Grunert-Image-01

by Andrea Grunert

Okamoto Kihachi (1) started his career as an assistant to several famous directors of Japanese cinema, including Makino Masahiro, Naruse Mikio and Honda Ishirō. He made his directorial debut in 1958 with All About Marriage (Kekkon no subete), a romantic comedy. But he very soon turned to other genres and in 1959, he made his first war film, the satire Desperado Outpost (Dokuritsu gurentai), followed two years later by the sequel Westward Desperado (Dokuritsu gurentai nishi-e). Okamoto also directed several crime genre films. His spy film The Age of Assassins (Satsujinkyō jidai, 1967) once again contains satirical elements as does his jidai geki film Kill! (Kiru, 1968). Jidai geki films are set in the Tokugawa period from 1603 to 1868, and Okamoto’s original approach in this film left an undeniable mark on the genre. Other jidai geki masterpieces that he directed undoubtedly include Sword of Doom (Dai-bosatsu tōge, 1966) and Samurai Assassin (Samurai), the latter being the focus of this article.
Produced by Tōhō Studios and Mifune Productions (2), the film stars Mifune Toshirō, who was already cast in a supporting role in All About Marriage. The film from 1958 marked the beginning of a long period of collaboration of the two men, who worked together on ten films. The script of Samurai Assassin was written by Hashimoto Shinobu, one of Kurosawa Akira’s usual collaborators, and is based on a novel by Gunji Jirōmasa.

The historical context
The action is set in February and early March 1860 in Edo (present-day Tokyo) and focuses on the attempt by a group of rebels to assassinate Ii Naosuke (Matsumoto Kōshirō VIII), the Great Elder, a high ranking official during the shogunate whose status could roughly be compared to that of a modern-day prime minister (3). The period depicted in the film is known as Bakumatsu (“end of the Bakufu”; the Bakufu denoting government by the shogun), a period of great turmoil sparked off by the arrival of American ships in Edo Bay in 1853. The threatening attitude of the Americans put an end to the isolationist policy that Japan had maintained since the 17th century. Bakumatsu ended in 1868 with the abolition of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial rule. Ii, the most powerful official of his time, was a supporter of the Tokugawa shogunate and favoured opening the country up to international trade. However, his policy encountered strong opposition from imperialist loyalists, mainly from those in the provinces Mito, Chōshū and Satsuma, to which Ii responded with violence by ordering the “Ansei Purge” (1858-1860), during which a large number of individuals suspected being disloyal to the Tokugawa shogunate were imprisoned, exiled or even executed. His merciless policy against his opponents made him a most hated figure.
The film’s plot culminates in the assassination of Ii by seventeen imperial loyalists from Mito and one from Satsuma at the Sakurada Gate, one of the entrances to Edo Castle, the shogun’s palace (today`s Imperial Palace) in Edo on 24th March 1860. In the film, Ii has only a few appearances and in one sequence he expresses his regret about the Ansei Purge, considering it too harsh. He is therefore reluctant to take action against the men from Mito who are suspected of planning an attempt on his life purely on the basis of suspicion. He is, moreover, arrogant enough to find it absurd that someone should try to kill him in broad daylight.
The film centres on the group of assassins plotting and scheming, starting with their first failed attempt to kill Ii. During a meeting at an inn, they discuss the reasons for this failure and the possibility that they were betrayed. While they consider who the traitor could be, the camera moves from one face to another until it settles on a figure sitting in the background. Camera movement and framing emphasize that this is the presumed culprit – the film’s main protagonist Niiro Tsuruchiyo (Mifune). While the opening credits run, Tsuruchiyo is shown unabashedly plucking a hair from his nose. In these very first shots of the protagonist, his attitude already differs from that of the other conspirators. He seems uninterested in their discussion and leans against a wall as if he is asleep. His unkempt appearance also distinguishes him clearly from the other members of the group.
Later, it is said that he is a ronin from Bishuu who lives in a shack and has the reputation of being a ruffian, stealing and killing and earning his living as a bodyguard and blackmailer. Numerous scenes show his penchant for violence and alcohol. In fact, Tsuruchiyo is a drunkard and an impetuous and short-tempered man, but he is also one of the two best swordsmen in the group of conspirators. It is because of his great skill with the sword that a man with such a bad reputation could become a member of the Mito group.

