L'Auberge du mal

Shintaro Katsu and Tatsuya Nakadai are without a doubt two of my favourite Japanese actors, to the point where I'm often happy to watch either of them in anything, so to see them both in the same movie, and have that movie be directed by Kobayashi, was a treat.

That being said: this is pretty mid-tier Kobayashi, so it never quite reaches the heights of Harakiri, The Human Condition, Kwaidan, or even Samurai Rebellion. He was at his best in the late 50s and 60s, and Inn of Evil definitely feels like it was made about a decade before its actual year of release.

But mid-tier Kobayashi still makes for a good watch, and while the plot is slow when it is there and for some stretches of the movie isn't really there, the visuals, acting, and overall tense atmosphere do a lot to make up for that, making this a film that's easy to recommend to Kobayashi fans already familiar with the aforementioned films.

A black and white film from a time when most Japanese productions were color although it would be very hard to imagine this film in color. An obscure offering from a director who is known for two of the best samurai films ever, Seppuku and Samurai Rebellion. He also made the seminal Japanese ghost film, Kwaidan.

Set in feudal Japan, a new police officer and his assistant are planning to take down a smuggling ring operated out of an inn on an island in a city criss-crossed with moats. No one dares enter the inn as only certain criminals are allowed in. Inside the the inn isn't a raucous non-stop party you might expect but a quiet, moody place inhabited by a small band of cynical criminals. The leader/owner of the inn is an older man assisted by his 18 year old daughter. Enter two of the criminals, one nick-named the "Disinterested" is played by Tatsuya Nakadai. The other, named the "Living Buddha", has brought in a badly beaten young man he just rescued from an inn on the mainland. The fellow gangsters are unsure of bringing in the unconscious man but the leader accepts the Living Buddha's act of mercy. Suddenly a decrepit drunk, played by Shintaro Katsu, shambles in demanding saké. They throw him out but the drunk is persistent and returns. The leader also allows him to stay. Cared for by the innkeeper's daughter and the "Living Buddha", the young man recovers and they learn that he stole money to buy back his girlfriend who was kidnapped into prostitution. Unfortunately he lost the money to a pickpocket while in an inn hence the beating. Meanwhile a representative for a rich family in the city arrives and tempts the gang with a job smuggling forbidden Dutch goods into the city. The gang has had bad experiences with this family before and they refuse. As time goes by the presence of the earnest young man starts to unravel the tough exteriors of the gang and they begin to want to help him rescue his girlfriend. And so the story unfolds.

A tour-de-force of lighting and black and white cinematography. The pacing is deliberate and the story revolves around the characters instead of action. The movie leaves the confines of the inn only a few times. The ensemble cast is superb with the lead Tatsuya Nakadai delivering his usual tormented soul. The going is a little slow during the second half-hour but it picks up and holds for the rest of the film. The action finally arrives at the end and it's well done.

Recommended.

Kobayashi continues his combination of social commentary with the remnants of his early melodramatic and dramatic work in Inn of Evil, a tale of a group of criminals at the lowest end of corruption in a corrupt society needing to deal with conflict from every side. I think it's also Kobayashi's most obvious film in a while, limiting its thematic impact, while a certain character moment ends up feeling a bit off and unbelievable undermining the character journey at the same time. And yet, there are moments of wonderfully isolated emotional resonance, especially late in the film, and we get some quality action by the end as was Kobayashi's wont in this style of film he worked in like Harakiri or Samurai Rebellion. I think it's one of his lesser works, but there's entertainment to be had still.

In a less populated part of Edo is a small island in a river. On this island stands a single structure, the Easy Tavern owned by Ikuzo (Kan'emon Nakamura) who has a small gang of criminals led by Sadashichi the Indifferent (Tatsuya Nakadai, returning to a performance more in line with his in Yojimbo) as well as his daughter Omitsu (Komaki Kurihara). The police will not do any work on this island, leaving them alone completely, because it is known that Ikuzo and some of the powerful families and merchants in the area have an arrangement where Ikuzo's men deal with the smuggling in of forbidden goods from forbidden ships for them. A new police officer Kaneko (Shigeru Koyama) has different plans, though. One night, unexpectedly, two men come running over the single bridge onto the island, fighting each other to the death and collapsing behind Sadashichi, injured but protected from Kaneko who was in pursuit. These two men are Tomijiro (Kei Yamamoto) and Gonroku, and their stories get told a bit later after they recover a bit from their injuries.

In the meantime, we get to know the residents of the Easy Tavern, most particularly Sadashichi whom Ikuzo describes as having a kind of mental illness that sets him apart from society, and society's resistance to him ends up making him violent. At least at Easy Tavern, he explains to Kaneko, he can be directed. They're lost souls, and the core of the thematic point of it is that they are the bottom rung of a corrupt ladder. When the straight and narrow Kaneko comes to the area to clean things up, he aims for the smugglers, not the men paying the smugglers. Is this fair? Well, it doesn't really matter because it is happening, and the increased attention is putting Ikuzo and Sadashichi off of the proposed job from the rich merchant's representative completely.

