What a very, very odd film. A Murder Mystery with many strange things going on within it's deceptively familiar exterior, and far more complicated that you might first imagine. Kon Ichikawa's classic gets a nice cheap HK DVD from IVL, and it's a treat not worth missing out on if you like things you can't quite pin down.
What a tangled web we've woven, without even knowing it. I suspect, as with viewing other movies long out of time and place, it's probably the case that much has gone on in the background without us being aware of it all. That is, that this film feels like it's the inspiration for others, and yet you go back and view it sensing it as the source of inspiration and it somehow becomes slightly pedestrian. That's an instinct, primarily, the film long having had a place in the Japanese Publics' heart a regarded as a classic by the now defunct Kadokawa, and it's because there's flashes of inspiration, individuality in here, which, although part of a familiar tale (as I sense it) it's also something clearly very special in its' own right. The basic idea of the story is not that far removed from a typical Sunday Afternoon murder mystery drama, and plays out as such, with the death of the Inugami Family head leaving behind a complicated series of relationships, both personal and business, that results in increased danger, some murders and deaths (gruesome, nicely dark, gory), a subsequent investigation by Tokyo Private Detective, Kindaichi.
My primary pleasure in the film is that the pedestrian basis for the story, the wrangle over the last will and testement, the money, the estate and legacy of The Inugami Family, comes from Kon Ichikawa's style of Direction, which allows for a moody, dark, adult tone that's simply not plausible for most TV dramas like this. I can see why it is also termed a Horror film, the mood is as such, and the visuals are often shot in a very dark manner, but it doesn't get so dark in its' mood that the viewer needs respite from it all, and somehow this makes the sudden gore all the more shocking, jolting. Ichikawa also makes the post-war atmosphere convincingly old-fashioned, often with the lighting fading out as though sun is setting giving the regular need for the use of electric light, and there's a mood of a period between traditional and modernity that is spun throughout the whole film. Add to this, the very clearly 70's production style, the funky / synth music, the astonishing visual moments - quick editing, camera effects, desaturation of color, odd angles, strobing, flashbacks - and there's a feel that's quite hard to grasp, but very easy to sense and be affected by.
As the story progresses, the dark past of The Inugami Family reveals adultery, drug use, poison, betrayal, and a very secretly disjointed family unit that is tentatively holding together until the will of the family head shatters everything. All the relationships are interwoven beneath the surface, and the intricacy is something to behold, holding many secrets and unusual ideas within it as it does, deftly told and mastered by Ichikawa into a whole that's much greater than the sum of its' parts. Fascinating stuff, strangely unsettling and oddly different, yet familiar, and that's how I will remember this film. Although this is probably aimed at a market of much older viewers than is typically buying into Japanese Cinema these days, via DVD, it's no different a situation than films by the likes of Yoji Yamada - slow, considered, sober, adult - and worth seeking out.
Шанс, что тут кто-то видел его - 0.0001%. Вобщем классика японского ужаса.