Portrait of an outcast
In Samurai Assassin, Mifune Toshirō again plays an outcast and a character guided by his emotions. Because Okiku (Aratama Michiyo), the woman who runs the inn where the meeting of the Mito samurai takes place, bears a striking resemblance to the woman he was once in love with, Tsuruchiyo stubbornly refuses to leave the place for days and becomes obsessed with Okiku. Dialogues and flashbacks reveal Tsuruchiyo’s origins and his decline. Born the illegitimate son of a high-ranking samurai and his concubine, he was adopted by a Doctor of Medicine, a man closely associated with samurai. Supported financially by the merchant Kisoya (Tōno Eijirō), a friend of Tsuruchiyo’s mother, he was given an excellent education as a young man and became the best student in a famous dōjō (a place of immersive learning, especially in the martial arts) in Bishuu. His unrequited love for Princess Kiku (also played by Aratama Michiyo) has turned him into an outcast. Rejected by the young woman’s father (Shimura Takashi) because of his low status, he lost all self-control and started drinking and quarrelling. Expelled from the dōjō, he became a ronin and the depraved individual he is portrayed as in the film. Haunted by the wish to discover the truth about his biological father, he seeks social recognition. His decision to join the conspirators from Mito is not based on ideology but on the hope that he will be rewarded following Ii’s death, and he dreams of becoming a samurai with a steady income.
Mifune’s performance is flawless as ever, his acting being in perfect accord with the portrayal of Tsuruchiyo as a brute, a man whose behaviour, in particular in the film’s final sequence, is close to madness. Despite the many scenes focusing on Tsuruchiyo’s outbursts, there are some moments in which he reveals a different and gentler side of his personality. When Tsuruchiyo plays with his friend Kurihara’s (Kobayashi Keijū) young son, he looks happy and relaxed. But the mention of his dead mother puts an end to this idyllic moment. Tsuruchiyo’s smile fades and his features darken into an expression of sadness.
Mifune’s energetic performance is an important contribution to the film in the way it deals with Tsuruchiyo’s inner torment. The loss of the love of his life and the desperate search for his biological father’s identity are the reasons for his decline and his subsequent struggle for dignity. He tells his friend Kurihara – who is not only an excellent swordman but also a renowned scholar – that his only aim is to live as a human being again. Unable to understand Kurihara’s remark that he has the same dream but extends this aim to other people, he simply says: “I don’t understand. All I know is that you are a good man.” This humble remark implies that Tsuruchiyo is not an intellectual like his friend, but it reveals that he is a caring and sympathetic human being.
However, he is the one who kills Kurihara, suspected by the Mito group’s leader Hoshino (Itō Yūnosuke) of being a traitor. Despite his doubts about Kurihara’s guilt, Tsuruchiyo agrees to the deed after being threatened with expulsion from the group. The prospect of being rewarded by being chosen for the murder of Ii is stronger than his friendship with Kurihara. When the identity of the group’s real traitor is revealed a little later, Tsuruchiyo is desperate, but for the cynical Hoshino, Kurihara’s death is merely collateral damage. In this sequence, which takes place at night in a dimly lit interior, Hoshino’s haughty expression and his pale face, stand out in the darkness, giving him a diabolical aura as the film’s embodiment of evil.
Tsuruchiyo, by contrast, is a character of contradictions. Called a “monster” by some, he is mainly a tormented soul and still capable of deep feelings. His counterpart on a symbolic level can be found in the Noh play Kurozuka (Black Mound), a play that Ii attends a performance of in the film. In this play, the female character who becomes a demon due to obsession wears the hannya mask of a vengeful spirit. However, this mask has a dual significance, the person who wears it being not only a demon but, like Tsuruchiyo, also grief-stricken and tormented, thereby displaying the complexity of the human being.

