Category: Masterpiece

Stanley Kubrick | 2hr 39min

The mysterious, erotic cult that Dr. Bill Hartford infiltrates one night after a bitter argument with his wife Alice may be deeply sensual, but it can’t exactly be described as intimate. Anonymity is highly valued here, concealing the faces of its members with impassive masks even as they bare their naked bodies. Orgies are performed with ritualistic solemnity upon fine furniture, while other guests quietly watch from the sidelines of this manor’s lavish, Baroque interiors. Within the main hall too, their red-cloaked leader conducts a ceremonial prayer, chanting a deep, guttural hymn and swinging a thurible around his circle of prostrating followers. Whatever this is, Bill certainly finds it more exciting than his monogamous marriage to Alice, though playing in the realm of dreams is a dangerous game when reality inevitably beckons from the other side.

Having long been fascinated by cinema’s potential to unlock humanity’s repressed desires, Stanley Kubrick’s interrogation of matrimony and temptation finally sees him aim his camera towards the act of sex itself. It may be one of the most common human activities alongside eating and sleeping, but it is perhaps the only one to also be considered taboo, never to be spoken about in polite company. In essence, it is a secret club that we know everyone is part of, yet which also demands us to remain silent on the personal matter of our fantasies, habits, and history. As we witness when Bill is caught out and forced to remove his mask, the threat of being exposed does not simply incite shame and humiliation. It is an existential threat to our very being.

Fortunately, there is a woman at this party who is oddly protective of Bill, offering to take his punishment when he is put on trial in front of the entire cult. He is “redeemed,” and therefore allowed to leave with nothing but a stern warning to disregard what he has witnessed – though the urge to probe deeper into this underworld isn’t so easily ignored. How can he return to his ordinary life and marriage after glimpsing such a thrilling, earth-shattering secret?

Of course, this is not the only function Bill attends in Eyes Wide Shut. Being one of cinema’s greatest formalists, Kubrick foreshadows the cult’s covert gathering with a Christmas party in the film’s first act. Besides the wealthy host Victor Ziegler and old friend Nick Nightingale providing entertainment on keys, Bill and Alice do not know any other guests – an awkward situation that returns at the cult’s mansion where Ziegler and Nick are again the only acquaintances present in a crowd of strangers. If the masquerade is where identities are concealed and desires are freely expressed, then this soirée sees its guests put on courteous facades for the sake of social convention, while infidelity quietly simmers in flirtatious passes. That is, until Ziegler urgently summons Bill upstairs to save his mistress Mandy from an overdose, suddenly shining a harsh light on his private affairs.

It is clearly a thin layer of decorum separating these characters’ private and public personas, even behind the closed doors of their most intimate relationships. That is where Bill’s psychosexual journey starts in Eyes Wide Shut after all, as the day after Ziegler’s party, he and Alice jealously confront each other about the strangers they flirted with. The only reason men would ever speak to women like her is to sleep with them, he asserts, while the opposite sex is simply programmed differently. This is the belief which his faith in their marriage rests upon, and so when she confesses to a fantasy that she had about another man, his fragile world is shaken.

The verbal sparring between Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman here displays incredibly fierce performances from both actors, drawing from the well of natural chemistry they shared in their real-life marriage before its breakup. While the rest of Alice’s story in Eyes Wide Shut is largely confined to their apartment, jittery, monochrome hallucinations of her making love to other men continue to haunt Bill on his night-time wanderings, as he smoothly glides across rear-projected backdrops of New York’s streets.

Kubrick’s reappropriation of what used to be a classical Hollywood technique is carried through with avant-garde flair here, effectively lifting Cruise out his immediate environment and submerging him in a dreamlike state. The ambient, practical lighting that is carried through the film as a whole also serves to shape his ethereal world with vibrant beauty, constantly underscoring the holiday setting with sparkling Christmas trees, golden fairy lights, and decorated shop windows. When Bill ventures into a dim, moody jazz club, its array of coloured bulbs become bleary stars in the background of shots, while cool, blue washes in his apartment contrast its festive warmth with melancholic innocence.

