This powerful film captures the reality of how evil can descend unexpectedly, to violate and destroy.
It takes place during the same terrible period in 14th-century Japan as director Kaneto Shindo's "Onibaba," an era when local peasants were forced into military service, leaving their dependents to adjust or die.
I can think of few films that open as dramatically as "Kuroneko." It's hard to say which is more striking -- the horror of the two female protagonists' situation or the painterliness of the scenes. Shindo's capture of the moment when predator and prey meet is cinematic perfection.
The movie's first half proceeds well. Women everywhere will cheer to see the two victims' spirits easily overpower bragging tough guys -- "We samurai can take whatever we want -- laid low by saki and sex. ("Please come to my abode.")
However, the film stumbles badly in its second half. One does feel for Gintoki, the warrior sent to kill a monster that is feasting on the necks of bawdy fighters. He finds himself dueling the souls of his wife, Shige, and mother. The young couple's lovemaking scenes are convincing, even as one wonders whether Gintoki will survive them. (How intriguing that Shige's soul values these embraces more than eternal life itself!)
However, the subsequent jostling between Gintoki and his mother's spirit makes no sense and ends inscrutably. Sure, his image in the snow is another stunner, an example of this movie's exceptional cinematography. But it defies belief, even within a supernatural context. One doesn't buy that a mother would kill her son. (She got her cat's arm back, and that's all she wanted, right?)
Indeed, the cat theme here seems dilatory and unnecessary. The reality of man's potential for cruelty supplies all the horror that is necessary.
This film is partly about persistence in the face of formidable threats. "I couldn't allow myself to die," Gintoki recalls about a struggle in a sea of reeds. "I didn't want to die there in the mud, so I summoned my courage."
The stunning camerawork here seems to presage forest scenes in similarly compelling works of world cinema to follow. Eerie tramping through the bamboo grove conjures images of Dario Argenti's "Suspiria," of 1977, and the title character's fateful woods traipse in Fassbinder's "Veronika Voss" (1982).
It takes place during the same terrible period in 14th-century Japan as director Kaneto Shindo's "Onibaba," an era when local peasants were forced into military service, leaving their dependents to adjust or die.
I can think of few films that open as dramatically as "Kuroneko." It's hard to say which is more striking -- the horror of the two female protagonists' situation or the painterliness of the scenes. Shindo's capture of the moment when predator and prey meet is cinematic perfection.
The movie's first half proceeds well. Women everywhere will cheer to see the two victims' spirits easily overpower bragging tough guys -- "We samurai can take whatever we want -- laid low by saki and sex. ("Please come to my abode.")
However, the film stumbles badly in its second half. One does feel for Gintoki, the warrior sent to kill a monster that is feasting on the necks of bawdy fighters. He finds himself dueling the souls of his wife, Shige, and mother. The young couple's lovemaking scenes are convincing, even as one wonders whether Gintoki will survive them. (How intriguing that Shige's soul values these embraces more than eternal life itself!)
However, the subsequent jostling between Gintoki and his mother's spirit makes no sense and ends inscrutably. Sure, his image in the snow is another stunner, an example of this movie's exceptional cinematography. But it defies belief, even within a supernatural context. One doesn't buy that a mother would kill her son. (She got her cat's arm back, and that's all she wanted, right?)
Indeed, the cat theme here seems dilatory and unnecessary. The reality of man's potential for cruelty supplies all the horror that is necessary.
This film is partly about persistence in the face of formidable threats. "I couldn't allow myself to die," Gintoki recalls about a struggle in a sea of reeds. "I didn't want to die there in the mud, so I summoned my courage."
The stunning camerawork here seems to presage forest scenes in similarly compelling works of world cinema to follow. Eerie tramping through the bamboo grove conjures images of Dario Argenti's "Suspiria," of 1977, and the title character's fateful woods traipse in Fassbinder's "Veronika Voss" (1982).