Japan in the fourth century. Two women live in the swamps - the mother of the son who went to war and his wife. The son will not return from the war, the man is no longer home. However, an irritant appears in the environment - a young man who managed to escape from captivity. Here begins the canonical drama with literally flawless shooting and editing. In general, the film is based on a Buddhist parable, which also featured the mask of a demon.
Director Kaneto Shindo – a well-known follower of the classic Japanese cinema Yasujiro Ozu – masterfully emphasizes the emotions and vices of the characters, supplying what is happening with organic dramatic music and using insertions of cane leaves. Literally a sample of classical cinema. It's just very beautiful. I don’t understand how you can show so many emotions in the field of cane.
9 out of 10
No matter what, but man is the most dangerous creature on Earth. In stressful and uncontrollable situations, human nature is capable of such insane actions that most people will freeze their blood in their veins. History knows many examples when people for the sake of survival went to the most immoral and soulless actions. In such an atmosphere of lawlessness and impunity, every action a person can become more and more terrible. In a similar situation are the main characters of the historical and dramatic horror “Demon Woman”.
Synopsis of Japan, XVI century. The country was engulfed in civil war. Two peasant women, a woman and her daughter-in-law, make ends meet somewhere in the swamps, huddled in a small hut and waiting for their son and husband, whom the emperor took to military service. In order to survive in this difficult time, women audaciously kill lost warriors, steal, the bodies are thrown into a hole, and the stolen goods are exchanged for food. They are used to such a harsh lifestyle. Everything changes when a colleague of a woman’s son returns from the war, who decided to have an affair with her daughter-in-law.
First of all, I would like to note one of the most outstanding Japanese actresses of the XX century Nobuko Otova, who played the role of Kichi’s mother. The actress embodied a unique atypical image of a Japanese woman, far from the harsh patriarchal Japanese society. Her heroine is a daring, sharp-tongued woman who is able not only to rebuff any man, but to destroy with the help of her blind rampant fury. Jitsuko Yoshimura played the role of a young wife Kichi, dreaming not so much about the return of her husband, but about just a man to return to her life.
Director Kaneto Shindo along with Akira Kurosawa is considered one of the most prominent Japanese film directors. From Under His Pen came a dozen films, many of which have become classics of world scale. In the case of Demon Woman, we can say that the director shot a sample of Japanese film expressionism. Immediately striking is the extreme frankness, so rare in films of the 1960s: there is nudity, and splashes of blood, and ostentatious cruelty, with which the director dissects the human nature of that time. We see how a small handful of people, who are far from politics, have to survive at all costs. In such an “unhealthy” environment, all boundaries are erased and any walls are destroyed, and elementary things and concepts lose meaning, forcing people to commit inhumane acts.
The action of the plot takes place in the XIV century in the period of Nambokuto. The country is engulfed in civil war. The governments of the opposing sides are ready to take ordinary peasants into the ranks of the army, who, by and large, do not care on whose side to fight. This fate befell young Kitty, whose mother and wife remained in a tiny hut somewhere in the swamps. There is no food, the harvest is scarce, and it is necessary to survive somehow. Both women found a way out and are now engaged in murder and robbery of lost soldiers. Everything changes when a fellow soldier Kiti Hati returns from the war. Hati begins to molest his friend's young wife. The girl initially resists, but then "gives" Hachi. This is immediately disliked by Kitty’s mother, who first tries to reason with her daughter-in-law’s word, and then proceeds to a business that will turn her life around.
The result of "Demon Woman" is a subtle combination of psychology, history and harsh suspense. The film is unlikely to seem scary, especially experienced in the genre of horror viewers. However, the film still catches its unusual presentation and enticing atmosphere. So without further ado, I just want to recommend the movie.
A deep gloomy burrow in the middle of a reed field harbors a primitive darkness, it frightens and beckons, enveloping this strange, instantly animated space under the gusts of wind under the cover of a creepy mystery. Here the dying wheezings of a lost traveler are drowned out by groans of voluptuous pleasures, and the short laughter of carefree lovers drowns in the cries of horror and despair of those who dared to start an arrogant game with forces beyond the control of human will. But only the noise of the swinging grass, like an echo, echoes them.
Kaidan “Onibaba” appeared in the filmography of the classic Japanese cinema Kaneto Shindo quite unexpectedly. As the first filmmaker to raise the theme of the consequences of the atomic bomb, Shindo was for a long time under the hypnotic influence of the darkness of the terrible consequences of this tragedy, with the hungry, impoverished post-war years and the hard, routine labor of the common people. In his famous painting “The Naked Island”, he glorifies the resilience and dignity of the “little” man, seeing in him the hope of the revival of a nation brought to its knees. And now a new film, based on an old Buddhist parable about the mask of a demon, attached to the face of a woman who thought to block her daughter-in-law’s way to the temple, seems to take a decisive step away from the theme already familiar to the director. Well, in essence, only weaves the questions of modern life into the eternal symbolism of myth, giving them an existential character and thereby raising them to a new level of comprehension.
