Vengeance Is Mine

Immamura Shohei, one of Japan's best directors, does not put a foot wrong in VENGEANCE IS MINE, one of the best films ever made.

This is a searing, raw, uncompromising study of a disturbed, callous, opportunistic killer, husband and son.

The film, running just over two hours, takes an almost doco-style approach to the crimes of its protagonist (played with chilling conviction by Ken Ogata) and takes great pains to examine the impact his behavior had on his mother, father and wife.

A flashback, which goes some way towards explaining how Ogata developed such a disdain for authority, is a masterstroke of cinematic brevity.

Although Immamura is known mostly for such brilliant work as THE PORNOGRAPHERS, BLACK RAIN and the excellent THE EEL, this is surely his crowning achievement, a film so rich and involving that it personifies everything that is so amazing about Japanese cinema, truly a cinema of the soul.

I think this movie is an all around tour-de-force depiction of a sociopath. All aspects of this movie are superb. The main actor gives a truly chilling and convincing portrayal of a man with no conscience, at the same time giving his character great depth and complexity. Aside from being based on true events, this cold blooded murderer is much more realistic than the clever game-playing types portrayed in such films as "Silence of the Lambs". I would highly recommend this movie to all but the squeamish.

'Vengeance Is Mine' is one of the best movies I've watched in a long time. I know there is a growing cult surrounding Imamura ('The Pornographers'), but I'm still extremely surprised that this movie isn't better known and discussed more. For many movie fans Japanese cinema either equals Kurosawa and Ozu if you're highbrow, and Godzilla and Mothra if you aren't, but both these simplistic approaches marginalize all kinds of fascinating and exciting movies from Suzuki's 'Tokyo Drifter' and 'Branded To Kill' in the 1960s, 'Vengeance Is Mine' and Oshima's 'In The Realm Of The Senses' in the 1970s, on to such contemporary innovators as Shinya Tsukamoto ('Tetsuo'), Beat Takeshi ('Hana-bi'), Takashi Ishii ('Gonin'), and Takashi Miike ('Ichi The Killer'). 'Vengeance Is Mine' is easily the most interesting serial killer movie I've ever seen. The narrative structure can be a bit confusing at first, and that combined with Imamura's non-judgmental approach might throw some viewers for a while, but if you persevere you won't regret it. Ken Ogata gives an impressive performance and the movie as a whole is utterly brilliant. I watched it twice to try and fully appreciate it, and I would now rate it as one of the very best movies of the 1970s (my favourite movie decade). This beautiful and disturbing movie comes with my highest recommendation!

Vengeance Is Mine marked Shôhei Imamura's return to fiction filmmaking after a decade spent working on documentaries. It is based on the true case of Nishiguchi, a Japanese criminal who eluded police for 78 days while committing five murders. The novel from which the screenplay was taken changed the name of the anti-hero to Iwao Enokizu and fictionalized real events. By providing a 'halfway house' between complete invention and real crime reporting, the source thus gave Imamura an ideal stepping-stone back into feature films: retaining the support of documentary inspiration whilst allowing the director to bring his personal vision and structuring to the events unfolding on screen.

Modern viewers are long used to a diet of slaughterer cinema, whether it be the Eileen Wuornos depicted in Monster, Albert Fish of The Grey Man, or much less illustrious fodder as Bundy, and Ed Gein. But even after 25 years, Vengeance Is Mine remains one of the few outstanding mass-murderer screen biographies. Told through a series of flashbacks, Imamura's film suggests by its structure both the disassociations of a killer's mind as well as reducing any empathy between creator and lead figure.

Thus we see Enokizu's story in five different time periods or points of view: first, during his final arrest and in police custody; then during the police investigation itself; while the killer is committing his crimes and escaping from the law; fourthly, his life before his crimes. Finally there's a scene or two occurring after the execution.

