Issue #342: Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Hitchcock Obsession
Big news for Paradox Newsletter: Kaiji (1996) returns. From September 2023 until October 2023, I wrote about the first four volumes of the manga:
I pledged to write and read only in accordance with the official Denpa books publication schedule for the English language translation of the manga. For reasons I am not aware of, Denpa’s publication was seriously delayed. But now, finally, Kaiji volume five is headed to my doorstep. That means a new Kaiji essay — look for it on September 9th or 16th.
I didn’t mention it when I watched it a few weeks ago, but I got to catch Soi Cheang’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024) during its brief stint in U.S. theaters. The movie is highly recommended, I wrote about it in more detail here. Such great action, a ridiculously lengthy runtime that feels short, cool stuff happening almost constantly. The movie reminded me of this scene from Baki (2018):
Walled In cements my admiration for Cheang, which I wrote about extensively here:
More recently, I watched Blink Twice (2024) and Alien: Romulus (2024) back to back. Blink Twice exceeded expectations, whereas Alien: Romulus was a total disappointment.
Romulus’s failures aren’t just that it’s middling and cast with a group of charisma vacuums who look like they would be more comfortable on the set of a made for TV movie for a children’s network. It is a soulless, irritating retread of two vastly superior movies without any of the ambition that characterizes the 2010s revival of the series by Ridley Scott. I am shocked the movie has gotten such a good reception. The sets look nice and the movie isn’t ugly. I can imagine it as ambient visuals during a Halloween party.
Blink Twice, on the other hand, is exceptional. It’s one of those movies that I want to write about more substantively, but have to remark about now in case it slips through the cracks of my writing itinerary. It is a work, situated between the designation “horror” and “thriller,” writing into an emerging tradition of socially (and social media) conscious works. It has shades of Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) (except it’s good), Spree (2020), and even Get Out (2017). Kravitz is not subtle in her first feature as a director, but she packs a lot of ideas into a very kinetic, fast moving film. The performances are arresting, but the thriller structure makes it “watchable,” though those with sensitivities to the kind of stuff normally called out in “content warnings” should proceed with caution.
Cigarette Embers in Cure and Rear Window
Among the many writing projects I’ve had on the back burner, there has been a really important one I have been preparing, slowly but surely, week by week: a comprehensive analysis of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure (1997). I just watched it again this weekend, taking copious notes. I am still collecting all of my screenshots and developing a strong thesis and outline. I hadn’t watched it since 2020, and the experience of watching it now was very different — I’m not sure it’s a film that lends itself to the kind of rigorous anatomizing I was trying to do. It is very dense, almost too dense, so I found myself going back over previous notes and correcting them, changing details I had written down previously, something that felt a little unusual having seen it before. But, there was a lot I forgot.
More than anything else, I noticed the film has a lot of individual scenes. When I prepare for writing about a movie in depth, something I haven’t done recently, I outline every scene and organize the screenshots into my various sections. It shifts between the lingering scenes of Takabe eating and someone walking down a corridor for less than a minute. Really, how many times did Kurosawa film someone walking down a corridor for Cure? I never associated him with this — I think of Hideaki Anno as the paradigmatic director of people-walking-down-corridors. But now I’ll be looking for it in all of his films I watch and rewatch.
I haven’t quite figured it out the rhythm of the shifting scene length yet. This is just to preempt my writing about Cure, but there’s another way I want to approach the film today in light of a film I was lucky enough to rewatch this weekend: Rear Window (1954). I think I’ve confessed in newsletters past that I see myself as the type of critic who can make associations between or among any works provided I’ve seen them in close proximity to one another. I try to curb this tendency as best I can, but the similarity between Cure and Rear Window hit me like a truck. If my belief in their cinematic relationship is only a result of the strong connections I can create with no other basis than watching the films consecutively, I have to surrender this tendency.
They are deeply related at the level of their form and symbolic concerns. Both works are about knowing and not knowing something. In each, the addition of knowledge is antagonistic to sense. In Cure, the more Takabe (Koji Yakusho) learns about Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara), the less sense anything makes. Even in his final attempt to assemble Mamiya’s actions into something coherent, he enters the space of incoherence, supplanting Mamiya from it. The same is true for L. B. Jefferies (James Stewart), who uncovers a mystery which itself is at odds with knowledge. In Jefferies’ case, it is because Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) has planted fake information to mislead. But Thorwald is also in the morass of nonsense, totally unable to determine why Jefferies would observe him and subsequently expose Thorwald’s crime.