Unaccustomed to the director’s style, sarcasm and bitterness, as if called out to freedom by the unlimited possibilities of parable allegory, are felt from the first frames of the picture. In this peculiar model of the universe, a small reed island surrounded by senseless and destructive clan struggles, everything is extremely bare in its primitive and base existence without morality, pity and love. The formula for folklore image of two women avenging their abusers was expanded by the director to the symbolism of a beggar, brought to the limit of humanity of the people, for the sake of survival ready, like predatory and greedy vultures, with coolness and cruelty to achieve their exhausted prey. In this inverted world, the dignity of honest and hard work is transformed into an animal instinct of self-preservation, and the place of the temple is conceptually replaced by lovelessness and primitive lust. But even such a grim picture of human decline does not yet overwhelm hope for the future. For all that is caused by the folly of war and the necessities of the flesh, being instinctual in its essence, does not contradict the eternal laws of existence, and, according to the author, can still be forgiven and justified by the all-conquering vitality which lies at the foundation of his universe.
However, the question of determining the trait when the natural thirst for life turns into an animal grin, and the face gradually turns into a diabolical guise, from the very beginning of the picture sounds persistent behind-the-scenes leitmotif, gaining its strength with each round of action. One of the heroes of Shindo’s film “Mama” once suggested that the man who created atomic weapons must have imagined himself as God. This important for the director theme of proud conceit, leading humanity to death, is fully embodied in the image of a “demonic woman”. Like the insatiable Pushkin old woman who wished absolute power over the universe, the heroine of the film, driven by fear and envy, starts a dangerous game with death and fate. She sanctimoniously manipulates the sacred concepts of sin, prohibition, punishment, and then, as if challenging the higher forces and at the same time not believing in them, puts on a terrible demon mask, ripped off the handsome samurai she killed. Significant for the director motive distorted and destroyed by human vanity beauty, combined with evil, symbolically embodied in the “came” from the war and then extracted from the hellish pit mask. And as if absorbing all the horror of the world, this demonic principle settles in man, absorbing and perverting his nature. Interestingly, a similar theme of loss of identity under the influence of guise, raised two years later in Teshigahara's film Alien Face, essentially boils down to the same problem of the duality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where the darkness and terror nestling in the human heart, gaining magical or scientific self-being, gradually devour its master. No wonder Shindo metaphorically linked the disfiguring effect of the mask with the consequences of an atomic catastrophe, because the desire to usurp divine freedom is inherently satanic.
The image of a person as a carrier of horror, as its very embodiment, is supported at the level of the visual range of the picture by a completely special style and color, once called “black poetry”. An oppressive and at the same time mesmerizing sense of mystery, the atmosphere of the living, invisible presence of something irrational and terrible spectacularly dissonates here with the deep, measured breath of eternal and all-conquering life. The skillfully recreated circular movement of being, transmitted in the incessant rustle of tall grass, in the peculiar mantricity, repetition of events characteristic of the author’s handwriting, symbolizes the inevitable integration of the personality into the natural rhythm that subordinates itself and is not subject to its will, common to all existence. In this view of the world you can see the sad grin of a person who has gone through a lot in his life. But it is also a hard-won experience of faith and knowledge—that which acts, penetrates, persuades, and inspires hope.
Performed in the classic style of Kaidan, the dark story of love and sadness of Kaneto Shindo from the first minutes makes the viewer get into a special world. A world of resources that are unfortunately limited. Resources for which people are willing to kill each other. There will be no terrible monsters or demons tearing creation apart - only hunger and despair. It is because of the lack of resources that all crimes occur in this film.
The minimalism of the Shindo space, which includes a house and a small section of the field, seems no less terrifying than the claustrophobic enclosed spaces of Polanski. If in the reality of Roman, there is always a “saving window”, an outlet, then Shindo’s “run-don’t run” still will not hide anywhere.
The two main characters are forced to live together. Not being family, they lost the only bond - a common man - beloved by both son and husband. Both are desperate. One it pushes into the arms of a crook, and the other on a strange intrigue that leads to very bad consequences. However, the living should not pretend to be ghosts.
However, this minimalism does not seem particularly interesting to me. Of course, in matters of depiction of a passionate novel, Shindo is very accurate, either repeating Ingmar Bergman, or anticipating the dilogy about the passion of Nagis Oshima. But the visual series itself, rather annoys me with excessive thickening of colors, rather than delighting. In addition, Shindo really begins to fascinate us with the plot, twenty minutes before the end of the film, taking all the previous time to fix simple everyday life and some deadly realities. And the theme of the mask attached to the face of a person is far from new in modern art.
