Hypnosis

I caught this on the off chance there'd be a connection with the television series, Saimin, whose final three episodes I'd happened to see. Aside from hypnotism, though, there's no discernible connection. Even on evidence just of those three episodes, the series may well have been superior, yet the film's a guilty-pleasure B-grade page-turner for about an hour before it implodes trying too hard to resolve things. Ringu one through three, Tomie, and now Saimin make three nearly interchangeable, if only in appearance, white-clad, bushy haired, big-eyed monster women. Could there be some myth here I'm not in on? (I'm tempted to include ...Jailhouse 41's Matsu, as well, even though there's no supernatural, she's victim, and her film's feminist in the end.) The Saimin film does provide some arresting images, usually with its hypnosis-inspired self-mutilations. In the single most shattering of these, really a throwaway that you could cut and do nothing to the plot, a brightly daylit man mistakes a gas stove burner for a basin and, calmly, washes his face in its flame.

The Japanese horror movie 'Ringu' aka 'The Ring' has received a lot of attention recently. Unwarranted in my opinion. On the other hand I have heard very little about 'Hypnosis', and it is a much more effective and entertaining movie.

Three apparently unrelated suicides occur on the same day in Tokyo. They are all bizarre and baffling. Sakurai , a middle aged hard boiled cop, investigates one of the deaths, and after hearing that all three suicides were heard to mention a "green monkey" before they died, he decides to investigate. With the help of Toshiya, a young and idealistic psychologist, the clues begin to point towards hypnotism of some kind. More strange suicides strengthen their theory, and their involvement with Jissoji, a manipulative TV hypnotist, and one of his subjects, the beautiful but troubled Yuka, deepens the mystery.

An excellent thriller with an original approach, some gruesome deaths, and an unexpected twist. If only Hollywood made movies as good as this! Highly recommended.

SAIMIN

(USA: The Hypnotist /UK: Hypnosis)

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound format: Dolby Stereo SR

Following a series of bizarre and apparently unrelated 'suicides', an experienced Tokyo detective (Ken Utsui) enlists the help of a young psychoanalyst (Goro Inagaki) who believes the victims were acting on a post-hypnotic suggestion. But their subsequent investigations reveal an even darker force at work, linked to a young girl (Miho Kanno) whose life has been blighted by sadistic abuse...

Based on a novel by Keisuke Matsuoka, this densely-plotted mystery takes inspiration from a variety of sources (Italian gialli, traditional Japanese ghost stories, etc.), though some of the images in the climactic showdown reveal a more immediate influence: The recent commercial success of Hideo Nakata's RING (1998). For all its ambition, however, SAIMIN is a routine potboiler which stumbles badly after a powerhouse opening (the 'suicides' are particularly impressive, despite some feeble CGI effects), though director Masayuki Ochiai - who co-wrote the script with Yasushi Fukuda - rallies proceedings for an extended finale in which the narrative's startling secrets are finally revealed. Ochiai is best known for his film adaptation of novel-turned-video-game PARASITE EVE (1997) - which also starred leading man Inagaki (a member of Japanese pop group SMAP) - and while SAIMIN echoes that movie's strong visual sense, it falls short as drama, and most of the characters are mere ciphers, undermining the storyline's emotional pay-off. Which is a shame, because the final half hour is galvanized by a series of dynamic set-pieces - most notably, a concert hall sequence in which Dvorak's 'New World' symphony is transformed into an instrument of murder! - and Ochiai is well-served by an excellent production team. However, those lured by the promise of gory carnage may be disappointed - the film is long on atmospherics and short on splatter.

Performances are varied, due to the script's limitations, but Kanno (TOMIE) is outstanding as a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder - which, the subtitles on the print under review assures us, isn't recognized as a viable medical condition in Japan! - who falls prey to a sleazy TV hypnotist (Takeshi Masu), a prime suspect in the murders. Inagaki is bland in a one-dimensional role, and he's constantly upstaged by Utsui, a veteran performer whose career stretches back to the "Sûpâ Jaiantsu" series of the 1950's.

(Japanese dialogue)

