Retribution (2006)

Retribution (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2006)
Japanese Title: Sakebi

The murders in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Retribution (Sakebi) have distinct commonalities leading detective Yoshioka (played by Kôji Yakusho) to think that they are linked together, either by a single killer or some bigger and ominous mysterious force. The victims are all drowned in saltwater in a nearly barren urban district in Tokyo which is slowly being reclaimed by the sea by a series of earthquakes. Yoshioka's dilemma deepens when clues start pouring in making it apparent that he might have been involved in the first murder of a woman in a bright red dress who has started appearing to him as a shrieking specter clamoring for attention.

It's set in the typical Kurosawa-esque Japan of generational decay and heightening social alienation. Like in Charisma (1999), where the forest bears the initial scars of the noxious tree, or in Pulse (2001), where an interconnected Japan fails to bridge the separated souls, or in the grandly offbeat Bright Future (2003), where its direction-less teens parade their youthful ennui in a manufactured landscape, where the setting carries the burden of society's ills.

The physical decay we see in Retribution of the remaining apartment buildings and the ones demolished (where the traces of their structures are the skeleton-like concrete pillars and puddles of rising saltwater eagerly grabbing the land stolen from them by the enterprising Japanese) mirrors the creeping decay that is slowly but surely enveloping Yoshioka. His preoccupation with the current series of murders, the daily visits from his crimson dressed wraith, and his girlfriend's less-than-constant visits force Yoshioka to combust internally; and you sense a tremendous fatigue both in his body and in his soul as if every ill memory of the past and the pressures of the present are conspiring to force him to decompose along with his surroundings.

Kurosawa weighs in escape and confrontation as solutions to Yoshioka's psychological torment. Yoshioka should either step out of his conflicted environment or face the so-called voice of truth which is society's primary sin, that of quiet indifference. The sin produces a moldering contempt that a person harbors for a loved one who firmly disassociates because of an unassessed air of self importance or just an innate collective callousness. It leads to the film's fatal dissatisfaction. Kurosawa dissects this dissatisfaction, the so-called contemporary woe (which is most probably not endemic to modern Japanese society). He treats it like an unstoppable tumor, a reason enough for a surprising doomsday scenario, much like the way he treats the collective depression in the riveting conclusion of Pulse. The intriguing irony in this Kurosawa ghost story is that the punishment for the living's ineptitude for the basic requirements of humanity is dealt with by the dead; and quite sarcastically, it is the dead which is most capable of boundless amounts of compassion and care, as shown near the end of the film.

A complaint most critics have with Retribution is that it is a Kurosawa pic that treads too closely to conventional horror narrative, something I really do not mind especially for a sub-genre that is supposedly on its extended death bed. I do not watch a Kurosawa film for the fineries of his storytelling (although his grand minimalism which often turns in awkward directions to ultimately satisfactory results is a Kurosawa trait that is undoubtedly unique only to his ouvre --- the way the intimate (or lacking in intimacy) finite chatters of workmates in Pulse would culminate in apocalypse; or the serial killings in Cure (1997) invite metaphysic musings; or the inward botanical engrossment of the characters in Charisma would end up in a road path to a cityscape on fire) but because of his inherent skill in maximizing mood and atmosphere without trespassing the boundaries of subtle taste (something Takashi Shimizu, sometimes Hideo Nakata, and most Asian horror practitioners tend to forget).

He completes his visual canvass, usually his camera is still as a corpse, and makes most of what he has by painting an entire picture of dread --- a morgue is visually bare yet the incessant swinging of the formalin apparatus forces an also incessant squeak that functions to broaden our already heightened senses; and an interrogation scene uncomfortably thickens when an invisible haunting attaches to the deranged prisoner. Whenever Kurosawa needs to utilize horror tropes (like the creepy long haired lady creeping for her kill), he outrages by going over-the-top: the bright red dress, the Superman flight tactics, the banshee-like shrieking.

If Retribution is an example of Kurosawa going conventional and commercial (the film is produced by the makers of The Grudge and its numerous remakes, both in the Japanese and English languages), then I am all for it. If the sub-genre needs a wake-up call from its brainless repetitiveness, Kurosawa, who is not even in his top form in this film, is the right man to do it.