A cinematic style of contrasts and fragmentation
Samurai Assassin is a film about the end of an era – that of the shogunate – and about darkness pervading a man’s soul. The many nocturnal scenes and the magnificent use of black-and-white photography with its subtle interplay of light and shadow, strongly support these central themes. This is also true for the use of meteorological phenomena such as rain and snow. Many of the scenes take place in pouring rain, underlining the misery of the film’s protagonist as he staggers drunkenly through the muddy streets. The assassination of Ii takes place during a heavy fall of snow, the white blanket on the ground being not a symbol of innocence or purity but referring to death. Also significant is the fact that Ii’s is assassinated on Peach Observance Day, or Girls’ Day/Doll’s Day (hinamatsuri), a festival with its religious origins in Shintoism on which the health and happiness of girls and young women are celebrated (4). On this day, dolls representing the emperor and empress and their entourage dressed in court costumes of the Heian period (784-1185) are put on display. In the film, Okiku has brought such dolls to Tsuruchiyo’s shack and arranged them according to the custom of hinamatsuri. The contrast between the symbols of youth, joy and innocence and Tsuruchiyo’s depravation, represented in this sequence by his dilapidated hut, revealsonce again the complexity of his personality and the tragedy of his life. Talking about his dream of social ascendency. Tsuruchiyo’s smiling face has something childlike, another reminder that this ruthless killer is nevertheless a human being. However, Okiku’s attempt to save Tsuruchiyo from himself fails. Returning to the shack the next morning, she finds on the dirty floor only the dead bodies of the ten killers that Hoshino has ordered Tsuruchiyo to liquidate and also the dolls. Later, the assassination of Ii takes place off-screen, beheaded by Tsuruchiyo, and the film shows the head of the emperor-doll earlier seen as a bridegroom falling down as if it has been cut off – an aesthetic device that also suggests the end of all happiness for Tsuruchiyo and Okiku.
As in other films directed by Okamoto, extravagant framing abounds, such as series of close-ups of faces or objects and an insistence on body parts. In the duel scene between Tsuruchiyo and Kurihara at their first meeting, the camera shot remains on the feet of the two opponents. Only at the moment when the two swords clash are Tsuruchiyo’s face and upper body framed. Very often in this scene, a face, a part of a body or an object are foregrounded. Another frequent device is the use of a frame within a frame, for example when the bamboo screens create a frame in one of the shots. Okamoto employs the technique of depth of field in a particularly ingenious manner, using bodies or parts of bodies as framing devices for a human figure in the background. Satō Masaru’s film score makes use of drums and flutes borrowed from Noh theatre to produce hammering or plaintive but always insistent sounds that are sources of strong tension.
Music, lighting, framing and sudden camera movements destroy any sense of harmony and therefore contribute to a feeling of insecurity and disorientation. The action in the film culminates in the attack on Ii and his retinue, which is filmed in virtuoso fashion and leads to scenes of pure carnage in which the conspirators kill the samurai and servants accompanying Ii and themselves die in the bloodbath. Writhing bodies, severed limbs and screams of the dying contribute gruesome effects to the sequence.