By recounting the various stages in a killer's life in non-linear fashion, interesting juxtapositions are possible, all the while dramatic tension between crimes is disrupted. We know that the murderer will have his way and the opening shows us he has been caught. The script's treatment of the material means suspense is removed from events, instead placed at a psychological level, i.e. not on how Enokizu builds to a killing and, presumably, hopes to get away with it, but why he does.

But as critic Alex Cox has said: "there are no easy answers" found in a movie much more oblique in its presentation than Hollywood might attempt. Indeed, for the most part, Enokizu's crimes seem to have no overwhelming motive at all (apart from the need for survival money), although deep at the heart of his compulsive behaviour is his bitter relationship with his father. And as Cox further observes, although Vengeance Is Mine headlines a biblical source, ("vengeance is mine, I shall repay sayeth the Lord") it is not absolutely clear in the film on who, or what, Enoziku is wreaking vengeance on.

If providence is interested in exacting justice by turn, bringing a necessary come-uppance, its mainly represented by two or three shots over the course of a film, suggestive of a hangman's noose - much more man's law than heavenly retribution. This, while Enokizu is caught and punished, such critical moments (commonplace set pieces in such western killer-centered films such as In Cold Blood) are not even shown. Vengeance Is Mine leaves precise moments of apprehension and execution to our imagination. Instead it shifts focus onto a fractured criminal career of mayhem, familial confusion, and casual sex.

Enoziku's father, Shizuo, is a complicated figure who stands as much at the centre of the narrative as does his son. Shamed during the war by refusing to stand up to the requisitioning authorities (a traumatic event witnessed by his son) he later develops a close relationship with Enokizu's wife. Although we presume not consummated, this attraction is a continuing source of great friction. But as Shizuo admits, another tie binds them as: "the blood of the devil runs in my blood too." At the end of the film it is left to Shizuo, a Catholic, to feel the guilt his son never expresses, and undergo excommunication as he arranges to be buried away from his wife in final penance. Critics have argued that Enoziku's murderous career is ultimately inspired by a lack of ability to kill his own father, and this failure is what motivates in turn his rage against others. Shizuo certainly recognises this weakness in murder during a final confrontation between the two, and it represents Enoziku's only regret.

With many of its characters drawn from the working classes and a preoccupation with sex, Vengeance Is Mine is a film entirely characteristic of its director, even after a decade long hiatus in his feature career. Like Mizoguichi before him, he often concerned himself with fallen or distressed women in his movies and here they are, represented once again. Imamura had also been a black marketeer in his early years, and was quite at home depicting the underbelly of society, whether it be the sleazy family inn at which Enoziku finds himself, the casual nature of the call-girls brought to its door or the fact that grandmother (herself a killer) watches intimate proceedings through a peep-hole.

Enoziku adapts the identity of a university professor during his stay at the inn, and elsewhere a lawyer (filching thereby an amount of money saved for a parole payment). Both outwardly upstanding and hunted at the same time, the criminal hides his culpability beneath a respectable façade. As with the rest of the film, the director's distancing allows no judgement on this state of affairs, merely showing Enoziku's illusion as convincing. Instead it leaves the anti-hero and his actions in a limbo, dependent on our own moral standpoint. Like the murderer's bones, thrown into the sky at the close, matters are suspended between heaven and hell, requiring further investigation.

Vengeance is Mine (1979) is a truly powerful film; an elliptical reconstruction/personal examination into the criminal mind, presenting a number of potential questions as to why this character became the person that he did, but offering us nothing in the way of easy answers. It is anchored by the central performance of Ken Ogata as Iwao Enokizu, a thirty-something tearaway and con artist who one day murders two men, seemingly for financial benefit, and in the process, triggers one of the largest and most infamous manhunts in Japanese history. Whereas the story presents numerous avenues of thought and situations that recall the very best of Hollywood serial killer films, crime fiction or the cinema of investigation, the film refuses to conform to any of this; giving us a juxtaposing mood wherein elements of documentary-like realism are cross-cut with a more enigmatic element of self-reflection, memory and examination.

