VENGEANCE IS MINE Movie Review

Fukusho Suruwa Ware Ni Ari

Shohei Imamura's 1979 film is based on the true history of an infamous murderer and scam artist, called Iwao Enokizu in the film and portrayed mesmerizingly by Ken Ogata. Enokizu's case became a sensation in Japan, both because of the brutality of his crimes and because of their seeming senselessness. Beginning with the understanding that there is in fact no such thing as a “senseless” crime, Imamura has structured his film as a series of flashbacks in which we witness the killer's crimes while he awaits conviction and execution for what he has done. We see key incidents from his past, including his unhappy childhood and failed marriage, but to Imamura's credit there's no one moment that appears to be the switch that turned this man into an unrepentant sociopath. As in Taxi Driver, we come away with the sensation of knowing this man quite well, yet not having the slightest understanding of what really brought him to this point. It's the welcome opposite of what pictures like this usually try to do, which is to fascistically give us an exact, clean explanation for seemingly random violence (as in Richard Brooks's In Cold Blood, when Perry Smith's crummy childhood shows up in near-subliminal flashes at key moments, as if to tell us that this is what he was thinking at that very second). It's far more comfortable for someone leaving a film to know precisely what factors will cause the person they're going to drive home with to murder them. Imamura doesn't let us off so easily, and it's the key to his movie's unsettling power.

NEXT STOP … The Ballad of Narayama, Mishima, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

1979 129m/C JP Ken Ogata, Rentaro Mikuni, Mitsuko Baisho, Chocho Miyako, Mayumi Ogawa, Nijiko Kiyokawa; D: Shohei Imamura; W: Masuru Baba; C: Sinsaku Himeda; M: Shinichiro Ikebe. VHS, LV FCT