The individual in history
A picture of the assassination of Ii at the Sakurada Gate shows a samurai running away rejoicing with a severed head impaled on his sword (5). In the film, Tsuruchiyo is shown in a similar manner, running away with Ii’s severed head on his sword and shouting in triumph. In the film’s final shot, Tsuruchiyo is an ever-shrinking figure in the falling snow the individual depicted as meaningless in the expanse of the snow-covered square at the Sakurada Gate.
Tsuruchiyo may be a violent man who has been led astray by circumstances, but in the group of Mito revolutionaries, he is a prisoner in a web of violence and intrigue. After being told Tsuruchiyo’s tragic life story, Okiku falls in love with him. Both she and Kisoya try to help him, and even Ii, who is, as it turns out, Tsuruchiyo’s father, is concerned about his unknown son, having asked one of his councillors three times about his whereabouts. However, when Kisoya finally decides to tell Tsuruchiyo who his father is, it is already too late.
Once again, Mifune plays an outstanding swordsman, although not a heroic figure but the victim of manipulation whose longing for honour and social recognition turns out to be an illusion. Tsuruchiyo is unaware of his self-destructive behaviour and of the collapse of a whole system, which is the consequence of Ii’s murder. Facing death, Ii makes a prophecy about Japan’s future, saying that his death means that Japan holds no future for the samurai. And indeed, the abolition of the samurai class came only a few years after Ii’s assassination (6).
However, the conventions of the rigid class system of the Tokugawa period with the samurai as the highest caste have plunged Tsuruchiyo into misfortune. The concept of honour that is associated with the samurai is absent in Okamoto’s film. And as in Kobayashi Masaki’s Harakiri (Seppuku, 1962), Okamoto’s view on the place of the individual in a corrupt society as well as in history is utterly pessimistic, with the individual just a small cog in the huge machinery of history. The names of Kurihara and the real traitor have been erased from the clan’s records, and Tsuruchiyo’s name was erased by Hoshino the night before Ii’s assassination, leaving no trace of the assassin in the history of the Mito clan and, by extension, in Japanese history. Tsuruchiyo’s triumph is a mere illusion, imbuing the end of the film with a feeling of overwhelming sadness, just as the cold of the wintry weather is pervasive on the screen and even palpable for the viewer.

Notes
(1) Names are written according to Japanese conventions: the family name before the given name.
(2) Actor Mifune Toshirō founded his production company in 1962.
(3) Ii Naosuke (1815-1860) presided over the Council of Elders from 1858 until his death in 1860.
(4) After the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, the date of hinamatsuri was fixed on 3rd March. However, before that time, it was on the third day of the third month. The use of different calendars explains the discrepancy between the day on which

hinamatsuri is celebrated today and the day of Ii’s assassination, given as 24th March in the Gregorian calendar.
(5) I refer here to a silk painting dating from 1860 and the work of an unknown artist.
(6) The feudal system and the privileges of the samurai class were officially abolished in 1871.

chaalchira 1

1.Something like a review

The good thing is – I can still fall for a film, in this case with this strange beautiful beast called Chaalchitra Ekhon. But as I am going old it becomes more and more difficult to translate all this emotions, all this enthusiasm into a coherent prose. The film is very much at the same time. It is a chapter from the biography of one of the most important Bengali film directors Mrinal (called in this film Kunal) Sen, who was a mentor for Anjan Dutt. But it is also a film about the first encounter of these two man. Even though the time is not explicit mentioned, it is 1980 when Sen casts the young Anjan (called in this film Ranjan) for his film Chaalchitra (Kaleidoscope). In this sense it is Dutt´s second autobiographic film which begins where Dutta Vs Dutta ends. But it is as well a film about Kolkata.

We see them while shooting the film and often in long discussions. Beside discuusions about their different ideologies and the work on the film, there are moments when they talk more privately, about their families or for example ho Sen became a filmmaker. These moment are hints that the relationship between the two men goes beyond a relationship between mentor and protege and it seemed to be something like these simple mundane but nevertheless poetic moments one can find in the films by Ozu and Ford. Like I mentioned the other protagonist is the city itself.

Anjan Dutt played in his own films often very difficult, alienated and failed fathers or father-like characters. In this film he plays Kunal (Mrinal) Sen another father-like figure but exactly the positive opposite of the father in Dutta Vs Dutta (also played by himself, an aspect I will return later to. Sawon Chakraborty plays the young Dutt. Both performances moved me in different ways. Dutt´s portrait of Sen seems to happen completely out of his memory in his mentor without mimicking and without hyperbolic make-up. Sawon Chakraborty seems to me very credible as the lanky young man. There is for example the funny habit of Sen to collect match boxes. When I saw this film for the first time I enjoyed the affectionate humor. At the first sight I did not feel the melancholy like in his Dutta Vs Dutta or Aami Ashbo Phirey. But when I saw it for the second time, I realized that the songs had as well subtitles (only one of them is sung in English) which changed my mood and changed my perception of this film.

