Shohei Imamura had already won the Golden Palm for his remake of "The Ballad of Nayarama" when he won again for "The Eel" a decade later. I wish I could regard it as a little more than your 'routine' foreign prize-grabbing movie but after such emotional knock-outs as "Underground" and "Secrets & Lies", I was perplexed. I thought it didn't do justice to a story that had a much greater potential.
"The Eel" has a poetry of its own, a melancholic quest for an unreachable purity from a man named Takuro Yamashita (Koji Yakusho) who served eight years in jail after killing his wife because she cheated on him. Receiving mail letters denouncing her, he pretended to go fishing to surprise her that same night with her lover. Takuro is startled, the scene is graphic and it's not out of voyeurism. It is possible that Takuro saw a facet of his wife he didn't suspect, one that reflected his own incapability to make his woman satisfied, if not happy.
And so he takes the most phallic deadly object and what follows is a disturbing and gory knifing scene that literally paints the screen in blood in ways even Kurosawa didn't dare. Takuro stabs the lover once but on his wife, he does it so much I believe in the impotency theory. Not only it's mentioned later in the movie but there's a sense of relief after the murder: Takuro covers his wife's body, takes his bike and gives himself to the police. Eight years later, he's released. There's a weird feeling of convenient expediency all through his actions, as if Karma sided with Takuro.
Indeed, the question of guilt is never really raised, which validates the idea that Takuro felt like he was delivering justice and that he paid what he owed. It's all natural then that he tries to work again as a barber and gives a new meaning to his life. He meets new people, gets his regular clients and befriends a fisherman with which he enjoys hunting eel together. Speaking of that, there's that pet eel he took from jail, the only creature he can talk to and share his secret with... to be honest, the eel left me cold, I appreciate some natural symbolism every once in a while but I couldn't picture the eel as nothing more than a sort of touchstone he needed in order to raise above, it was his Wilson the volleyball, so to speak.
Gradually, and thankfully, the eel loses his importance as we witness Takuro's icy façade melting. All's quiet then until he meets the young and beautiful Keiko Hatori (Misa Shimizu) who looks like his wife and whom he accidentally saves from an attempt of suicide and as a way to show her everlasting certitude, she works for him and naturally, falls in love with him, and no matter how hard he tries to dodge her courtship and the boxed lunches she brings him every morning when he goes back to work, work ends up bringing them together. It is rather strange how everything goes fine for Takuro, he was a decent man first and became a decent man again after, the film has an almost cynical way to tell you that every decent man has the right to "loosen up" and transcend ethical limitations.
Fair enough, the director can encourage us to side for Takuro, but sometims, he asks too much from our compassion and the least he could do is make the character problematic for the others, if not for us. Keiko is an interesting character but there never seems to be any problem with her with Takuro's past, the guy's got quite a puzzling aura for a woman used to deal with creepy individuals. And while the harassing garbage-man reproaches him (and rightfully so) his lack of guilt and redemption, the man is depicted in such a despicable way that we can only side with Takuro by default. Then there's a whole subplot about pregnancy, money, loan sharks and a lunatic mother that feel contrived and prefabricated for a film that aims for contemplation. Now, to make a long story shot, it didn't take me much time to figure out the film's problem, it's not about feeling sympathy for Takuro.
I was mentioning "Secrets & Lies", the previous Golden Palm winner, what made the film so impactful is the final revelation and the ensuing emotionality. "The Eel" handles Takuro's past as a secret but one that we know with every detail, we're like one step ahead of everyone and we don't see Takuro as a mystery, we see him as a man trying to get back to normality and knowing his past ceases to be a point. Then why would Imamura make such a big fuss about that murder if it doesn't have any specific resonance after? I believe the murder should have been the revelation, Imamura should have kept an aura of mystery over Takuro and at some point make him reveal to Keiko that he murdered his wife, only words, and leave the bloody sequence as a climactic flashback.
I don't want to depreciate the film for technicality but its most powerful moment should have been kept for the ending. Let us interrogate ourselves about that man, let us wonder if he's worth our sympathy and then let's just surprise us. A film so quiet and contemplative needed a more satisfying climax than that lousy fight, a moment that seemed to belong to another movie.
