Jigoku

I picked this one up on a lark and I was pretty underwhelmed. The opening is both stylish and genuinely creepy with its laments, wrapped corpses, and surreal hellscapes, and it segués cleverly into a college lecture hall where our protagonist, a young theology student it seems, is listening to a lecture on concepts of hell. It's by no means fair to say that it's all down hill from there, but the movie only intermittently reaches the same heights. There are deeply unsettling and scary moments, but they're balanced by lot of ho hum bits and few others that almost set one to giggling. The plot is a complete mess it pulls credulity to bits and keeps on ripping and its all so rushed that there's neither time to build any real suspense or develop the characters. This is another problem: The female lead is a stereotypical picture of what I take to be a traditional Japanese idea of womanly virtue and the protagonist is just kind of wishy washy and uninteresting. His demonic friend and tormentor Tamura steals every scene he's in; the actor was clearly having a blast chewing up the scenery. And he succeeds wonderfully in what (I presume) he's supposed to do, which is making evil look a lot more fun than our hero's imperfect handwringing sort of virtue. But of course all the plot and real world stuff is just to set up hell right? Well the hell doesn't redeem it. It's often beautiful in a sick sort of way (Brueghel has a run for his money here) and viscerally repulsive, but while it might shock and perhaps even awe the viewer at points it's more gory and repulsive than unsettling. I suppose my reaction might be culturally conditioned, perhaps it would get under the skin of a Buddhist much more than it did a (somewhat lapsed) Christian like myself, but this brings me to another point: The theology is harsh as well you know. Almost everyone's evil and even the people who've committed fairly understandable and, I'd think, forgivable sins end up in hell. I grew up in an avowedly evangelical church and their theology was much more forgiving and understanding of human weakness. Sometimes we seem to have landed in the world of those terror tracts some churches in my home town used to pass out; there's a definite air of grim disapproval (whether affected or genuine I can't tell) for the sinful modern world hanging over the thing that's so stodgy it's more than a little funny. I'll give it high marks for the visual style and for the cool jazz that floats through and most of the actors acquit themselves quite well (though some don't have too much to work with). But to say that makes a complete mess of plot, pacing, and characterization is, if anything, kind.

Words can't aptly describe the assault on the senses that is JIGOKU but I'll try anyway: over-used phrases like fascinating, surreal, disturbing and unique instantly come to mind - but the film is all of these and more. By now, I have a fair number of strange Japanese films under my belt - but this one's something else entirely!

From the stylized approach (shooting from odd angles and the occasional adoption of a greenish hue) to its plethora of arresting imagery (especially the gruesome body piercing - sword through neck, eye-gouging, feet stamping on huge needles, torso sawed in half, etc.), director/co-writer Nakagawa's vision of Hell is surely among the most visceral ever depicted on the screen. While its concept of establishing sections (or circles) of punishment for specific crimes goes all the way back to Dante Alighieri - though, as mentioned in the film itself, Buddhism has its own take on the subject - cinematically it anticipates the one seen in the Coffin Joe outing THIS NIGHT I'LL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE (1966). Still, with respect to both the microcosmic viewpoint of the plot and the film's vivid color scheme, it also reminded me of GOKE - BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL (1968), while its essential nihilism (I literally lost count of the number of people killed off during the first hour!) looks forward to BLIND BEAST (1969).

The doppelganger element - in the DVD's main supplement, a 39-minute featurette, it's mentioned that the script was partly inspired by the Faust legend - heightens the film's already disquieting aura: Yoichi Numata as an emissary of Hell in human form (though he's not spared the painful retribution for his sins once the scene shifts to the netherworld) is especially effective; interestingly, the actor was disappointed by his own performance and admits now that he couldn't understand the role! However, I need to point out that - much like I had written of Ingmar Bergman's THE RITE (1969) - the plot reaches a level of implausible melodrama as to feel almost like a parody (even more so when considering the various characters' penchant for bursting into sentimental songs a' la the work of John Ford!).

Anyway, while I found the DVD transfer somewhat dark, I'm glad to say that the copy I own is the 'Second Pressing' - this means that the problem concerning a 2-minute sequence, which previously got skipped when watching the disc on a DVD player, has now been fixed. Originally intended for Eclipse, Criterion's sub-label - back when it was supposed to release little-known genre/exploitation titles - I feel that the film is important enough to warrant its place in the official Collection.

The bits from GHOST STORY OF YOTSUYA (1959) shown in the featurette were very intriguing and, hopefully, won't be too long in coming; still, I was equally itching to learn more about the various 'B' horror films by Nakagawa and production company Shintoho (which had actually started out by making such masterworks of World Cinema as Akira Kurosawa's STRAY DOG [1949] and Kenji Mizoguchi's THE LIFE OF OHARU [1952]!) whose posters form the extensive still gallery...

Although I have to admit that I'd never heard of the film prior to Criterion's DVD announcement, Chuck Stephens - in his rather pretentious essay in the accompanying booklet (though he perceptively suggests that the pairing of the dead yakuza's mother and girlfriend may well have anticipated the deadly female relatives of ONIBABA [1964]) - believes that JIGOKU ought to be thought of in the same terms as such horror landmarks as EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1959), BLACK Sunday (1960), PEEPING TOM (1960) and PSYCHO (1960), films which collectively brought an unprecedented maturity to the genre. Needless to say, the film's greatest influence can be seen in the gore-drenched Asian exploitation cinema which survives to this day (interestingly enough, JIGOKU was itself remade twice over the years - in 1979 and 1999!).

This movie spends half of its time in the real world and half in the afterlife. During the first half you ask "where the hell is hell anyway?". After it goes to the "real" hell, you realize that hell is all the things that went undone in the mortal coil.

You realize that if you don't want to live in hell later, don't live in "hell" now.

A great psychedelic trip without psychedelic trappings.

Certainly not a film for everyone, 'Jigoku' combines visions of Dante, surreal art, nightmarish tortures, and of course, Japanese camp. Director Nobuo Nakagawa presents it all in a dark, dreamlike way, shocking us (mildly) with the death of characters in the first part of the movie, and ramping this up to really shocking us with his vision of the torments of hell. It's in these that the film is at its best. There are the scenes of gore which may have you cringing, but the truly memorable scenes are those which are artistic, such as the field of hands reaching up out of the ground, and the whirling torment of people circling in a frenzy. In Nakagawa's hell, there is both physical pain and mental anguish, as people endlessly seek loved ones or slog through rivers of pus and waste. Where the film is weaker is in providing reasons for why all of the characters end up in hell in the first place. While the initial setup of a hit and run accident is pretty tight, expanding this to a broader set of characters gets a little contrived. Through it all, the character of the dark and sociopathic friend is played well by Yôichi Numata, who stands out in the cast.

I read about this movie when I was a kid. Never thought that much about it since I would probably never see it. Recently rented it off Netflix and WOW! Nakagawa's message comes through loud and clear across 46 years and the even wider cultural gap between US and Japan. Unusual stylization (truly hope to see this on a theater screen someday) is incredibly effective as a purely aesthetic experience (meaning you could turn off the subtitles and still be enthralled by the visuals and the music) AND as an elegy for the Japanese traditions of beauty and honor. You can read the various summaries in other posts. Suffice it to say this movie qualifies as a masterpiece if you don't go into it with "horror movie" expectations. See it!