screaminmimi

Great find at my public library: eye-poppingly gorgeous restored print of Kinogasa Teinosuke's 1953 "Gate of Hell (Jigoku Mon)" out in Criterion edition, UPC: 7-15515- 10451-7

Has everything visually that drew me to classic Japanese cinema when I was a kid. The color and pattern sense of 12th century clothing and home décor and the use of light and shadow one was more likely to see in a b&w film than in most Technicolor films of the early 1950's.

The story is based on a contemporary historical account of the Heiji Rebellion of 1160 and its aftermath, intertwining images from a picture scroll depicting the rebellion with the live action of the movie. The plot centers on the lives of three people caught up in what would have been a love triangle if the lady in question had agreed to it. Instead, she is the victim of Travis Bickel-like stalker who won't take "no" for an answer.

May not be for all tastes: not as much chambara (sword fighting) as some people like in their jidaigeki (historical dramas), and a little over the top on the melodrama, but still worth seeing, especially from the technical standpoint of benchmarking a great job of color film restoration. Not garish, but jaw-droppingly accurate.

Getting used to the rhythm of the storytelling in the beginning of this movie may prove to be too much of an obstacle to enjoying it for non-Japanese audiences. The way characters are introduced, as if seemingly unrelated to each other, is something of a head scratcher. However, being left in the dark puts the viewer in the same position as several of the characters whose varying points of view about the same set of events are presented. As in the classic Kurosawa film, "Rashômon," the audience has no way of deciding which of several more or less plausible explanations of a gruesome crime is accurate, and, like "Rashômon," the least plausible turns out to be true. That said, this is no "Rashômon." However, it is stylish and entertaining as teen-oriented horror flicks go, and refreshingly not peopled with characters you want to yell at for being stupid. It's also a relief that most of the gore is off- camera and well enough represented by sound effects.

I wish more people in the U.S. could see the diversity of Miike's work. He's unfortunately lumbered with the reputation of his shocking "Audition." It seems to me after seeing almost a dozen of his movies, that his signature style is his ability to work in any style, now confirmed by this stage play peopled by film actors who are just as good in live theater as they are in his and other directors' films.

This play updates a traditional Japanese folktale about the consequences of not complying with the gods' wishes. It's eerily predictive of the 3/11 string of disasters, not so much in exact detail, but in the way some elements of society can't be bothered to respect the power that nature can bring to bear on human-created structures and institutions. In this story, nature is chiefly represented by a tantrum-prone, love-struck demon princess, and her minions. That's pretty telling. For millennia, the Japanese cosmology has sought to ease humanity's relationship with the capriciousness of nature. This is deeply ingrained in Japanese daily life, but as seen with the aftermath of the 3/11 Tôhoku earthquake and tsunami, putting a bunch of nuclear reactors on earthquake-prone stretches of coastline is modernism and human hubris gone amok. Nature just is what it is. The way it's written in kanji, 自然 (shizen), is telling. The kanji mean "self" and "as it is". People disregard it at their own peril, and to the detriment of others around them.

The leads are played with heart and skill by Tomoko Tabata, Shinji Takeda and Ryûhei Matsuda. Miike makes good use of a supporting cast of other well-known movie actors in multiple roles: some human; some animal; some shape-shifting demons, gods and other supernaturals--without major adjustments in their appearance (unlike all the technological, costume and makeup resources he availed himself of in his other big supernatural story, "Yôkai Dai Sensô"). Likewise, the stage set is simple and uses lighting and sound (not so much naturalistic in either case, as evocative) to indicate locale. Where there might be bloodshed, he doesn't even make use of stage blood, trusting the audience and his actors to make the experience real.

Although this is a stage play, the camera work is closer to that of a TV production, well coordinated to make the best use of small moments in close-up. However, it never tries to be anything other than a stage play, and the audience's response and participation are critical to appreciating it as a real-time work. It's the next best thing to being there.