There' no denial that "The Eel" ("Unagi" as would say Ross) doesn't need to aim for high-standards of movie-making to be an overall solid and punctually powerful drama but a misplaced climax derailed the character's arc and emotional flow and turned the whole film into something poetic and beautiful, but rather lackluster experience given the thrills it provided in the opening scene. Indeed, it should have ended with the beginning.
"The Eel" has a poetry of its own, a melancholic quest for an unreachable purity from a man named Takuro Yamashita (Koji Yakusho) who served eight years in jail after killing his wife because she cheated on him. Receiving mail letters denouncing her, he pretended to go fishing to surprise her that same night with her lover. Takuro is startled, the scene is graphic and it's not out of voyeurism. It is possible that Takuro saw a facet of his wife he didn't suspect, one that reflected his own incapability to make his woman satisfied, if not happy.
And so he takes the most phallic deadly object and what follows is a disturbing and gory knifing scene that literally paints the screen in blood in ways even Kurosawa didn't dare. Takuro stabs the lover once but on his wife, he does it so much I believe in the impotency theory. Not only it's mentioned later in the movie but there's a sense of relief after the murder: Takuro covers his wife's body, takes his bike and gives himself to the police. Eight years later, he's released. There's a weird feeling of convenient expediency all through his actions, as if Karma sided with Takuro.
Indeed, the question of guilt is never really raised, which validates the idea that Takuro felt like he was delivering justice and that he paid what he owed. It's all natural then that he tries to work again as a barber and gives a new meaning to his life. He meets new people, gets his regular clients and befriends a fisherman with which he enjoys hunting eel together. Speaking of that, there's that pet eel he took from jail, the only creature he can talk to and share his secret with... to be honest, the eel left me cold, I appreciate some natural symbolism every once in a while but I couldn't picture the eel as nothing more than a sort of touchstone he needed in order to raise above, it was his Wilson the volleyball, so to speak.
Gradually, and thankfully, the eel loses his importance as we witness Takuro's icy façade melting. All's quiet then until he meets the young and beautiful Keiko Hatori (Misa Shimizu) who looks like his wife and whom he accidentally saves from an attempt of suicide and as a way to show her everlasting certitude, she works for him and naturally, falls in love with him, and no matter how hard he tries to dodge her courtship and the boxed lunches she brings him every morning when he goes back to work, work ends up bringing them together. It is rather strange how everything goes fine for Takuro, he was a decent man first and became a decent man again after, the film has an almost cynical way to tell you that every decent man has the right to "loosen up" and transcend ethical limitations.
Fair enough, the director can encourage us to side for Takuro, but sometims, he asks too much from our compassion and the least he could do is make the character problematic for the others, if not for us. Keiko is an interesting character but there never seems to be any problem with her with Takuro's past, the guy's got quite a puzzling aura for a woman used to deal with creepy individuals. And while the harassing garbage-man reproaches him (and rightfully so) his lack of guilt and redemption, the man is depicted in such a despicable way that we can only side with Takuro by default. Then there's a whole subplot about pregnancy, money, loan sharks and a lunatic mother that feel contrived and prefabricated for a film that aims for contemplation. Now, to make a long story shot, it didn't take me much time to figure out the film's problem, it's not about feeling sympathy for Takuro.
I was mentioning "Secrets & Lies", the previous Golden Palm winner, what made the film so impactful is the final revelation and the ensuing emotionality. "The Eel" handles Takuro's past as a secret but one that we know with every detail, we're like one step ahead of everyone and we don't see Takuro as a mystery, we see him as a man trying to get back to normality and knowing his past ceases to be a point. Then why would Imamura make such a big fuss about that murder if it doesn't have any specific resonance after? I believe the murder should have been the revelation, Imamura should have kept an aura of mystery over Takuro and at some point make him reveal to Keiko that he murdered his wife, only words, and leave the bloody sequence as a climactic flashback.
I don't want to depreciate the film for technicality but its most powerful moment should have been kept for the ending. Let us interrogate ourselves about that man, let us wonder if he's worth our sympathy and then let's just surprise us. A film so quiet and contemplative needed a more satisfying climax than that lousy fight, a moment that seemed to belong to another movie.
There' no denial that "The Eel" ("Unagi" as would say Ross) doesn't need to aim for high-standards of movie-making to be an overall solid and punctually powerful drama but a misplaced climax derailed the character's arc and emotional flow and turned the whole film into something poetic and beautiful, but rather lackluster experience given the thrills it provided in the opening scene. Indeed, it should have ended with the beginning.