trapped by sand walls are no different from anyone else, except perhaps that they can readily see their walls. Instead we are confined by society and its rules and regulations, by the necessity to work – as indeed the woman is, rewarded by working hard by less sand in her midst, more water to drink and the comfort that tomorrow there will be that much less to do – and by the narrow perception of normality within the world. There is also a keen sense of duty to the village, assisting in their survival in the knowledge that you are genuinely making a difference, and the zen theory of simplistic tasks to achieve enlightenment. There may not be the lights of the city, the fast food, cinemas and technology, but he was never interested in these aspects anyway. It was the dunes that he always escaped to, to escape his mundane life for the solitude of entomology, and it is the very dunes that captured him that offers him something the city simply can’t.

Describing it in words won’t do it justice, as the end result feels all too enlightening (as cliché as that sounds), there is a profound message here that isn’t layered behind pretentious ramblings from poetic but ultimately cryptic lines. They don’t pile on the metaphors and let you guess what they’re on about, it’s far too simple for that, and yet the result is so much more than just a tale about some sand, more a parable than anything else. I always hate using the term ‘perfect’ as it always implies that there was no possible way it could have improved irrespective of whether you know how, so instead let me say this: if there’s a fault here I’ll be damned if I can find it.




And im done for him