Only if you get hold of a copy of the book OPEN TO SUGGESTION (published in Britain in 1989 but suppressed in the USA by the CIA, who told numerous American publishers who were interested in it that it would be against the national interest to publish it) can you appreciate just how accurate this film is. This tensely directed Japanese film, directed by Masayuki Ochiai (who was also one of the three writers), is a rather garish and eerie thriller which becomes somewhat paranormal towards the end. Various people are suddenly committing suicide without explanation, and a police investigation tries to find out why. They all appear to go into a trance just before killing themselves and say that they can 'see the green monkey', so there is clearly a link of some kind, but none of the people appear ever to have met one another, and it is a deep mystery which seems impossible to solve. And who or what the green monkey is no one can figure out either. Eventually it becomes clear that they have all previously been hypnotised and a high-pitched sound has been triggering post-hypnotic revived trance states without warning, resulting in their deaths. As OPEN TO SUGGESTION (which includes a 150 year survey of documented cases of the criminal abuses of hypnosis) makes clear, approximately 5% of the population are what are known among hypnotists as 'highly-suggestibles', or 'virtuosos'. They are the ones who can easily be criminally abused by an unscrupulous expert hypnotist. A small minority of these are multiple personality cases. One of the leading characters in this film is a very pretty waif-like girl named Yuka Irie, played by Miho Kanno. As the film evolves, we discover that she is a multiple personality case and that one of her personalities even lives in a different Tokyo flat which is unknown to her main personality. This sort of thing is not at all unusual for a true 'multiple', and such cases have frequently been fully documented. Yuka Irie has been hypnotically abused, and heightening terror arises from this volatile situation, since multiples need to be handled very carefully under hypnosis or disaster can result, as it does here. It is often wrongly believed by the gullible public that 'no one can be made to do anything under hypnosis which is against his or her moral principles'. That is complete nonsense. It was a false story circulated by the stage hypnotists (one of which features in this story), and perpetuated by the television hypnotists, to encourage members of the public to come forward for the hypnotic entertainment shows without being apprehensive. Of course, hypnosis in the right hands of responsible people can accomplish near miracles in many ways, such as total suppression of pain, control of haemorrhaging, cure of psoriasis and most skin conditions, cure of phobias such as spider and flying phobias, cure of smoking addictions, and so on. There is also a psychiatric version known as 'hypno-therapy', which has also had excellent results much more quickly than standard psychiatric techniques, but can obviously only be practised by a small specialist minority of trained psychiatrists and not by the normal hypnotist. However, documented cases prove that in criminal hands, highly-suggestibles can be made to rob banks, commit murder, and even commit suicide. The world's security services use hypnosis to train assassins, and everything in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is pretty accurate, as also in the film TELEFON. It was Hitler's regime which first made hypnosis a major tool of state. Ferenc Volgyesi, the SS's master hypnotist, hypnotised more than 60,000 individuals during the Hitler era, and after the War (having originally been contacted and visited in person by the American hypnotist Clark Hull in the late 1930s), he was brought to America, called Frank, given a new life, and helped the American security services to set up their programs using hypnosis, most of which have never been publicly admitted or revealed. However, I do not wish to alarm the security agencies by embarrassing them too much, I merely mention this as historical background. What has happened since 1945 is secret and will unquestionably stay that way. But one fact is certain, namely that more than 50% of all hypnosis experimentation which took place in America after 1945 was done by the FBI, CIA, and other such organisations, was never published, and is still classified as 'top secret'. This will never change. I was told this personally by Professor Ernest Hilgard, former President of the American Psychological Association, and founder of the Stanford Hypnosis Lab. (See his classic book DIVIDED CONSCIOUSNESS if you really want to understand this film.) The title of this film, SAIMIN, is the Japanese word for 'hypnosis', and the video tape with English subtitles which I have of this film is entitled HYPNOSIS. 'Saimin' must be a loan word from Chinese, for the Chinese name for hypnosis is 'cui mian', which is pronounced 'tswaymien', which sounds almost like 'saimin', thus indicating that one is derived from the other. Since I never heard of the Chinese borrowing anything from the Japanese, but the Japanese have borrowed countless things from China over the millennia, including many of their written characters, in my opinion this word must be Chinese in origin. Until I saw this film, I was unaware that there were people in Japan who were so knowledgeable about hypnosis, and especially who would or could advise filmmakers to make a film like this. That in itself is something of an enigma, for those who like enigmas. But meanwhile, anyone who has a serious interest in hypnosis can profit by seeing this remarkably gripping and harrowing tale, though it is pretty scary and over-dramatic. Also, not all girls who run amok under hypnosis are as cute as this one, which all goes to show that movies are movies. No movie wants an ugly crazed, hypnotised girl.

Maybe I'm alone among people from the West who saw this film just because Inakagi Goro was in it ... I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of Japanese horror fans who didn't see it for precisely that reason.

This may well be a scary film if you don't know who the star is. But while I was watching it, I spent most of my time either laughing at Goro-chan (who plays the young man in this film) for being even worse at acting than he is at singing (no offense, Goro), or just plain ogling at him. When there's someone that famous in a film it doesn't half take the fear out of it. (At least, that's what I'm hoping by going to see Chakushin Ari this weekend.)

(For those of you who don't know who Inakagi Goro is, he's the quiet odd one out of Smap. His main talent is standing looking sexy in the corner while the other members of Smap do silly things.)

I do recommend this movie, because the last ten or twenty minutes or so are so damn funny. I don't think this is going to spoil the movie but just in case you might not want to read it ....

It's pure genius the way she sets fire to his apartment in order to set the fire alarm off! That's just great!