Thursday, September 4, 2008

Vengeance is Mine



B+

Directed by Shohei Imamura

The great Shohei Imamura can never be accused of making half-assed films. All of Imamura's cinematic offerings are ambitious, complex, and painstakingly detailed, all qualities that have a distinctly double edged quality to them. In "Vengeance is Mine," Imamura strives so hard for perfection that an otherwardly brilliant character drama is reduced to a stil brilliant but just really, really, really overlong film.

"Veangeance is Mine" follows the crime spree of Iwao Enokizu (played brilliantly here by the great Ken Ogato) as he makes his way through the Japanese countryside, piling up the body count for seemingly no reason whatsoever. The story itself jumps around from his interogation to crucial moments in his life, from his wedding to a woman he eventually abandons to his numerous romantic conquests to his numerous kills and their ramifications on his day to day life. The film is told through a complex series of flashbacks and requires a fair amount of dediction to follow the course of the story since the action skips around from place to place and from one era to the next. Watching Iwao maneuver his way through life, manipulting individuals and killing without a conscience is, to say the least, creepy, but also fascinating in a morbid sort of way.

"Vengeance is Mine" like most of Immamura's films, deals with a marginalized, criminal individual living on the fringes of society, and simply sits back and watches how said individual lives. As opposed to some Immamura films, such as the wonderful "The Eel," where his protaganist, even though a criminal, is imbued with a sense or morality and decency, the hero of "Vengeance is Mine" is buoyed neither by any type of moral obligation to his family or to others and seems to opperate completely outside the bounds of "normal" human behavior. The chracter sketch that results is a fascinating one and is worth watching if nothing else than for the morbid pleasure of watching someone live life with no real moral qualms, interested only in his own survivial and satiating his most basic needs.

The genius behind "Vengeance is Mine" is undeniable and Immamura's legacy as a premier filmmaker is already well established both in Japan and abroad. Despite this, Immamura's tendency to piece together extremely disjointed films that lack any real moral core (this is a debatable stament, I know) has always left me feeling somewhat cold. My favorite Immamura film, the above mentioned "Eel," appealed to me because the main character, although attempting to remove himself from society following a vicious crime, nonetheless found himself compelled to assist those around him in their time of need, leading to a film which ended with an almost shockingly un-Immamura sense community and of the value of compassion between humans. This type of feeling was altogether lacking from "Veangeance is Mine" which made the film, for me at least, interesting without being emotionally resonent.


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