Shinjû: Ten no Amijima

Similar to the fate of the star-crossed lovers in Romeo and Juliet, Double Suicide by Masahiro Shinoda is Shakespearean in its theme of lovers who are forbidden by society's rules to be together and can only find fulfillment in death. The film is based on a 1720 Kabuki (or Bunraku) puppet play, The Love Suicide at Amijima by Monzaemon Chikamatsu, who has been called the Japanese Shakespeare. As the film begins, black-clad puppeteers known as kurago are busy assembling puppets and setting the stage for the drama. Soon live actors replace the puppets but the puppeteers remain in the background, silent participants changing the sets, assembling the props, and "pulling the strings", representing perhaps the inexorable hand that guides our lives or as Shinoda has said the `thin line between truth and falsehood". The film is intensely emotional and has the feel of grand opera but the puppeteers make clear the artificiality of the drama and keep us distanced.

In the film, Jihei (Kichiemon Nakamura) is a paper merchant who is married with two young children. Though he loves his wife Osan, he has been secretly seeing a courtesan Koharu (Shima Iwashita who also plays Osan) for two and a half years. He has dissipated his fortune at the brothel and now cannot raise enough money to redeem Koharu from her enslavement to the brothel's owner (Kamatari Fujiwara). Though his family finds out about their romance and Osan tries to persuade Jehei to sever the relationship, it becomes apparent that the bond is unbreakable and we watch helplessly as the inevitable tragedy unfolds. Double Suicide has a haunting score by Toru Takemitsu and amazing black and white photography, shown in sharp detail and contrast in the new Criterion DVD, and is highly recommended for a unique viewing experience.

A mesmerizing film which asks deep questions about the role [or interplay] of fate and free will in human actions. The occasional appearance of hooded background figures and their actions, sometimes just to change the scenery, is done in such a casual manner that it underlines the view that we are not always in full command of what is perceived to be our reality. The ending is truly stunning. A one of a kind experience!

...based on the 18th century play by Chikamatsu. Married paper merchant Jihei (Kichiemon Nakamura) falls in love with indentured prostitute Koharu (Sima Iwashita), and promises to raise the money necessary to secure her freedom. However, when their plans look unlikely to succeed, they swear to commit suicide together to be united in eternity. Sima Iwashita also plays Jihei's long-suffering wife Osan.

Director Masahiro Shinoda opts for a highly stylized production. The film open with a bunraku, or puppet show, troupe preparing for a performance of the play while Shinoda is heard discussing the film's script with screenwriter Toru Takemitsu. When the story finally gets underway, the performances range from realism to kabuki expressionism, while the sets are also a blend of the real-world with the deliberately artificial. The most striking aspect is the presence of stagehands, dressed in black from head to toe as is the traditional way in stage performances, lurking about the sets. Their otherworldly appearance and silent presence turn them into a sort of grim reaper hovering over the characters, signaling their inevitable fate.

Kichiemon Nakamura is a paper merchant, desperately in love with courtesan Shima Iwashita and she with him, but she has five years left on her contract and he does not have the money to free her from it. He is also married -- his wife is also played by Miss Iwashita, who is married to the director of the movie, Masahiro Shinoda -- and so they speak about killing themselves together. In the meantime, their love has become common gossip.

It's based on Chikamatsu Monzaemon's 1721 joruni puppet play THE LOVE SUICIDES AT ANIJIMAI; a live performance soon followed. Monzaemon (1653-1725) was the son of a masterless samurai. It is uncertain when he wrote the first of his more than 130 plays, but his earliest known credit was 1683's THE SOGA HEIRS. He wrote for puppet plays and, until the middle 1690s, kabuki. He is widely thought to be Japan's greatest playwright.

This production acknowledges both forms. The play starts in a theater, with a producer speaking of the problems; some mannequin heads bespeak of the puppet drama. The rest of the movie is kabuki-like, with artificial-looking sets and masked stagehands in black to move props around, follow the lovers as their go about the course of their tragedy, and aid in their suicide. Their presence in the cinematic medium, which usually stressed naturism, gives them a weird, demonic purpose as the executioners of fate.

This film essentially begins with an attractive prostitute named of "Koharu" (Shima Iwashita) lamenting to her lover "Jihei" (Kichiemon Nakamura) that unless he can come up with some money to buy her contract she will soon be sold to a rich merchant that she despises by the name of "Tahei" (Hôsei Komatsu). This distresses Jihei who is totally in love with her and has tried everything he can in the last three years to raise the sufficient funds. To make matters even more complicated, Jihei is married to a devoted wife named "Osan" (also played by Shima Iwashita) and has two young children at home who depend upon him as well. To that end, realizing his predicament, his brother "Magomoen" (Yûsuke Takita) decides to intervene in order to convince Jihei of his responsibilities and to do that it requires him to discredit Koharu's love and commitment to him. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say this was a rather remarkable film which featured a technique I had never seen before in which stagehands were utilized to assist in the development of the story. Only later did I learn that this stemmed from a Japanese theater tradition known as kuroko and is often used in Kabuki plays. Another aspect of this film is the typical Japanese over dramatization involved between the actors to convey deep emotion. Since it's a cultural trait of many Japanese films and plays I will just say that it essentially comes with the territory and leave it at that. Be that as it may, although the movie drags a bit here and there, I found it to be quite entertaining overall and I have rated it accordingly. Above average.