******
This review is my contribution to the Kiyoshi Kurosawa Blog-a-Thon at The Evening Class.

The Guard From Underground (1992)

The Guard From Underground (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1992)
Japanese Title: Jigoku no keibîn

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of my favorite contemporary Japanese directors. All of his works after Cure are flat-out masterpieces (yes, even the much-maligned Bright Future), and one can only acknowledge Kurosawa's filmmaking as defiantly interesting, and never boring (yes, even in the much-maligned Bright Future). He's almost done everything. He started with soft core pornography, made a musicale, toyed with horror, drama, yakuza, science fiction, and the like, and he always manages to come up with something good. Kurosawa's The Guard From Underground is him seeking inspiration from one of his favorite American directors, Tobe Hooper (Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre is said to be one of Kurosawa's favorite films), in crafting a uniquely Japanese slasher flick.

The Guard From Underground is set in an office building where beautiful museum curator Akiko Narushima (Makiko Kuno) is starting out to work as an expert adviser to the newly formed department that is tasked in trading in paintings for the corporation. The same day she first reports for work, a newly hired guard arrives. The guard, with an imposing height and frame, is Fujimaru (Yutaka Matsushige), a former sumo wrestler who is currently being sought out by the police for murdering his sumo colleague and his lover. It is never clear why the ex-wrestler is insanely bashing everybody's heads, or how he got the job as a security guard, despite the fact that he is being hunted down, and he is quite famous for being in all the newspapers. There's a correct assumption that logic needs to be thrown out the window for an hour and a half, and one just has to enjoy the brutal murders that will ensue within the corporate building.

The Guard From Underground comes from Kurosawa's pre-Cure days, meaning it was during the time that Kurosawa's films weren't thought-out, philosophically stimulating fare. It's almost impossible to justify The Guard From Underground in intelligent discourse as the enjoyment from watching the film doesn't emanate from the brain, but from the senses. For a low budget flick, the film is visually alluring. The corporate building looks more like an abandoned hospital, with its hallways narrow and unkempt, and its rooms deliver a feeling that pain and suffering must've happened within its walls. Kurosawa doesn't let his budgetary constraints lessen his film and instead shoots the hallways, the rooms, with quiet tension, his camera wading through the little spaces and catching the dastardly events in teasing detail. His brutality isn't showing the blood splurting out, or limbs getting chopped off and thrown out ala Takashi Miike, but instead, Kurosawa relishes in quick yet boisterous attacks to the senses. I guess that's the reason why his guard's weapon of choice is a club, or any blunt object. There's a lot more cringe to be garnered from hearing bones breaking, and skulls smashing than in actually seeing them.

Kurosawa populates the office building with a horde of queer characters. There's Akiko's officemates, an overly enthusiastic lady, an overly friendly man, a quiet and seemingly useless balding guy, and a sexual pervert for a boss. The human resources head is Hyodo (Hatsunori Hasegawa), who is quick to complain about his employees personality faults but can't see that he's squandering corporate money while he sleeps at work. There's really no point detailing these characters as complex human beings with feelings and emotions, since they're all dead by the time the film ends. It's quite clear that Kurosawa isn't interested in these characters, but instead, delights in the act of filmmaking. His filmmaking clearly overshadows the material. He washes the material with an over-the-top musical score that properly labels the screenplay as low-end fare, but in a way, Kurosawa's not taking the material seriously vitalizes the entire affair. There's one clever scene wherein Akiko is trapped inside the library, and the backdoor suddenly shakes and rattles, causing Akiko to panic. The sequence is shot interestingly, an example of the visceral terror Kurosawa is capable of, even though the scene belongs nowhere in the film's logic. The Guard From Underground is nowhere near the masterpieces Kurosawa will eventually make, but having said that, it's still watchable fare, at least for Kurosawa completists like me.

******
This review is my contribution to the Kiyoshi Kurosawa Blog-a-Thon at The Evening Class.