Démons

A very slow burn of a horror movie. I had no idea what to expect from a Japanese movie from the 1970s. I've seen very few Japanese films overall, and definitely no horror ones.

I honestly have no idea how to contextualize this one. I have absolutely no frame of reference for what I just watched. Certainly unlike any film (that I know of) that was released before this. This makes me want to watch more Japanese films, and definitely more Japanese horror. That is the mark of a great film.

I wasn't sure whether I read the genre properly for this film because the build up is not typical of the genre.

Once it gets going it does not stop. And the circular storytelling is so satisfying. I wasn't feeling this one until it gets to around the halfway point and I realized this wasn't just horror for horror's sake. Really interesting film that I want to revisit someday, probably next October.

Hopefully I'll have a more nuanced understanding of the Japanese film scene by then.

'Shura' also known as 'Demons' or 'maybe even better known as 'Pandemonium' is second feature by great experimenter Toshio Matsumoto. It is one of the most experimental samurai films I have ever seen, and one of the most disturbing revenge stories. The film begins with colorful sun setting to transform into bleak black and white cinematography. After a geisha deceives a samurai and robs him together with her husband, the samurai starts the bloody and twisted path of revenge that unravels many secrets and treats the viewer with such twists that makes M. Night Shyamalan go green with jealousy. The film is cool mixture of classic samurai movies and film-noir with the tasty sauce of Matsumoto's experimental techniques. More straightforward and less surreal than the director's better known 'Funeral Parade of Roses'.

I don't know that there's anything in this movie which blew me away, but there was also nothing which bothered me either. I suppose the plot is a fairly straightforward revenge story, but the stylistic elements of the film were more than enough to save the film. For instance, I liked the usage of darkness and shadows in several scenes. I don't know if I can quite put my finger on why those elements work, but something about seeing various characters appear/disappear from the shadows gives the film a dreamy aesthetic. I also liked how certain scenes were repeated. Through these scenes, you get a sense of Gengobei imagining how he wants to behave in certain situations or how some of the violence he commits or witnesses it etched into his head. These scenes also cause the film to become a subjective experience which puts you in Gengobei's headspace really well. Finally, the high level of violence also surprised me. While certain elements like the slow motion and the (relatively) high levels of blood help in this regard, that most of the deaths are prolonged gives them even more staying power. All things considered, this is definitely the most violent classic samurai film I've seen. As I said at the start of this review, I wouldn't say this film blew me away, but I do have a lot of respect for the film's technical qualities. It's a stylistically impressive take on the revenge film which is so unique with its craft that you eventually stop caring about its somewhat barebones plot.

A strangely hypnotic and violent tale of greed, betrayal and revenge, this tale is a masterclass in cinematography and lighting. In fact, this has to be among the best lit films I have ever seen. Set designs are minimal and intersting and so is the story and it manages to hold the attention pretty nicely. The middle section of the film is a bit slow and that could have been worked on but otherwise it's good. The twist at the end works well. All in all, a pretty masterful work of art and a very underrated piece of samurai cinema.

The only possible parallel I can furnish to position SHURA in the greater map of Japanese cinema is the last 20 minutes of that soul-destroying masterpiece Kihachi Okamoto directed in 1966, the indomitable SWORD OF DOOM. And even that comparison leaves a little something to be desired. Not only because SHURA is an exhausting 2+ hours of that same brooding sludge so thick you could slice it with a wakizashi, but also because, directed as it is by experimental guerilla rebel Toshio Matsumoto, it stands as a somewhat different beast from the general hobnob of genre cinema.

Woven of that same tragic almost Shakespearian fabric, with a protagonist who like Ryunosuke Tsukue in SWORD OF DOOM finds himself doomed to walk the path of demons in a downward spiral into madness and despair, SHURA is as bleak dark and hopeless a jidaigeki as was ever execrated and sealed from man and beast on celluloid. Unlike Ryunosuke Tsukue, however, who starts on the Great Buddha Mountain Pass and slowly cuts his way into his own private hell, Gengobe in SHURA starts in that private hell and plunges himself deeper in depths of the soul unknown. The movie opens with Gengobe hunted in pitch black by hovering lanterns held by unseen persecutors. He enters a house and finds a scene of carnage and mayhem, the floor strewn with mutilated bodies, limbs, others hanging dead from the ceiling. I told you it only starts there.

The movie itself exists in a hopeless purgatory. No establishing shots of anything. No daytime. The passage of time signaled with intertitles. The occasional external shot, a patch of gravel road, the frontside of a house, offers no relief, no room for breath, because it reminds us that there are no horizons or depth for the eye to rest. Everything was probably shot on soundstages with only a few lights strategically placed hither and thither, no doubt a lingering remnant of kabuki theater from which Japanese cinema has borrowed heavily. With no broader world to be measured against, the interiors and the story that takes place inside and the characters that breathe and walk and double-cross and slaughter each other in them, all seem to hover suspended in absolute suffocating darkness and everlasting night.

The title really says it all. The Ashuras, a rank of lower demigods in Buddhism, are meant to reflect the mental state of a human being obsessed with force and violence, always looking for an excuse to get into a fight, angry with everyone and unable to maintain calm or solve problems peacefully.

It's not only cynic or tragic as the best of jidaigekis usually are, it's positively bleak and unremitting. That shots and entire scenes repeat themselves automaton-like, first taking place inside the protagonist's anguished mind and then reality, only serves to reinforce the existential phlegm through which SHURA wades waist-deep for two hours. The atmosphere is so oppressing that questions of clunky expositional dialogue such as the characters often spout ("this is your wife's head" says a character while brandishing said head in plain sight) and theatrical exaggerated acting are rendered almost meaningless.

The story is still good, gripping, engrossing, as classic and plain and stripped of all fat as the best jidaigekis usually are, with a limited cast and sets that hint at the stageplay origins of the script, but in the end it's the overarching feeling of despair that stays with you. A movie so much of its time and place, almost impossible to even think of it as coming from anywhere else than Japan of the late 60's-early 70's, that will by its very nature appeal only to a limited audience. If you came this far and liked what you read then you're probably ready to brave SHURA. Beware all who enter. There is real cacodemonia here.