There are two different alienation effects in this film. The one, often tangible in the shooting programme (which take places on non-designed real streets, in cars , trams and lanes and recorded with handheld cameras). Sometimes freeze frame shots interrupt the flow and suspend for a moment the cinematic illusion of movement, the film is for seconds reset to its primordial state, the photograph. This alienation effect reminds me in some films by Mrinal Sen. But since I watched the film again, I discovered a second and very different alienation effect which I connect rather with Anjan Dutt. The wonderful songs by Anjan and Neel Dutt might be the most popular elements in all films by Anjan Dutt. But the songs were always interwoven with care and very thoughtful in the artificial into the architecture of his films, as coordinates for orientation in Dutta Vs Dutta, more experimental as another level of perception in Aami Ashbo Phirey or Finally Bhalobasha. The lyrics from the songs used in Chaalchitra Ekhon suggest a retrospective perspective, from another time rather our present than the passed time of the film´s narration. During this songs, the film sometimes digresses from the narration into lanes, markets or river banks etc. The narrative flow is interrupted and suspended for a moment. But sometimes they seem as well here the pendant to Anjan Dutt´s voice over narration in Dutta Vs. Dutta. While watching the film again, I laughed a bit less and felt a bit more the melancholic under current. The film becomes more a memory of a time and especially of a person who is already missed. It is rather a personal, poetic epitaph. And those we miss, we sometimes remember with a smile.

There is a great moment which gives an image about the visual imbedding in Kolkata´s urban landscape. Ranjan Dutt and Kunal Sen are discussing on Sen´s balcony. Later we see them on the balcony from the streets in a long shot. The two characters appear now a living part of the city´s architecture. That is almost an Edward Hopper-moment.

  1. My experience with this film

“I celebrate myself and sing myself

And what I assume you shall assume

For every atom belonging to me

as good as it belongs to you.”

(Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, published in Leaves of Grass))

While writing my review on this film, I came across of a lot of reactions, most of them share my enthusiasm, few of them are more reluctant reviews. Especially the more reluctant with which I can not agree made me thinking about a general problem of film criticism, the judgmental and often smart-alecky perspective. What is the right language one uses when one loves a film with skin, hair and bones. It is relatively easy for me to articulate from the safe place of a reviewer why Chaalchitra Ekhon is a great film but I still think there is more and I am often too shy to articulate when films goes much deeper than for example satisfying the vain connoisseur in me. The kind this film evokes intense emotions and the kind the film haunts me uncalled for days, sometimes weeks, asks for a more personal perspective. Through the films by Ritwik Ghatak and Terrence Malick (from up to 2011), I got a strange awareness of vulnerability which stands often side by side with what we call great art. I could mention other examples. I know, neither Ghatak, Malick or Dutt do not need my praise or the praise of anyone. Moments in films which let me lose very easily the control over my emotions and which are burnt in my memory are the ending of Dutta Vs Dutta and (I come to that later), Chaalchitra Ekhon, many moments from Malick´s autobiographic inspired The Tree of Life or end of Ghatak´s Subarnarekha. The faces who hunt me have nothing designed anymore (they seem often like modern version of Dreyer´s presentation of human faces in La Passion de Jeanne d´Arc) the emotions these moments evoke hit me with their total nakedness, means vulnerability. Is this great cinematic art? I say damn this question! I experienced these moments as what I want to call cinematic singularities, strong moments of truthfulness in which the critic or the connoisseur in me is suspended for moments. Usually my cinephilia works like that: I watch, some moments evoke emotions in me or memories and I entrust the film with my innermost feeling like in a confesstional box or during a therapy session. But there are also experiences with films where this discreet intermediate area is more variable or even instable. The faces, for example of Anjan Dutt, Sawon Chakrabory, Brad Pitt, jessica Chastain or Madhabi Mukherjee are exposed, last but not least through the non-human but precise and often merciless non-human perspective of the camera. Is the exhaustion we see in these faces the performed exhaustion or do they include signs of exhaustion of the performers themselves or probably both together?

