Sakura no mori no mankai no shita

Probably a top contender for most deranged marriage depicted in a film, Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees is a top-notch folktale horror movie about derangement, superstition, obsession, and of course, good ole fashioned marital strife. If Hausu is the pinnacle of 1970s Japanese horror, then this movie is it's more quiet, restrained, but equally deranged older sibling.

At the opening we get a shot of the cherry trees in modern day, and people under them and enjoying the shade and pleasant view they provide, until a child's voice, tells us that the trees used to be feared hundreds of years ago, and would induce madness in those that walked under them, which then transports us to Edo era of Japan, and the madness begins. A beautifully shot, colorful madness, but madness nonetheless.

Tomisaburô Wakayama, who played Ogami Itto in Lone Wolf and Cub, gives a very quiet and unsettling performance, and is nothing like Ogami Itto aside from the decapitations he gets to do very frequently. He is simultaneously pathetic and threatening, as it's difficult to reason with a man who eventually decapitates so many people that he grows bored of it, and does it solely to satiate his wife's growing appetite for heads to do... things with. I think you can guess what she gets out of some of them. Her manipulation of an already gruff and wild man is a sight to behold, and there's an interesting power play in their relationship. She is very clearly in control of him, which would obviously be not very common in this era of Japan's history. But this is not a very common movie. We get to see their relationship evolve from captor and captive, to parasite and host, to maybe, truly in love with each other. Then there is the ending. The less said, the better. But it is truly shocking and visually jaw-dropping. Definitely a unique piece of Japanese horror to say the least, and would make for great post-midnight viewing.

This film begins with a wild "mountain man" (played by Tomisaburo Wakayama) ambushing a small group of people on an isolated path in the wilderness. He immediately kills everyone in the group except for a "beautiful woman" (played by Shima Iwashita) who he immediately falls in love with and declares to her that she is now his wife. Realizing her situation she acquiesces but at the same time demands that he carry her on his back to prove just how manly he is. Naturally, being so wild and unsophisticated he does exactly as she orders and proceeds to carry her to his cabin in the woods. When they get there she is surprised to see several other women come out to greet him and after being told that they are his former wives she orders him to kill all but one. Once again, he does exactly what he is told. From that point on he subsequently obeys her every demand regardless of how sadistic it might be-and she is extremely wicked. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a rather bizarre film which had a great amount of black humor along with beautiful camera work. That said, however, I thought the characters were rather one-dimensional and the story lacked the necessary suspense for a film of this type. Likewise, the special effects were rather simplistic as well. Even so, in spite of these flaws I still found the movie to be somewhat enjoyable and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

A brutal mountain man is a footpad on the road, killing his victims to robber their possessions. When he stumbles upon a beautiful woman from the city, he kills her husband and servant and brings her to his house on the mountain to be his wife. When the woman sees his other wives, he asks him to kill all of them except a crippled one to be her servant. The man tries to please his new wife, but she is never satisfied. She asks him to go to the city and then she decides to collect heads of people. Her husband begins a crime spree and is know as "The Cutthroat". Some time later, he decides to return to his mountain house and his wife says that she will go with him. He decides to take a different way under the blossoming cherry tree where something happens.

"Sakura no mori no mankai no shita", a.k.a. "Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees", is another weird Japanese film. The plot begins showing people on the present days having fun under the blossoming cherry trees, but warns that in the past, people feared the cherry trees. Then the story discloses the story of a strong and brutal mountain man that takes a beautiful, but evil and deranged woman from the city as part of his pillage. The man begins an insane crime spree to satisfy the bizarre desires of his new wife. The conclusion is abrupt and quite open. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Sob as Cerejeiras em Flor" ("Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees")

"Take me back to the capitol city and bring me everything I desire...use your strength to please me."

Nobuhiko Obayashi 1977 "House" is the requisite Japanese horror film we talk about when we talk about the 70's. It rightfully deserves its place among the greatest, most influential, and certainly most memorable of the decade.

But now let's talk about, "Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees". I hadn't even heard of this movie until this weekend, but "Blossoming Cherry Trees", currently streaming on Filmstruck, is a visually stunning, quietly insane, masterpiece.

Careful to insert "quiet" in there, because it's not insane like "House". It's not over-the-top style dripping in excessive wave after wave of special effects. "Cherry Trees" is just a beautiful shot, bizarrely paced, horribly tempered, kind of insanity.

The director, Masahiro Shinoda, came out of Shochiku studious, oldest of the "big four" movie houses in Japan. There, in the early fifties, he learned his craft as an assistant to the great master, Yasujiro Ozu. Possibly my favorite filmmaker of all time (this changes as the wind blows).

Shinoda's first film as director in 1960, "One Way Ticket to Love", placed him firmly among the Japanese New Wave, though he doesn't seem to have quite caught on in the West like Shohei Imamura or Seijun Suzuki did.

"Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees" is a strange, gorgeously shot fable. In a land where walking under the blossoms of a cherry tree in bloom will drive a person mad, a base, violent, mountain bandit kidnaps a beautiful woman from the "capital" to be his wife. In love with her, he goes to ever more excessive lengths to please her whims, which themselves become more and more ungrounded from reality, turning towards the utterly macabre. Beauty and love, and what we do for them, is the horror on display here.

The movie stars Tomisaburo Wakayama from "Lone Wolf and Cub" as the barbarous mountain warrior, and Shinoda's wife, Shima Iwashita, as the mad city woman.

The movie is bookended with stunning, open, vistas of an entire valley filled with endless blooming cherry blossom trees, which composer Toru Takemitsu's score, atonal and traditional-flute haunted, somehow makes ominous even in the brightest of daylight, like giant, swaying ghosts. Drifts of cherry blossoms swoop on whirling winds across the images, and, as we near our climax, sometimes fill the ground, dense as snow pack.

But as the action moves from the mountains to the city, the style turns more theatrical, with sets designed like stages, allowing for a single camera point to gaze in at the choreographed action; large matte painted backgrounds in certain parts of the city to create a world ravaged by violence, weather, and immorality; opening narration, seemingly read by a child, stick it firmly into the mire of twisted storybooks; and the bold acting style, not uncommon for Japanese cinema of the era, recalls kabuki and noh styles.

This is a great, great film. If you have the penchant for 1970's Japanese cinema, I say seek it out.