Hakuchû no tôrima

Oshima's Violence at Noon is a meditation on the destructive capacity of love. It traces the course of a grotesque love triangle between a rapist and two women who both love him, leading to an ultimately tragic conclusion.

This is a deliberately deep, art house film, with much ponderous dialogue. The dialogue serves as much to express Oshima's ideas on love as to advance the plot, with lines such as "Love has no rewards." The film also features some great cinematography, with excellent use of black and white. A sequence in which a violent attack is represented by a series of photographs is a particular highlight.

However, the film suffers from a tendency to let ideas take precedence over characterization. We often have little idea why the characters do certain actions, a particular problem given that some of their activities are extreme. Ultimately, this is a thought-provoking film that at times descends into the head scratching.

First of all, let me correct a wrong statement which you can find in one of the two other reviews on this film: no, Oshima never attended a film school in France, although he was clearly influenced by the French New Wave and eventually shot a film in Paris in the 1980s ("Max my Love"). Now, to see some influence from Resnais' "Marienbad" and "Muriel" in this film is quite right: the lightning-paced editing, jump cuts, elliptical narrative and numerous flashbacks turn this work into a rather challenging one for the viewer, while it presents an interesting reflection on haunted memory (another common point with Resnais).

No, as you may guess, this is not a "sit back and relax" film. To put things in a nutshell, "Hakuchu no Torima" is the portrayal of a violent rapist as seen through the recollections of his wife and one of his victims. As the film starts, Eisuke (played by a great Kei Sato) encounters Shino (Saeda Kawaguchi), who works as a maid in a house. She is a former coworker from a failed collective farm, whose life he once saved -- only to rape her. Soon, Eisuke's criminal pattern of rapes and murders emerges as he goes on assaulting women (Shino being the witness of one of them, as Eisuke tries to violate her employer). When cooperating with the police on making a description of the rapist, Shino withholds her crucial knowledge of his identity. She prefers writing letters to Eisuke's dutiful wife, Matsuko, a schoolteacher (Akiko Koyama -- Mrs Oshima), in order to expose his true nature and perhaps induce her into turning Eisuke over to the police. As the police investigation develops, Shino insinuates herself into the investigative process by following Inspector Haraguchi (Fumio Watanabe) as he pursues clues in an attempt to understand Eisuke's destructive impulses. Haraguchi is led to believe that Shino, as Eisuke's first victim, is the underlying cause for his violence. Flashbacks tell us about the complex circumstances behind Eisuke's rescue of Shino at the collective farm, revealing the dual image of Eisuke as both criminal and savior in the eyes of Shino, and explaining the inextricable bond between the criminal and his victim. Strangely enough, Shino and Matsuko will eventually unite their efforts to protect Eisuke from capture... or won't they?

Throughout the whole film, Oshima is more preoccupied by the relationship developing between Shino and Matsuko than by the rapist. The despair of both women is linked to that of Eisuke himself and to the failure of the socialist movement in postwar Japan (symbolized by the collapse of the collective farm, after which the true believers either committed suicide or turned to primitively destructive ways). Based on a true story (when Japan was terrorized by a man who raped and killed up to 30 women in 1957-58), shot in a stunning black and white (which makes this film look like no other film from Oshima), "Hakuchu no Torima" explores the themes of guilt and self-destruction, and shows how crime reflects the pathology of the society in which the criminal lives. A difficult yet beautiful and riveting film, for experienced viewers.

I bought a rare copy of this for $1 at my local library, being a fan of foreign (especially Japanese) cinema, and never having heard of the director, Nagisa Oshima. I definitely cannot say that the film is bad, because like the reviewer above, I did not understand it. It isn't that I had difficulty following what was happening in the storyline, which was pretty straightforward, but I just had no idea what the intent of the filmmakers were, what the purpose of the story was. The storyline is so bizarre and sensationalistic - a serial rapist and his relationship with both his wife and one of his victims, all three of whom used to be part of some kind of commune for intellectuals (I didn't even know it was a commune until reading another reviewer's synopsis) - that I am sure there must be some underlying symbolism or message here the director was trying to convey. Maybe it had something to do with Japanese society of the time (1966), I'm not sure? Therefore, I must give my opinion of the outward details of the film. The black-and-white cinematography of the film was exquisite, and the constant cutting of shots from scene to scene was highly impressive. It is obvious a great deal of energy and resources were put into the production. This film is outwardly exceedingly beautiful, on a par with other such visual Japanese films as "Kwaidan" and "Kagemusha." The music score was arresting, as well. Other reviewers all seem to compare this to the work of French director Alain Resnais, but I have never seen any of his films. To me, the film seemed distantly related to the works of Stanley Kubrick in its meticulous attention to visual compositions (I saw the film in widescreen, and I can't even imagine watching it in full screen) and its delving into very dark, uncharted psychological territory. Another film to compare this to is Nicholas Roeg's "Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession" - another dark, non-linear, visually beautiful film whose themes were very difficult to penetrate. The other major drawback is the length - this film does seem to go on about a half hour too long.