There’s a dual layer to Thorwald’s confusion. On the surface, the way he has been prodded by Jefferies is, as far as Thorwald knows, outside of the scope of the law. So, there’s an obvious plot reason Thorwald would think he is being blackmailed rather than subject to citizens arrest. On the other hand, Stella (Thelma Ritter) and Lisa (Grace Kelly) make much out of the deviant voyeurism Jefferies engages in. Stella even suggests that Jefferies’ activity is criminal. In that sense, Thorwald’s questioning is a result of the obscenity of Jefferies’ action. It is impossible to rationally explain why one would watch their neighbor in this way.
The two films are also lit very similarly. They are dark, with scenes often unfolding in poorer lighting than your average film noir. This feeds into the knowledge theme for both texts. The illumination of rationality cannot totally account for the darkness of human subjectivity. In Cure, this becomes especially important because Mamiya is using hypnosis to cause people to commit murder. One mechanism he uses involves a lighter and a lit cigarette. The rhythm and movement of the lights and their contrast with darkness allow him to enact hypnotic suggestion on his victims.
Close up shots of the burning end of Mamiya’s cigarette are evocative enough, but when Takabe finds Mamiya for the first time, Mamiya is smoking with his body in complete darkness.
Mamiya claims to be unable to determine where he is or where Takabe demands he move to. Mamiya, supposedly, cannot even comprehend geographical space, something that should be self-evident to him.
There is an equally evocative moment where Thorwald smokes in darkness in his apartment, as Jefferies and Lisa spy on him from across the way while the rest of the neighborhood laments the murder of another family’s dog.
Here’s the two next to each other:
As I went on to discover, Rear Window is a very important film for Kurosawa. His first feature, a pink film called Kandagawa Pervert Wars (1983), is an extended riff on the Hitchcock classic. Though Kandagawa is by all accounts an utter failure as a film or tribute to Hitchcock, Kurosawa wears his influences on his sleeve. Early in the film, Aki (Usagi Asō) spies on her neighbor, a young man (Houen Kishino), studying for university entrance exams. In front of him are a litany of film titles, mostly European or American.
The scene unfolds similarly to how one can imagine Kurosawa’s own frustration making this kind of film. The message is clear: sex gets in the way of the studying, and making, great films. Jefferies himself suffers the same kind of interruption to his clandestine spying, but the potential murder by Thorwald interrupts Lisa’s libido rather than being swept away by it (another apt figure of speech for Kandagawa, as the final set piece involves a river’s current).
As short as Kandagawa falls compared to Rear Window, Cure is his do-over. And, indeed, it is much more successful. But if one is going to read anything into Kandagawa (which I don’t recommend… do as I say, not as I do), it is that the vicissitudes of domestic life are an interruption to another kind of more fulfilling life, whether that’s a life of the mind or a life of the detective out to set things right and bring coherence to an incoherent and dangerous world. Sex and domesticity, counterintuitively, are part of that incoherent world that imperils the subject. Rear Window has much the same message, with the romantic — specifically, marital — relationship as the site of murder, professional failure, injury, and mayhem.
In the broader arc of Kurosawa’s career, his indebtedness to Hitchcock is clear. But one might not think to relate Rear Window and Cure. The smoldering end of the cigarette reveals their meaningful interconnection.
Weekly Reading List
It’s Sami’s world, we’re all just living in it. Snake Super Health (imessage edition) is my first stop for workout, diet, and supplement advice. Now, the world can benefit.
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/19/nx-s1-5068033/homicide-life-on-the-street-is-available-to-stream-on-peacock — Homicide: Life on the Street (1993), one of my favorite shows of all time, is available on Peacock. It’s the first time it’s ever streamed. The show is critically acclaimed. Andre Braugher gives a barnburner performance every episode. He embodies being “locked in” on this show. But he’s not the only one. Richard Belzer is in it. Yaphet Kotto is in it. This show is no joke. I have two box sets. Different ones — one from A&A and one from Shout! Factory.
They couldn’t clear all the music in the streaming version, so those box sets are still the best way to watch it. But this is the easiest way to watch it. It also has the best picture. I’ll take what I can get.
Conner O’Malley talking about watching Billions (2016) in 60 second increments is an important piece of tv criticism.
Until next time.