Eyes Wide Shut does not evoke this cultural imagery merely for its striking aesthetic though. Like the cult’s devout worship of sex, Christmas represents the intersection of the sacred and profane. It is historically a Christian celebration, yet its pagan roots stretch even further back, while in modern-day society its spiritual significance has been entirely stripped away. Religious iconography is scarce to be found here, as Kubrick instead recognises it as an annual orgy of consumerism, encouraging us to gorge ourselves on the world’s temptations. As the final scene in the toy shop demonstrates, these may merely manifest as whimsical, material goods for children, though adults are far more likely to pursue more carnal exploits as an escape from loneliness that this time of year often brings.

For us too, the atmosphere that Kubrick builds is deeply intoxicating, lulling us into a trance strung together by impressionistic long dissolves and a minimalist piano motif alternating between two eerie notes. His camera is fully engaged with the movement of bodies, twirling around Alice’s amorous dance with an older Hungarian man at Ziegler’s party, and later slowing down into a steady, prying zoom as she and Bill embrace in the mirror. Moments like these often break up the cold sterility that is present in Kubrick’s detached wide shots, and thus we often find ourselves alternating between perspectives of the human body as either vessels of profound emotion, or merely an anatomical collection of organs acting on animal instinct.

There is no need to settle on one interpretation over the other here – Kubrick recognises that it is merely a matter of subjective versus objective perceptions, and it is frequently impossible to tell the difference. Whether he is being seduced by his patients’ daughters or going home with a prostitute, Bill is teased with sexual advances everywhere he goes, though each time he is incidentally pulled away by some other engagement. If this is a dream, then perhaps it is his subconscious mind waking him back up, pushing him back to his duties as a faithful husband and respectable doctor who must maintain a clinical relationship with the human body. He walks a very narrow line, but the fact that he never entirely throws himself into temptation even saves his life on at least one occasion, as we learn when the prostitute’s HIV diagnosis comes to light.

More ambiguously, the treatment that Bill administered to Mandy may have also incidentally been the reason he was allowed to leave the cult’s manor unharmed, as he eventually deduces the identity of his masked saviour and receives confirmation from a man who was present – Ziegler. With that said, his secret club did not actually play any role in killing her, the cultist claims. It was all a ruse to scare Bill off, and the fatal overdose being reported in the news is merely incidental.

Whether or not Ziegler is telling the truth, it is enough motivation for Bill to abandon his investigation completely. Whatever personal issues may be present in his marriage to Alice, the risk of divorce, an STD, or even death is simply too significant to be treated with such recklessness. At the same time though, can we truly appreciate what we have in front of us if we don’t grapple with the darkness that lies on the other side?

“Maybe I think we should be grateful,” Alice ponders in the final minutes of Eyes Wide Shut. “Grateful that we’ve managed to survive through all of our adventures, whether they were real or only a dream.” After all, dreams do not belong to distant, far-flung worlds. They are closely intertwined with the actions and decisions we make every day, guiding us towards tangible futures born from primal fantasies. By carefully traversing that indistinct realm which dissipates each morning upon being touched by sunlight, Kubrick delicately reveals those depraved, shadowy figures that live inside us all, and the invisible power they hold over our minds, civilisations, and humanity.

Eyes Wide Shut is currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV and YouTube.

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 43min

Marriage within the Kohayagawa family takes on multiple meanings throughout The End of Summer, always dependent on the individual in question. For younger daughter Noriko it is an aspiration hindered by her sweetheart Teramoto’s decision to move away for work, while her elder sister Fumiko performs her duty loyally, raising a son with her husband Hisao. The pressure for their widowed sister-in-law Akiko to remarry is also quietly mounting, even as she quietly resists with the sincere acknowledgement that her youth is long gone – not that patriarch Manbei sees this as an issue when he controversially tries to reconnect with his old mistress. A widower of his age should not be considering the prospect of marriage, his family proclaims, lest he should embarrass them all.

