“the can opener/ where could you have hidden it/ enlighten me please”

since i watched a guillaume depardieu film shortly after his untimely death, and worked in a paul newman movie shortly before he died, i thought it only fair to do the same for ken ogata, who died last week. so yesterday was the 1979 film “vengeance is mine”, directed by shohei imamura, who also directed ‘the eel’, which i liked very much.

the film is the story of a serial killer, ehokizu, who, for no discernible reasons, sets off on a 78 day killing spree, managing to elude police through a series of frauds. the film alternates between scenes of police trying to extract a confession after ehikozu’s capture and scenes of his time on the run.

one of the first things that you notice about ehikozu is that he is a very strange guy, to put it mildly. at first adamant that the police will never get a word of confession from him, he turns out not that hard to trick into it. he exhibits problems with violence dating back to his childhood, and grew up to be a generally rotten person who treated his wife abhorrently, although this could be inherited from his father, who comes very close to an affair with ehikozu’s wife on numerous occasions, while ehikozu’s ailing mother can do nothing but look on. (he also at one time buries a dog up to it’s neck in dirt and pours boiling water on his head, which seems like overdoing it.) but ehikozu’s father offers the only real analysis of his son’s behavior near the end of the film “you could only kill those who would never harm you.” it’s possible that the father’s warped christian values (god doesn’t approve of divorce, but he’s okay with you doing your daughter-in-law?) have skewed ehikozu irreparably, but ehikozu clearly has some elements to him that are all his, and completely out of control. what makes the film so scary is the fact that there really is no reason for him to have killed any of his five victims. ogata is wonderful, whether rolling around on the floor for fun or making up impromptu haiku, and the character works because he feels no need to justify any of his actions. the other standout character is the one-time murdereress mother of an innkeeper that enihkozu takes up with, a bad-tempered little woman with a penchant for peeping on guests of the inn.

the music was a bit bizarre, better when they used a peter gunn-type jazz theme than near the end when it morphs into some sort of synthesizer nonsense better suited to ‘sans soleil’ or some such. the flashbacks could have used a bit more clarity, and the final scene is just nonsensical, honestly, and I felt it detracted a bit from the rest of the film.