I would love to have a conversation with the director on just what the storyline means, but unfortunately, I had to watch it without any frame of reference. That made it a frustrating intellectual experience, but an impressive aesthetic one.

Violence at Noon looks at one men and two women, but it's certainly not a love triangle, at least in any 'normal' sense. The director, the iconoclast Nagisa Oshima, takes a decidedly non-linear approach to this story of a rapist and murderer who has ties to two women, one he raped many years before and his wife (or ex-wife perhaps).

I actually DID feel confused a lost a couple of time during the film, but only in the first half. It did jump around a lot, but after a certain point I clicked into Oshima's fast-paced rhythm (and it has about 2,000 cuts so that is a lot even by today's standards), and it has such a fiery sense of what is right and wrong and how the gray areas of the world just take over, and also how a rapist and murder can be understood, if certainly not "liked" at all. It's a dynamic, angry character, simmering and volatile, and when he's on screen you can't take your eyes off him (and it makes for one of the really great openings to any movie, as he enters a house and eyes a woman, a very dangerous-sexy scene).

I really got engrossed in this story of suicide, regret, guilt, and what happens when enveloped in society - that it's a murder mystery is so secondary a note, maybe even the last thing on Oshima's mind. In fact if it hadn't been for a scene on a train that is just shot very clumsily and pretentiously, it might be close to being a perfect "art" film, where a director takes some major chances with style and effect to tell his story. As it stands, I was drawn into Violence at Noon through the emotionally harrowing performances and the innovative editing (and even among other "New Wave" filmmakers of the era who used editing to unconventional effect this had an uncanny sense of going back and forth in time - taking on memory as snapshots, but still cohesive for a full story).

This movie has something incredible. The fastness. We are put, since the first scenes, in a crazy mood made of hunger rather than satisfaction. And this hunger is the one of a rapist.

Eisuke, the "demon of noon" is a serial sexual abuser that, as we witness from the first minutes, tries to put his hands of fury over a young girl called Shino, a waiter who lives in Kansai. Far from her native village in Nagano prefecture from which the "demon" belongs too. Before moving, however, Shino used to have sex with Genji the son of the village master in which she used to live. The reason was escaping from poverty after a flood that destroyed almost all the house of the place they both belong to. The hunger of the girl became so the reason she slept with him. However, he really liked her. So this leaded to a double suicide of love. The Japanese call it "shunji" and could have been a traditional element for a classic plot. But Oshima is an innovator. In fact, Genji, liked by a shy village school teacher called Matsuko, is the only one to die. Shino was escaped and raped by Eisuke, the demons that here makes his first crime. So we realize that Shino was raped twice. Matsuko, rather than feel lost, is more and more attracted by Eisuke, and Shino, after the second rape, decides to inform her the real identity of the demon. The problem is that Matsuko and Eisuke are now a married couple. The teacher, is shy as ever, but this happens only on the surface. And, in Japan especially, not every time to appear means to be. We discover she is so much attracted by his violent and beastly drunk husband to avoid to help the girl. However, at one point, she decides to help but, after the death condemn to Eisuke, to end her days in a double suicide with Shino. They did it but Shino another time survives.

Explaining the plot here is necessary to understand the themes of a story completely untidy made of flashbacks and close ups that seem trying to show us the inner soul of the characters. This is given by the fact that this plot evolves under the skins. Under the surface. Even if the violence occurs at noon. Here Matsuko is not a wife as Ozu could have imagined. Here we have a demon that lies under her as well as the characters of Nomura's movies. The forest, however, as the idea of the sun as heat rather than light, is a theme yet developed in Kurosawa's Rashomon where we have, as in this movie, a generally hidden act that lies under the sun and not surrounded by fog.

Another thing very important is the political message behind this work. Even id we are not in a move like "Night and fog of Japan" where this element is stressed more we can consider the two dead victims, Genji and Matsuko, the real couple of "shunji". They, being both pure before the flood, somehow loved each other but were attracted by the flesh and instincts after the order was destroyed. Eisuke is the tool that, creating the chaos, can show us this. As well the easiness that makes Shino living without caring too much about, not only her liar soul, but also her violated body. She concerns only about the goal. That is eating after the starvation. As the postwar Japan did in front of the bombings by the Americans while old officers were killing themselves. The hunger, if reaches a goal, so not as happens with Eisuke, who feels a thirsts of passions, can be justified. And Shino wins as Japan did.