Like I suggested how the songs are integrated in Chaalchitra Ekhon, make this film a kind of very personal obituary on Mrinal Sen. The scene when the young Ranjan hugs Kunal/Mrinal Sen clumsy and cries in his arms is for me one of these strong moments where the awareness of just watching a film disappears for a moment. This images goes far beyond a mark of respect of a protege towards his mentor. It is a gesture of love of a young man for aan elder man he wished to have as a father and who finally enables him to find his own path. Like a phantom image, While seeing this moment I remember the end of Dutta Vs Dutta like a phantom image. Before this scene the voice over of Anjan Dutt resumes that no one from the family he was born in will ever see his films. This moment suspends again the artificial spacetime continuum of the film for a moment. Later we see this other “hug-scene”. Here, Anjan Dutt plays his own father. Now he has lost everything. He is a very sick man, hardly able to move and unable to speak. The relationship the son (Ronno/Anjan) had with his father was difficult, the young man suffered a lot. Now, he can not do anything but forgive this godforsaken lost soul with a last hug, the last gesture of love he can offer.

Shall I praise this work Chaalchitra Ekhon forged with heat of life and art experiences or shal I praise the heat which made such films possible at all? Often , my most intense experiences with a film force me to admit that I don´t know nothing anymore at all. There is no question that personal filmmaking today is a big challenge. Despite the amount of work which is necessary, the sweat and the stress, Chaalchitra Ekhon looks like radical Caméra Stylo, written down and filmed like felt and thought, honest and authentic to the bones..

Rüdiger Tomczak

chaalchitra 2

NC24_cinema_Penalty Loop
(Copyright: „Penalty Loop“ Film Partners)

