Cure

This movie has a simple premise and a simple story that is nevertheless explored in an incredibly delicate and talented way. Kiyoshi Kurosawa is an extremely talented individual and perhaps the only writer/director who is able to simultaneously scare and mentally challenge me at the same time (note that very few are capable of doing one or the other). Although the writing is very good (story and dialogue), Kurosawa's real strength is his ability to represent visually the progressive denouement of his story. He rather subtly show you and let your imagination and intellect figure it out for you than to spell out bluntly what the straightforward storyline should be. It does not, however, get to the point of chaotic untidiness or pointlessness, for he is able to guide you slowly along the way (I would then say that he is slightly easier to follow than David Lynch is, but then again who is not). He uses here a strikingly effective technique where he shows you a room from one angle and later lets you discover that room more and more as the movie advances. His camera shots are always well planned and he is thus able to draw you in the movie bit by bit-quite an eerie sensation.

The acting is generally good and believable. The camera-work is a stand out.

There are many scenes where you will be able to appreciate this superior artistic and technical quality. The music is good and tenseful, but it is sparse and what is used instead is a contrast of minimalist and grossly amplified everyday sounds that vibrate through the movie. When there is no sound, you often find yourself holding your breath. This is not used strictly as a ploy, but rather creates a mood and further pulls you in the general atmosphere of the movie. Most of all, again, the directing is top notch. The pace which is slow enough for you to have the time to both think and be afraid is not slow enough that it gets boring, although you should not expect a North American expeditious run through the film. Everything is there, but it comes to you in slow, meticulously chosen dosage. Only, at the end can you truly see the masterpiece that has been drawn stroke by stroke in front of you.

One of the reason this movie actually works is that it is designed to play with your mind and trigger fear and reaction based not only on emotion, but on reason. People are dying, but everything is calm, rational. The tone and story are pretty much realistic and, at the end of the experience, you may feel beyond your volitional control that you are actually convinced of the "strange" things in the movie. Hopefully this feeling will subside...

This film is like a Japanese "mate" to Se7en, although in many ways I think it's superior. The ending is rather enigmatic but if the implications are as I see them (no spoilers) then it is the ending I wish Se7en had gone for. Like many Japanese films I've seen, I get the impression that I'm missing things (cultural outlooks, social relationships) that the Japanese must see. But even knowing that it was a very disturbing film and the director knows how to add to it. It's an extremely dark film (in many ways) and near the end it sounded like something the entire movie was "breathing", like a demon close to your ear. A very eerie effect. Worth seeing.

I saw CURE at the San Francisco Film Festival in around 1998, and like many, I found the concept and craftsmanship arresting. A number of audience members stayed around afterwards to discuss it - it's a psychologically complex tale of hypnotism and the seductions of altered consciousness. Koji Yakusho (DORA HEITA, 13 ASSSASSINS, etc.) is at his acting peak as a detective who tries to solve a series of murders that don't seem to relate to common logic.

Recently, I saw the DVD version of the film - and it's clear that the film had been cut severely. Most viewers have only seen the US DVD version, so they're not even aware of the problem. A few of the more graphic sequences were cut, important portions of the narrative set in an old sanatorium were excised, and the violent finish was excised entirely. (The US DVD concludes with the suggestion of a further killing; the theatrical Japanese version is more powerful and unambiguous.) In some cases, a later, recut version may be better than the original; however, that's not the case here.

There's scant online text relating to the differences between the two versions.

It speaks well for director Kiyoshi Kurosawa that he took a low-budget police procedural and made an innovative thriller out of it. Most of the scenes are under-edited and shot at a distance, to extract the most from the hypnotic storyline; the longer, hypnotic sequences are several minutes long, with no edits. Because the film uses medium-distance shots to give a sense of hypnotic disassociation, viewers with larger screens will gain an advantage.

I strongly recommend seeing it - but would suggest you seek out the original, uncut theatrical print if you can. The differences are striking. I'd rate the original print as 10/10; the cut/domestic DVD is maybe 7/10. This film would profit from a Criterion reissue, but that doesn't seem to be in the works.

