Onibaba

I am a lifer. I was an enthusiast throughout my childhood. I studied them in college. I even subjected myself to the machina of the Dream Factory during the mid 1990's in the hope of making them. Motion pictures have profoundly moved and shaped me. So, it was no small event when enthusiasm turned into cynicism a few years ago. The art form that gave me so much suddenly felt like a shallow, corporate shell of what I once loved. Sometimes I begin to wonder whether there are no longer inspiring surprises to be found. Though I have not seen every movie made, I have seen thousands of films- enough to believe that there is little out there to amaze me... then, something comes along that kicks my ass, rekindles my love of cinema and reminds me that no matter how long I live, there will always be surprises. This week, I sat down and watched the 1964, Japanese cinema classic, Onibaba.

Onibaba is one of the creepiest movies I've seen in years. Set during a civil war of medieval Japan, an old woman and her daughter-in-law live in a small hut amongst a sea of tall grass. They eke out a living by selling the armor and weapons of unsuspecting soldiers who unwittingly stumble into their grassland trap. With aid of halberds and a deep well, the women murder and salvage for millet and sake. The film is sparse on dialogue and instead fills the narrative with expressionistic cinematography and a minimalist sound. In an age of John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and Howard Shore it is a blessed release to watch a film that doesn't try to relentlessly steer me with orchestrated Muzak. The wind and clacking of the the long, grass stalks create an unnerving environment where death appears and disappears with startling swiftness.

What most struck a nerve with me was the primal quality of the storytelling- this is not Kurosawa's Japan. The characters are primal in their desires. Starvation, lust and violence drive the narrative from the start. The opening sequence of the film follows the women as they kill a pair of soldiers, strip their bodies, dump them into a hole, scarf a quick meal in their hut, then collapse on bamboo mats. The younger woman's lust for a man sends her racing through the tall grass at night into his arms, despite the terrifying possibility that a demon lives amongst the grass. All the characters are unsettling with their voracious, relentless appetites. A major part of the film's hook is that one never knows who to root- each character is fatally-flawed in more than a few, unpalatable ways. Onibaba reminded me that it is not spectacle that makes memorable movies- it is character. This film has it in spades.