by Andrea Grunert

The Town of Headcounts (Ninzū no machi, Japan, 2020), Araki Shinji’s (1) directorial debut is a sombre portrait of Japan at an unspecified time in the future. The film is the dystopian tale of a society that manipulates its citizens and tries to eliminate the undesirable such as the poor and the criminals. If space is an important factor in this first film, the focus in Penalty Loop, Araki’s second film, is on time (2). Yui (Yamashita Riō), the girlfriend of the film’s main protagonist Jun (Wakaba Ryūya), has been murdered. The young man is devastated and takes the law into his own hands, killing her murderer, Mizoguchi (Iseya Yūsuke), who works as a maintenance man at the same factory as Jun. When Jun wakes up, the day after having had his revenge, it is still June 6th – the same as the day before – and his victim is still alive. Jun is caught in a spiralling loop of violence during which he kills Mizoguchi again and again.
Araki varies not only the situations in which the killing takes place, but he also shifts from reality to virtual reality. What makes his film original and particularly appealing is its visual design. Jun and Mizoguchi work at a hydroponic plant factory, a highly automatized place and almost devoid of human presence. Jun, clothed from head to toe in a protective suit, is almost unrecognizable as a human figure. The huge room in which vegetables are grown and where his task is to set in motion a conveyor belt with heads of lettuce looks sterile. Just as in his previous film with its futuristic-looking setting, Araki does not need special effects to create an eerie feeling of unfamiliarity. In addition, the motif of the time loop is a perfect pattern to display a great variety of genre conventions borrowed from fantasy, horror, and crime films.
The hydroponic factory is certainly a significant feature of Araki’s film, but the plot focuses on the two main characters, Jun and his antagonist Mizoguchi, depicting not only the conflict between the two men – reminiscent of two duellists – but also the development of the relationship between them and their personalities. Jun commits his first murder in a frenzy. He first spikes Mizoguchi’s coffee, leaving him writhing with severe stomach cramp. When Jun later kills him, Mizoguchi is no longer able to defend himself and Jun stabs his victim brutally several times, venting his fury at the death of his girlfriend.
When Jun kills Mizoguchi the second time, Mizoguchi sees his assailant’s face, and from then on starts adopting strategies to avoid being killed. The following day, he does not drink the poisoned coffee but offers it to a female employee at the factory and watches almost with glee as the woman writhes in pain. To begin with, there is no dialogue between Jun and his opponent, but language soon becomes an indication of rapprochement as human beings. Jun’s desire for revenge moderates and Mizoguchi, realizing that he is going to die, reacts with sadness.
Despite its emphasis on death and violence, Penalty Loop is not lacking in humour, for example when Jun pushes a trolley on which is Mizoguchi’s dead body, wrapped in a plastic bag and kept in an upright position through the aisles of the factory, a group of employees watching in amazement. In another scene, Jun complains to his victim: “I am going to dump your body. You are so heavy”, to which Mizoguchi replies laconically “I am sorry.” However Mizoguchi also complains about being in constant pain as it hurts being so frequently stabbed or shot.
Araki skilfully mixes tragedy and humour, just as he convincingly combines the social and moral levels. The Town of Headcounts is full of references to present-day Japanese society, and in Penalty Loop too the plot is firmly anchored in reality. The film also has a strong psychological dimension. At the beginning it is reported that the police have arrested Yui’s murderer. That does not seem to be enough for Jun and he wants to see the perpetrator dead. The death penalty is still carried out in Japan but mainly for what are considered aggravated murders. However, for Jun, the law does not seem to be enough. He is depicted as someone who gives unbridled rein to his anger and helplessness over Yui’s death. These are certainly feelings that many viewers could share from their own experience – although probably from other less dramatic scenarios. The death penalty is hinted at in the scene in which Jun and Mizoguchi go bowling. In this scene two kinds of opponents are referred to, namely “executioners” and “death row inmates”. However, it is not the death penalty that is the focus of Araki’s film but how to come to terms with the violent death of a loved one and how to deal with one’s grief.
Jun is depicted as an attentive and caring person, revealed in one early sequence in which he sets a ladybird free. But the brutal death of his girlfriend changes him and the gentle Jun becomes an unscrupulous avenger who plans Mizoguchi’s death carefully and does not kill in the heat of the moment. The film only hints at how such a friendly and ordinary man can become a killer. However, the development of Jun’s personality does not end there, and he becomes himself a prisoner of the spiralling loop of violence that he has triggered. The constant killing sobers him up, and a new process of realization sets in, Jun realizing more and more clearly that revenge will change nothing. Nevertheless, he cannot stop killing.
This awakening of a conscience also means that he can for the first time really come to terms with the past, revealed in flashbacks showing him with his girlfriend. In this way, Araki indicates just how much grief is a slow process. Jun’s girlfriend is presented as a mysterious young woman whom he first met when she was burning documents on a beach. Even when Mizoguchi – who reveals that he is a contract killer – talks to Jun about the murder, much about Yui remains in the dark. For Jun, the brutal loss of his girlfriend also means that he does not get any answers – neither about Yui’s behaviour nor about her true feelings. These many unanswered questions torment him as they do many other bereaved.
