Pitfall

An artistic film that defies simple analysis. There are ghosts, but it's not a ghost story. There is a crime scene investigation, but it's not a murder mystery. It's got surreal moments, but it's not strictly a fantasy.

At the heart of this allegory is a very down to earth social criticism of Japan's mining industry. The film shows us the backbreaking work of miners in the Kyushu region, one that has been desolated by industry. Pay is meager and workers are sometimes hunted down for desertion. There are unions but they are weak, and industrialists use one of the many ploys at their disposal to keep them that way - they pit the leaders of different groups against one another. The mysterious man in the white suit to me is simply a symbol for big business. Without a trace of compassion, it leaves entire communities as ghost towns, raping the land, and leaving its workers eternally hungry.

The visuals in the film are stark and brilliant. Teshigahara boldly puts images and sequences on the screen that make us wonder what's happening, and where he's going with this. The film may seem disjointed and odd, but bear with it, or watch it a couple of times (as I did).

It's certainly not cheery though. There is so little hope against unseen forces that leave people in squalor, and have men fighting one another in the mud of life. A shop owner is raped by a cop and it's witnessed by a boy. It's very unfortunate that this seems to evolve into acceptance or consent on her part after a jump cut (the painful to watch trope that 'no' eventually means 'yes' with enough force or persistence). It's a small moment, but this woman sells candy bearing Disney characters, a clear (and sad for Japan) post-war reference. And what of the future? A little boy in a barren landscape who has seen several murders, a rape, and impassively rips apart a live frog? It's bleak.

PITFALL is by far inferior to the other two collaborations of Hiroshi Teshigahara and Kobo Abe (The Face of Another/Woman in the Dunes). It was not as interesting/innovative or brilliant, it's more of a cinematic "curiosum" i would say. That doesn't mean it has no merits. I could never guess where it goes, it's overambitious, one could say it has not any identity but i love multiple-genre movies, even the ones which get a bit messy and confusing.

PITFALL starts as drama, then it becomes a drama/fantasy, then, a mystery and it ends like an existential drama. Unfortunately, it ends up less exciting as it sounds. Still it's a good movie and i disagree with the reviewers who said that zero explanations are being given. Actually, it's obvious what happened here, as long as you pay attention to all those "conflicting parties" here. Hint, it's not two but three.

Pitfall is slightly reminiscent of a wacky Hollywood comedy with the wackiness the hollywoodness and the comedyness removed. There is a murder, there is a ghost who wants to know why they were murdered, and there are a variety of people running around trying to figure out what's going on.

But unlike some 40s ghost movie, ghosts are powerless to do any more than watch and complain among themselves. And so the movie becomes more the eternal question why must we die then the typical question of who done it.

With its quirky score and offbeat premise the film is often engaging, but some of the plot points are actually pretty ridiculous and it feels like this might have made more sense as a dark comedy rather than an existentialist drama. The movie definitely needed a better ending.

While imperfect, all in all it's pretty absorbing.

From the start of the movie you follow two deserters that are mine workers. A guy dressed in white is spying on them unnoticed from a distance. Then The miners move on to new jobs but the man in white follows still unnoticed....

This movie is much more about moods I think than the actual story. It is a slow moving movie especially the first half of it. But I was absorbed about wondering who was it following him and why. I did also like the boy as the silent observer where I wondered if he would interfere with the story at a time and in what way.

I would not recommend this movie to everybody. I did enjoy it a lot but I would not consider it as a masterpiece. If you are are interested in slow but moody B&W pictures then it may be for you. If you want a bit more action then choose another movie.

Although structurally and aesthetically experimental cinema, Teshigahara's debut proper already carries all the trademarks of an assured author and although a bit rough around the edges here and there it shows a director experimenting with his craft even as he perfects it. Japanese new-wave ferried to its logical conclusion even as it takes its first baby steps.

Based on a story by Kôbô Abe, PITFALL explores the myriad possibilities that emerge from the space where life and death overlap, as a poor miner is murdered under mysterious circumstances in the marshes near an old ghost town. His murderer, an alluring white-clad figure, buys off the silence of the one witness, a woman operating a candy store in the ghost town district, and disappears as mysteriously as he appeared. In the mean time the murdered man wakes up next to his corpse only to discover he's now a ghost.

While THE SIXTH SENSE milked a very similar idea for maximum mainstream appeal, shock twists and shallow thrills, Teshigahara is wise to allow his material to breathe. Even though a very pragmatic subplot about two rival labour unions introduced in the end of act two detracts from the existential nature of the story, like all great storytellers Teshigahara never settles for the convenient and tidy, refuses to explain what the viewer most needs explained. Personal interpretation is very important in any work and particularly in something as haunting as this. Who is the killer? Why is he doing it? Questions left open, the character cleverly typed as a seriocomic grim reaper of sorts riding around in his moped, a manifestation that invokes notions of fate by the very nature of his acts. Is there not meaning when one is not aware of it?

Teshigahara pits the dead against the dead, the living against the living and everybody against each other, ghosts quizically examining their corpses and wondering the reason of their deaths, the living deaf to their protestations and too busy being suspicious of each other. A world revolving around a discordant axis, thrown off balance and left for us to explore its geometry.

Teshigahara's direction reflecting the uncertainty and disorientation of the plot as much as Toru Takemitsu's dissonant score. A POV shot of a child introduced only for the child to walk inside its own POV shot. Jarring jump cuts that send characters jumping through space. Construction works photographed in all their derelict, abandonded glory, a ghost world for the dead to haunt. Notions of hell on earth. The ghost of the murdered man complaining he's hungry as winds rise in the soundtrack. A pack of dogs ascending a steep slope like other Sissyphi. Very precise, very geometric, the work of an assured visual director.