Vengeance Is Mine
October. 17,1979 RA thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu is on the run from the police.
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Reviews
Simply A Masterpiece
Purely Joyful Movie!
Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.
As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.
In late 1963 a serial killer and conman Akira Nishiguchi gained nationwide attention in Japan by murdering five people, several of them while on the run from the police. In the late 1970s a book based on his life inspired the master director Shôhei Imamura to use his story as the basis for a cold crime film titled Vengeance Is Mine. The film starts with the capture of the killer Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) and advances non-chronologically, depicting the detectives interviewing his family and former lovers and how Enokizu first came to know them. Particularly the muted relationship of Iwao's wife Kazuko (Mitsuko Baisho) and his Catholic father Shizuo (Rentarô Mikuni) is paid attention to, so is his stay at a brothel-like inn managed by Haru Asano (Mayumi Ogawa) and her ex-con mother Hisano (Nijiko Kiyokawa). The scenes ranging from Enokizu's childhood to his time in death row cast light on what kind of man he is, but avoid serving easy, clear-cut explanations of his inner motives.Imamura has taken an unspectacular, down-to-earth approach to his enigmatic subject. Some techniques, such as identifying the victims' names and causes of death by subtitles, are not far from the style of documentaries. While some of Enokizu's killings take place off-screen, the depicted murder scenes are not softened by turning the camera away or fading to black, making especially the sexual violence hard to watch for sensitive viewers. Still, Vengeance Is Mine is more of a character study than a crime thriller, as in the latter parts of the film the detectives' role is diminished and the focus turned to Enokizu. He is portrayed as having been belligerent and self-confident from young age, soon blossoming into a full-blown psychopath to whom other people's feelings are of little concern, as exemplified by his cruel psychological treatment of his family. Even if Iwao's basic nature is inherent, it could be possible that the suppressed atmosphere in his parents' home has affected the way he turned out: the deeply Christian father sparks Iwao's hatred for weakness and humility, prompting him to openly mock the lack of action from the family's part when feelings develop between Kazuko and Shizuo.Besides his twisted relationship with his family, another defining element in the film is Enokizu's stay at the inn with Haru, a mistreated woman who has to look after her unreliable mother. Imamura's portrayal of Haru is highly forlorn; to her Iwao's presence represents a possibility of freedom from her gloomy life, even when his past is no longer a secret to her. It is also during this time when the stress of being a fugitive is starting to take its toll on Enokizu; he turns from a self-confident fraudster to a more serene and openly menacing figure, an interesting change as we, the audience, already know him as cocky and carefree from the first scene that has yet to happen in the story's timeline.The very dark lighting in the interior scenes and the slow-paced, detached storytelling will alienate those expecting a suspenseful serial killer thriller, but as a flat-out drama Vengeance Is Mine provides a fascinating trip into the world of the suave killer. Ken Ogata handles the lead role with natural charm, effortlessly fitting in the various roles Enokizu assumes over the course of the film. Rentarô Mikuni also makes a great counterforce to him as the guilt-ridden father, but especially the unlucky women Haru and Hisano are powerfully brought to life by Ogawa and Kiyokawa. The visuals are not as aesthetically striking as in Imamura's earlier masterpiece Unholy Desire (1964), but the mood is so heavily tied to the reality of Japanese society in the 1960s and 70s that the depressing mundanity of the surroundings is never out of place. The only moment rising above the strictly realistic atmosphere would be the very final scene on the top of a mountain: Enokizu's spirit will remain lingering in the lives of those around him. All in all, Vengeance is Mine should not be ignored by any enthusiast of crime cinema, but admirers of slow-burning character dramas are probably the ones to find it the most rewarding.
"I'll never forgive you." "Who the Hell asked you to?" This has been dubbed the "greatest serial killer movie ever made". It's the true story of Iwaao Enokizu from as devout Catholic family who, while posing as a charming university lecturer, went on a 78-day slaughter spree in the 1960s before he was captured, unrepentant to the end. The murders are rendered with protracted verite - comparable to Kieslowski's Short Film About Killing - though are often so slapdash they can seem like the work of a deeply depressed Benny Hill sketch writer. And Vengeance... would be nothing more than a spreadsheet of bestial brutality were it not for Imamura's intelligent approach to its subject (think of this as a Japanese take on Camus' The Outsider) and willful cussedness, exposing a side of society the 'new Japan' would prefer to whitewash over.
Not as brutal as "Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer", but not as sophisticated as "The Talented Mr. Ripley". Vengeance is Mine is the story of a con man, thief, and murderer (not serial killer, there's nothing ritual about any of it), during 78 day manhunt to find him. The film also shows moments from Enokizu's youth, and has two sub-plots one about his Catholic father and wife, resisting their attraction to each other, the other about a mother and daughter who run a brothel, where Enokizu' sometimes stays.Criterion Collection DVD came with an interview with the directer where he says his only interest in films are people, there no nature shots in his films, every frame has human actions. His interests are not moral, he's interested his characters feelings, thoughts, sex lives, their everyday habits, but that's it.No cop hot on the trail, no great explanation for how he has come to this (Why so serious?), no guilty confession. It's a character driven story about a sociopath, at times charming, at others brutish, and still others pent up and pathetic (the final father son scene).Any very intense, unlikely humanistic, well made film. Not sure I would watch it again, but worth seeing once.
Immamura Shohei, one of Japan's best directors, does not put a foot wrong in VENGEANCE IS MINE, one of the best films ever made.This is a searing, raw, uncompromising study of a disturbed, callous, opportunistic killer, husband and son.The film, running just over two hours, takes an almost doco-style approach to the crimes of its protagonist (played with chilling conviction by Ken Ogata) and takes great pains to examine the impact his behavior had on his mother, father and wife.A flashback, which goes some way towards explaining how Ogata developed such a disdain for authority, is a masterstroke of cinematic brevity.Although Immamura is known mostly for such brilliant work as THE PORNOGRAPHERS, BLACK RAIN and the excellent THE EEL, this is surely his crowning achievement, a film so rich and involving that it personifies everything that is so amazing about Japanese cinema, truly a cinema of the soul.