The character of Mizoguchi does not perhaps have much depth, but is far more than a mere cliché. Araki, who is also the screenwriter of his film, could easily have portrayed Mizoguchi as an embodiment of evil. Instead, he emerges as a broken figure, which is emphasized by Iseya Yūsuke’s performance, as nuanced and imaginative as ever (3). His acting gives the character profile. Intrigued by Jun who is drawing a picture of a mighty tree close to the factory, he finally tries to draw the tree himself. The camera remains on Mizoguchi for a long time while he concentrates deeply on what is for him an unusual task but enjoys this peaceful moment, a smile lighting up his face. The melancholy but also the joy that he experiences suggest that he too is changing. Artistic creativity is set in contrast to violence and death. By portraying Mizoguchi as a human being rather than a cliché, Araki enriches the film’s moral dimension and critically questions revenge.
In addition to ethical reflections, the questioning of the revenge motif and implicitly of the death penalty, i.e. violence sanctioned by the state, Penalty Loop has a strong spiritual dimension, an aspect mentioned by Araki Shinji in the interview I conducted with him (4). Nature plays a major role in the film’s technological world, which is both realistic and at the same time detached from reality. The factory looks futuristic but is real – Penalty Loop was shot in a hydroponic plant in Fukushima Prefecture. In the factory, nature is domesticized and completely under human control. It is presented as a modern landscape and a human interpretation of nature. But there are also plants in Jun’s apartment and frequent shots of the huge tree that the two protagonists draw. While Mizoguchi is drawing his picture, the wind blows through the tree’s foliage, evoking the idea of a ghostly presence. The same suggestion of a spiritual presence is created by the image of an isolated spot in a bamboo grove, recalling similar images from numerous jidai geki. Nature is central to Shintoism, which holds that restless spirits who have been torn from life unnaturally inhabit trees and howl their suffering to the winds (5). Making use of these conventions, Araki succeeds very convincingly in externalizing inner feelings via pure visual imagination.
Flower symbolism is repeatedly evoked by the radio commentator Jun listens to every morning. According to the voice on the radio, the iris, the flower of the day – i.e. June 6th – is a symbol of hope. However, the yellow iris has a negative connotation, being a symbol of revenge, and thus this symbol combines both the film’s revenge motif and its yearning for hope.
There is no image of a yellow iris in the film, but Jun, the avenger, drives a yellow car. Colours are very important in The Town of Headcounts, and in Penalty Loop too, Araki giving a great deal of emphasis to colours. The film’s main colour is green – the rich green of the salads and vegetables in the hydroponic factory and that of the leaves on the huge tree on the factory’s premises, the green of the bamboo grove and of the plants in Jun’s apartment. This lively colour establishes a significant contrast to the theme of murder and violence. There is also the blue of the water in the sequence in which Jun and Mizoguchi are rowing on a lake. Filmed from bird’s eye view, the bluish-turquoise surface of the water creates an almost idyllic image. This brief moment contrasts with the nocturnal images in which water is linked with death – Yui is murdered near a lake; Jun apparently dumps Mizoguchi’s dead body in the same lake. Even the scene with the two men in the boat ends with a death when Jun shoots Mizoguchi dead. Araki’s use of water as a motif in the film is a reminder that this element is in many cultures strongly associated with both life and death and expresses the very idea of rebirth.
Araki privileges image, music and sound over dialogue. Emphasis is put on the actors and how they communicate using their eyes and their facial and body expressions. Very often, Araki is content to offer allusions. In Penalty Loop, the viewer does not know any more than the characters do, but is it necessary always to explain everything? Making clever use of the time loop narrative, Araki has created a film full of unexpected turns. Despite its violent theme, Penalty Loop is highly entertaining, and the spellbinding combination of drama and comedy leaves enough space for deeper reflection on death, loss and grief. Moreover, Araki succeeds marvellously in combining a great variety of narrative and visual elements without destroying the film’s internal coherence.
Notes
(1) Names are written according to Japanese conventions: the family name before the given name.
(2) It should be noted that the time loop motif figures in two other recent Japanese films: Takebayashi Ryō’s Mondays: See You “This” Week! (Mondays: Kono tainurūpu, jōshi ni kidzuka senai to owaranai, 2022) and Yamaguchi Junta’s River: The Timeloop Hotel (Riba; nagarenaide yo, 2023). The first of these films deals with Japanese white-collar workers, a young salaryman being caught in a time loop. In the second, the characters are caught in a two-minute time loop at an inn in the countryside. Penalty Loop is however very different from these two films, the time-loop factor being the only common element.
(3) See Araki Shinji on working with the actors in the interview that I conducted with him during the Nippon Connection Film Festival in Frankfurt on May 30th, 2024.

(4) ibid.

(5) Links between nature and the spiritual world are also features of Buddhism and other religions.