And then we get Tomijiro's tale. He was an indentured servant with a love interest who worked for another family until her father decided to sell her to a brothel. He stole his set aside wages of 15 ryo and set out to find her, squandering it all in pursuit of Gonroku, the man who purchased her. It's this tale that suddenly convinces Sadashichi and the other men to take on the dangerous job, and it's the leap that I'm not quite willing to accept. They're established as rather self-centered men with a large sense of reticence around any job after two of their men died in their last job, and their sudden acceptance of all the risk to do a job that they will offer all the reward to Tomijiro to afterwards seems a bit thin.

The job goes forward, things go wrong, and the four men who went on the job either die or disappear, including Sadashichi. Tomijiro, after a moment of potential release as he grows easier with his situation and the potential to save his lady, helps around the tavern, but the failure of the smuggling operation sends him into desperation again. Gonroku, who keeps coming to the Easy Tavern every night to get drunk without anywhere to seemingly go, obviously has a large amount of cash on him, and Tomijiro decides to kill and rob him for the money. The scene between Gonroku and Tomijiro ends up one of the most heartbreaking moments in any film in Kobayashi's body of work. It's beautiful and sad.

The finale action scene plays out, and we get a small coda as Tomijiro and his girl visit the now empty Easy Tavern followed by onscreen text saying "We have died for nothing." That's a bit of nihilism to end a film where something actually was gained, but it also recontextualizes the action of the film to cast it more in the light of the "victories" in both Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion. The lowest rungs of a criminal conspiracy were wiped out while the upper rungs, the ones actually pushing the buttons to make things happen. The fight was directly because the police wanted to stop smuggling, but as Ikuzo says, if they don't do the smuggling, then someone else will. It's really part and parcel with The Thick-Walled Room and Hymn to a Tired Man where the upper echelons of power were receiving smaller punishments than those beneath them.

I can imagine one more rewrite of this script that would have pushed it from lesser-Kobayashi into the higher tier of his work. I think the early emphasis on Sadashichi's mental state makes the character change halfway through less believable than it needs to be. Also, Ikuzo ends up with a fair amount of dialogue, especially with Kaneko that makes the point of the film a little on the nose. Beyond those smallish issues, which are pretty relegated to the first act, this is still a quality entertainment. The equating of the small sparrow hatchling that Sadashichi nurses and then loses is the kind of more subtle thing that helps provide all the subtext that the film really needs, and that scene with Gonroku near the end is wonderful.

So, it's not Kobayashi's best work, but it's still solidly good.

A gang of misfits, the innkeeper and his daughter, a drunk and a wounded young man find themselves holed up inside an inn called the Easy Tavern as they wait to transport smuggled goods from a Dutch ship. It sounds like the beginning of a joke but it's anything but. It's another opportunity for Masaki Kobayashi to probe the depths of the human spirit in this period drama set in Feudal Japan.

I won't go into plot specifics because part of what makes Kobayashi's movies so powerful is the experience of letting all the details slowly sink in until the final catharsis hits you like a ten ton hammer. If you've ever been left dumbfounded by the sheer emotional power of his movies, Inn of Evil will not disappoint. All his stylistic hallmarks are present. The plights of ordinary men forced to extreme measures by the corruption and oppression of the rich and powerful. Character flaws rooted in the past blocking their inner need. Emotionally scarred people in search of redemption. Long narrations that reveal character and motive. The final catharsis of people overcoming their flaws by sacrificing a part of themselves. If Kobayashi is among the most powerful film-makers in the history of movies, it's because he so perfectly understands tragedy. His movies are essentially ancient Greek tragedies with the characters themselves acting as the "deus ex machina". And it takes divine strength for them to sacrifice themselves with such selflessness.

The characters and their choices and motivation follow Kobayashi's personal style. Like the drunkard (played by the great Shintaro Katsu) redeeming himself for his past foolish ambitions and greed, by giving up his savings to a young man who needs to buy his wife back from the brothel her father sold her. Were it not for the slight ending Inn of Evil would have ranked up there with Seppuku or Samurai Rebellion. The idea behind the final cathartic showdown is great (a large number of enemy soldiers with lanterns in their hands chasing the heroes in a dark field) but the realization suffers a bit. Maybe for lack of budget or shooting time, it's not as stylish or well choreographed as one would expect. The only swordfighting takes place in these final 10 minutes and it's again not very impressive, so chambara fans might wanna look elsewhere for their slice and dice fix. The print I saw was a bit too dark and muddled so it didn't help things much either. Criterion need to get their hands on this one pronto.

The acting is as good as one would expect from a cast spearheaded by the brilliant Tatsuya Nakadai and Shintaro Katsu and the photography is in beautiful black and white with very nice exterior shots. The heart of the movie is what matters though and Inn of Evil comes with a great story about man's need for redemption. Strongly recommended.

I've liked all the other Kobayashi films I've seen before - Harakiri, Kwaidan, Samurai Rebellion and the Human Condition trilogy - but this one just never seemed to take off. A bunch of uninteresting and unlikeable lowlifes sit around a dimly lit tavern and steadfastly do all they can to not make us care for any of them. One gets the feeling the film could have turned out a lot more like, say, Reservoir Dogs, if only the dialogue was at all entertaining or thought-provoking. But it's not. The one glimmer of interest occurs with the attempted murder of the bar drunk, but not even that adds up to all that much, and the only even vaguely memorable moment visually is the bit where people with lanterns charge around in the dark at the end. A real disappointment all round.