As is the case in most Yasujirō Ozu films, Japanese tradition is at the forefront here, merging The End of Summer’s rigorous form, style, and content into a gentle meditation on those longstanding cultural values that have ensured stability across generations. Where his penultimate film sets itself apart is in the astounding elegance of the execution, even by his own standards. In terms of pure visual storytelling, this competes with only a handful of his greatest works, while pushing his geometrically precise style forward through rejuvenating colour photography.

Ozu’s layering of frames through corridors and doorways remains one of his most potent visual devices here, often containing his characters within the spaces of work, leisure, and domestic duty which define their day-to-day routines. There is often an extraordinary graphic harmony between people and their surrounding décor, symmetrically dividing a table at one of Noriko’s work lunches by gender, while running a pattern of brightly coloured bottles beneath them parallel to their staging.

The End of Summer’s mise-en-scène also transcends conventional blocking choices, often suggesting the presence of specific characters despite their physical absence. When we transition into a scene with Akiko at an art gallery for instance, Ozu gently delivers a montage of floral paintings in an art gallery, while on a broader level he represents the entire Kohayagawa family through the brown, earthy tones that encompass them. Within their home, dark wooden flooring, furniture, and panelling are the dominant aesthetic, complementing their light bamboo drapes and striking an extraordinary contrast against their exquisitely patterned wallpaper and textiles.

As for Manbei himself, his personality and power are most strongly signified in the family sake brewery, often seen with barrels leaning obliquely against its wall in Ozu’s pillow shots. Their contents are the foundation of his small business, though in this modern era its future is looking frighteningly uncertain, as the need to merge into a larger corporation seems more inevitable with each passing week.

When Manbei suffers a heart attack, these shots consequently draw a parallel between the health of his body and his company. As Noriko rushes to call an ambulance, Ozu cuts through a series of familiar locations in their home that are now gloomily dimmed and emptied, before returning to the brewery’s exterior where the absence of barrels is poignantly noted. The graveyard shot that is additionally inserted here isn’t to be passed over either – Ozu’s careful editing weaves a mournful foreboding in the wake of this sudden illness, quietly hinting at the tragedy that has already taken the family’s beloved mother, and which will soon claim their patriarch and business as well.

Throughout Ozu’s career, the encroachment of the modern world into traditional Japanese spaces has steadily become more central to his narrative conflicts, even as he maintains a nuanced standpoint on the issue. With a piece of the Kohayagawa family’s identity at stake, the threat of post-war industrialism is felt especially deeply here, yet at the same time Ozu savours the incongruence of this cultural clash. The blinking neon lights of Kyoto’s cityscapes are searingly beautiful, while views of temples through Venetian blinds and pagodas peeking over tiled roofs further develop the uneasy interactions between Japan’s past and present.

Quite unusually though, it is not just the younger generations subverting cultural customs in The End of Summer, but even Manbei himself. Every so often Ozu dismisses his characters’ polite reservations with glimpses of spirited humour, watching the elderly sake brewer play hide and seek with his grandchild, and elsewhere try to shake his employee’s tail while running off to his mistress’ home. His children’s concerns about this rekindled romance are understandable given its history, though now that their mother has passed, so too can we understand Manbei’s renewed desire for companionship.

It is obvious upon meeting Tsune that we realise she is no wily seductress, but just another lonely parent seeking love, and ultimately proving her dedication to Manbei as she nurses him through his sickness. Happiness and fulfilment can clearly be found outside the family unit in The End of Summer, even if certain relationships are left ambiguous, such as the question of whether he fathered her daughter Yuriko. The rebellious streak that he and Yuriko both share only supports this speculation, particularly manifesting in her as a rejection of Japanese culture and adoption of a heavily Westernised lifestyle. Rather than the loose-fitting and slimming garb worn by Manbei’s daughters, she wears bright, eye-catching dresses that accentuate her curved figure, and her dating life primarily revolves around white American men.

