Le Soldat Dieu

Koji Wakamatsu's anti-war film Catepillar (2010) is notable for it's strong anti-nationalism stance and Shinobu Terajima's powerful performance as a long suffering wife dealt a poor hand in life (one in which she won an acting award at the Berlin Film Festival). Her husband is returned from war, as a "God of War" with decorations, without limbs, the ability to speak or hear. Her role as a good wife of a soldier of the Emperor's is to take good care of him-a thankless task for a man who only eats, sleeps, and demands sex from his wife. Furthermore, we learn that he was an abusive husband and has committed atrocities in the war in China. Wakamatsu is a member of that older generation and has an ax to grind-one that the nationalists of today wouldn't be so happy about either. It's a difficult film to watch, but perhaps necessary since most of the new generations are unaware or unbelieving of the atrocities committed at war by the Japanese in the name of the emperor due to whitewashing to history textbooks in schools.

Though he's not credited, this film seems to be based on a story by Edogawa Rampo, which has previously been adapted in the anthology film Rampo Noir. This film transports the story to the WWII era. Keigo Kasuya returns home from the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1940 a quadruple amputee - no arms, no legs - without the ability to speak. His wife (Shinobu Terajima) is reviled, but soon falls back into her position as loyal spouse. The film examines the patriotic fervor of the times - Kasuya is declared a "war god" and is worshiped by the locals. Privately, the couple's life is Hell. A power struggle arises between them, and Terajima - who before the war was a victim of abuse by her husband - realizes she has power that she didn't have before. The political aspects of the film are the most interesting part. The focus on sex - which was the main focus of Rampo's story - gets a tad boring after a while. Both leads are fantastic, particularly Terajima, who obviously has a lot more to do. The film could stand to look better - it was filmed digitally and transferred to film, and is very murky. All in all, it's quite good.

9/10. Powerful movie about the horrific impact of the Pacific War and World War II as a whole, particularly on the Japanese home front and the brutality of atrocities committed by the Japanese military during the war.

What happens when the war ends and you're not one of those lucky survivors who came out of it mostly unscathed? When the belief system you built your entire life upon crumbles?

A violent, limbless veteran and his almost equally broken wife, are an example of what could happen. And it's not a nice thing.

I wonder why the short story of the same name is never given credit. Especially since it was written by Edugawa Rampo*, the "father of Japanese mystery". Is this blatant plagiarism or is the story so famous that it needs no reference? The film is intermediate in its adaptation, keeping the general premise of a limbless veteran and his tormented wife. The Rampo text is much darker and depicts the wife as relishing in sexually teasing her "lump of flesh". The film version adds visualizations of the "caterpillar's" war crimes in China during WWII; memories of which haunt the miserable creature. Unfortunately, the film tends to dwell on the tedium of their lives (eating, sleeping, "sex") and not the psychological/physical abuse that the wife perversely doles out.

*Edugawa Rampo is a phonetical pronunciation of Edgar Allen Poe in Japanese: "Edugaw-Aram-Po"