Given this particular presentation, Vengeance is Mine can be seen as something of a difficult film; employing a fractured timeline that takes in thirty years of Iwao's family history, as well as offering us a central narrative perspective that seems to have been woven together from a number of different, highly conflicting viewpoints. Illustrating this device, director Imamura begins the film with the capture of Iwao and his transportation back to police HQ. From here, we cut to the police inspectors interrogating the murderer, who taunts them with his flippant behaviour, uncooperative attitude and provocative questioning before a chain of events begins to form. Here, Imamura juggles the narrative perspective of Iwao with that of the police, so that we are never quite sure if what we're seeing is a recreation of police evidence or the word of a man that we cannot really trust. As the film progresses, other characters will be introduced, and all of them will in some way contribute towards fleshing out the story in such a way that continues this idea of a patchwork narrative, or conversely, what film critic Tony Rayns refers to as "the lines of thought".

The effect that Imamura's structure has on us is at times staggering; cutting to a scene of spiralling family turmoil in between moments of murder and seduction, in a way that both disarms and distracts us; forcing us to ask questions and connect the dots as it were to try and pin point Iwao's exact reason for this misanthropic violence and rage. Later in the film, more surreal and enigmatic moments will be added to offer further shades of reference, accumulating as we crawl closer and closer to a final that we hope will tie these issues together, but instead, leaves us with even more questions pertaining to the complex ideas regarding love, honour, family, faith, society, spirituality, regret, rage, murder, life and death. This presents a stark irony to the film. Whereas the structure of the script and the presentation of the characters and narrative are incredibly complicated and vague, Imamura's direction is subtle and as light as a feather.

Perhaps drawing somewhat on his past work in documentary-directing, the style of Vengeance is Mine has an uncomplicated minimalism and sense of urgency. Imamura makes great use of cramped, claustrophobic interiors, from the police car in the opening sequence, to the interrogation scenes, to the sequences between Iwao and the owner of a hotel where he later hides out. He also captures the spirit of 60's Japan, moving from the small islands and villages with their old ways and traditional values, to the bright lights of the city and a beguiling underworld of crime and prostitution. Much of the film is shot in a very light, cinéma-vérité style with hand-held cameras or locked off shots framed through windows and doorways, with the use of extensive on-screen inter-titles to announce the names of victims, the date and times of death, and the choice of murder weapon. Again, this appropriation of style and the emphasis on examination and a certain presentation of reality in all its sordid detail is very much keeping with Imamura's previous documentary work, and the lurid, real-life aspect of Iwao Enokizu's unprovoked double-murder, and the gruelling 78 day manhunt that followed.

In keeping with this uncomplicated visual approach, the violence of Vengeance is Mine is stark, uncompromising and brutal. As ferocious and provocative as the central performance from Ken Ogata and as cold and unsympathetic as the murders in Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing (1988). Given Iwao's character, and Imamura' refusal to take sides regarding these complicated issues - presenting the drama from a distance and allowing the audience the opportunity to make up their own mind regarding the various rights and wrongs - Vengeance is Mine will definitely be a difficult work for many viewers. Iwao is such an unlikable and unsympathetic character and yet, we watch the film unfold through his eyes and share in his thoughts, feelings, lies and disappointments. The title is also misleading and vague; tapping into the ideas of Catholicism central to the plot but in no way representing the view point of any of these characters.

Ultimately, Vengeance is Mine requires thought and consideration on the part of the audience to pick apart the various sub textual ideas presented by the narrative and the matter of fact way in which the direction comments on them. There are clear ideas of family, with the relationship between husband and wife, father and son, mother and son all driving Iwao to commit these crimes and show no sympathy, as well as cultural and spiritual taboos central to the Japanese culture of the post war era. The highly enigmatic ending also adds further shades that require personal interpretation, with the last five minutes presenting something vaguely surreal and undoubtedly thought provoking. Vengeance is Mine is a bold and provocative work that forces the viewer to ask some serious questions, with no guarantee of any easy answers, and remains a powerful and uncompromising work of intelligent cinema.