So, I can confidently say that with a fairly neutral attitude to this picture at the level of reason. Shindo, this picture makes me a little nervous. The thickening of dark colors, hopelessness and a completely trivial story, the morality of which is as simple as many fables of Ivan Krylov, does not please me. And even the fact that here Shindo did indeed anticipate Nagis Oshima does not solve anything.
“Demon Woman” is a festival film, the simple ambiguity of which allows you to write a lot of words, reflect, philosophize, and even to incomprehensible Japanese folklore to reduce everything in case of misunderstanding. But, in assessment, I tend to trust my emotions and intuition.
4 out of 10
A classic of Japanese cinema, director Kaneto Shindo is a creative follower of the mastodons of Japanese cinema Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu, who took much from his immediate predecessors - from virtuoso possession of form to consistently relevant and lively themes and ideas. But Shindo was not a mere epigon, he was able to develop his own directorial handwriting and enter the pantheon of greats on equal terms. Prominent film fans Shindo is primarily known for the 1960 drama “Naked Island”, which is imbued with the poetry of village life and recognized as a masterpiece of world cinema, the general public is most likely familiar with Shindo as the author of the script “History of Hachiko”.
The film “Demon Woman”, released in 1964, marked the transition of Shindo from social dramas performed in a style close to neorealism and documentary film to a specific Japanese genre of “scary tales” – Kaidan. Kaneto Shindo worked with this genre only twice, but so much so that he forever entered his history, filming perhaps the best representatives of it. Here it is worth making a small digression and saying that the Kaidan, as a genre unit in cinema, can be interpreted in the way that many film critics and film critics interpret noirs and westerns - that is, as sets of certain style, plot and setting stereotypes, from which the director can make everything in the end - from a high tragedy to a rabid action movie. Kaneto Shindo made his kaidans as psychological dramas with an admixture of social criticism and some elements of a thriller and horror film.
The Demon Woman tells the story of the mother of a warrior who went to war, whose name is Kitty and his wife, who, in order to feed themselves, are forced to engage in robbery and kill lost travelers in the high reed thickets. One day they meet a co-worker of a departed son named Hati, who says Kitty died in the war. Soon after, Hati, who lives nearby, begins to show attention to the widow, who secretly answers them with a strong man, she is much more likely to find food than with an old woman. Kitty’s mother is imbued with a poisonous suspicion of her daughter-in-law, she is afraid that she will leave her, abandon one.
This tangle of relationships is shown by Sindo with psychological authenticity in a rigid realistic manner, not devoid, however, of poeticity, which is achieved due to the calibrated layout of full-scale shots - reed thickets at different times of the day, in different weather metaphorically complement the state of the heroes, emphasize drama.
The mother of a dead warrior decides to scare her daughter-in-law, who runs to Hati’s hut at night – she dresses up in the robe of a demon, puts on a terrible mask, removed from a samurai killed in the thickets and does not let a girl pass, who is already horribly afraid of the dark.
From the moment of the appearance of the same samurai with a mask, mysticism is added to the previously realistic narrative - the story acquires an ominous shade, and the central idea of a person's greed and cruelty towards his neighbor grows with all its strength so that it literally hypnotizes the viewer, not letting him break away from the screen.
The social principle that is present in all Shindo films is also presented here - the film, if desired, can be interpreted as an allegory about the life of the poor, about the oppression of one person by another. This film echoes another famous kaidan, Kenji Mizoguchi’s Tales of the Fog Moon After the Rain, released 11 years before Shindo’s 1953 film. But if Mizoguchi’s film is poetic, bright in mood, then “Demon Woman” is an evil, harsh statement, executed very expressively and even ruthlessly towards the viewer.
Visually, the film is without exaggeration gorgeous. Pavilion scenes can boast of almost ingenious work with light, and full-scale, as mentioned above, the ideal layout of the frame. The black and white image is stylish and exquisite. It is also worth noting the honed movements of the camera, expressing the emotional states of the characters and expressive editing. Kaneto Shindo shows himself here as a visionary with a capital letter. Exceptional work with the form of “Demon Woman” can recall another film of 1964 – “Quidan: a narrative of the mysterious and terrible” directed by Masaki Kobayashi, made, however, already in color.
The same formalistic qualities can boast of the second Kaidan Kaneto Shindo, released four years after “Demon Woman” – in 1968. This is the famous “Black cats in the bamboo thicket”, no less titled film than “Demon Woman”, and in the opinion of many even better than her.
Kaneto Shindo made “Demon Woman”, using the folklore genre as a platform for his sayings and ideas, which he singled out – along with a rare formalistic skill – a film from a mass of strong middle peasants – Quaidans of the 50-60s, such as, for example, the films of Yoshihiro Ishikawa or Nobuo Nakagawa.
“Demon Woman” is a rare work of art of beauty, whole in form and expression, bright, expressive and insanely stylish.