It's not easy to give yourself over to this film, for like the unwilling victims' it portrays, it rather slowly and methodically casts its spell, whisking you farther and farther away from the comfortable rhythm and conventions of the crime thriller it appears to be on the surface.

Kyua's austere landscapes are in fitful turns picture postcard beautiful, mundane and mysterious. Much of the story unfolds in master shots, keeping you at a distance from the characters and affording the illusion of a comfortable intellectual detachment which it meticulously strips away scene by scene.

The plot is deceptively simple; a weary Japanese Homicide detective is investigating a series of grotesque murders. Each murder seems to have the same ritualistic pattern, yet in each case the culprit turns out to be an ordinary individual, dazed and unable to offer any motive for their horrific crime. Nothing seems to connect the murderers to each other, until the Detective picks up the trail of an amnesia afflicted drifter who seems unable to answer even the simplest questions about himself, yet displays a disconcerting ability to reflect any line of questioning about his own identity back upon the questioner. Time and again he returns to a question at the core of the mystery:

"Who are you?"

It seems more and more, as the drifter is passed from detective, to guard, to clinician to pyschiatrist, that this question is far more dangerous than anyone might have guessed.

Kyua is a model of subtlety and restraint. Although there's a significant amount of implied violence and several shocking scenes of murder, these aren't gratuitous. Kyua's particular genius is it's ability to transform it's urban Japanese landscapes and even the most common objects from familiar to suspect and eventually sinister: a length of piping, a flashing traffic sign, a blast furnace, the sound of ocean surf at night, a flickering lighter, a dark apartment lined with academic tomes, a puddle of spilled water, the letter X smeared on a wall, a deserted rundown building.

There are few filmmakers with the audacity and imagination to venture into the places Kyua wants to take you. Fincher, Lynch and Cronenberg come to mind as those who time and time again have shown their willingness, and perhaps compulsion to return to the unsettling territory of perception, identity, and the boundary between normalcy and psychosis. If the director's first name were only David (it's not, his name is Kiyoshi Kurosawa) we'd have the makings of a good conspiracy theory here.

The film was released in 1997 but only recently has made it's way to western shores, and US distribution by Cowboy Pictures, and has wound its way inevitably to cable networks like Sundance. It's cast includes Koji Yakusho as the detective Takabe. Fans of Japanese cinema will recognize this fine actor from his award winning roles in "Shall we Dance" and "The eel".

Kyua isn't the type of visceral immediate drama that the average suspense film provides. If you can put aside your preconceived notions and allow it to unfold in it's own time, I suspect you will find the questions it asks and secrets it reveals to be all the more disquieting, problematic and in the end profound. Many critics have lined up to call this film a masterpiece, and pegged Kurosawa as one of a number of japanese directors worth watching.

In the wake of the sarin-gas attack mounted by the Aum Shinrikyo cult on the Tokyo subway system in 1995, horror films enjoyed a sudden spurt of popularity in Japan. Many of the films focus on hypnosis or media-induced violence, the fragile normalcy of modern life, and grisly deeds committed by seemingly ordinary citizens. This unnerving 1997 thriller, which seems like a direct response to the Aum Shinrikyo incident, offers a glimpse of how our own national cinema may absorb the blow of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A rash of senseless murders wracks Tokyo; the victims have deep X-shaped gashes across their throats, and the killers (often their loved ones) are found in a daze. The only connection appears to be a mysterious drifter (Masato Hagiwara) who gets into random strangers' heads with a single, oft-repeated question: "Who are you?" What makes this subtle, quiet shocker so unsettling is the idea that everyone has secret resentments that render him or her hypnotically pliable--that everyone harbors some glimmer of murderous rage that can be exploited, whether by a drifter or by religious extremists. The writer-director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a prolific Japanese filmmaker who's developing a large cult following here, heightens the unease with buzzing soundtrack noise and eerie long takes that leave us consistently unprepared for the violence to come. And the last sequence will leave people arguing--it requires close attention, culminating in an ending even more disturbing in its implications than the conclusion of SEVEN.