The two sequences where Ozu takes the Kohayagawa family outside the city and into the countryside thus mark a reprieve from this modern cultural conflict, even if it is exchanged for profound mourning in both instances. In the first instance, they hold a memorial service for their late mother in Arashiyama, where Ozu’s pillow shots turn their focus to forests and hills that have barely been touched by human civilisation. The second time they venture beyond their home though, the grief is far more potent, commemorating the passing of their beloved father.

The small appearance of Ozu regular Chishû Ryû as a farmer observing the crematorium chimney with his wife is notable here, despite there being no direct interaction between them and our main characters. Judging by the crows gathering along the river where they work, they surmise that someone has died, and soon their suspicions are confirmed when smoke from that giant pillar begins rising into the air. “It’s not a big deal if an elderly person were to have died, but it would be tragic if it were somebody young,” the woman ponders, while the man takes a more positive spin on her indifference.

“Yes, but no matter how many die, new lives will be born to take their place.”

It is merely the cycle of life, his wife acknowledges – a comforting assertion given the confirmation in these final scenes that the Kohayagawa brewery will indeed be sold off, ending an era in this family’s history. No longer do these adult children wear light colours and delicate patterns, but instead exchange them for pitch-black, funereal garments. Even after they leave the graveyard, the severe imprints they cast against the pale blue sky poetically resonate into Ozu’s sombre final shot, revealing two crows cawing upon a pair of headstones. They are the grief of the living that lingers with the deceased, but so too are they the souls of husband and wife joined in death, marking the resting spot where their bodies lay. Perhaps the celebrated traditions of marriage and family can secure a longstanding stability through this loss, yet The End of Summer does not underestimate the sorrow that it entails, composing wistful lamentations of life’s transient, bittersweet joys.

The End of Summer is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Ken Russell | 1hr 51min

The French Wars of Religion had long since passed by the time the fortified town of Loudon became the epicentre of lingering tension between Catholics and Protestants in the 17^th century, setting the scene in The Devils for a battle fought not with weapons, but political and religious manipulation. Urbain Grandier, the outspoken priest charged with defending the statehood of Loudon, is popular among the people for standing firmly with its high Protestant population, while making enemies of those Catholic authorities who deem him a threat. If Loudon is to be demolished and subjected to the rule of the Catholic Church though, then it would take more than an assassination to undermine Grandier’s influence. The priest must be so thoroughly discredited to the point of humiliation that no one can stand by his side without suffering the same ostracisation, thus bringing the rest of the town to its knees in feeble surrender.

It is incredibly good timing then that Sister Jeanne des Anges should come forward with baseless accusations of witchcraft aimed squarely at Grandier right as the Church begins conspiring against him. Though she is the abbess of the local Ursuline convent in Loudon, she is an outsider among her own nuns, tormented by sexual desire for Grandier and filled with self-loathing over her hunchback. “Take away my hump!” she prays in screaming agony, longing to be seen for once as beautiful. As such, when she discovers that Grandier has married another local woman, her furious, vindictive jealousy is unleashed.

Ken Russell’s narrative and characters here are rooted heavily in recorded history, yet the parallels shared between The Devils and Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible are extremely visible. Both storytellers are heavily concerned with humanity’s natural tendency towards irrational fear, and how it drove the discrimination against individuals in a pair of 17^th century settings. Where Miller sought to write an allegory for 1950s McCarthyism by studying the infectious hysteria of the Salem witch trials though, Russell feverishly opposes 1970s religious conservatism in The Devils, treading far more explicit ground with violence and nudity that triggered the censors to come down hard with an X rating.

From Russell’s perspective though, the outrage that surrounded The Devils would have been far more justified had it been directed at the harsh subject matter it is depicting. He particularly expressed frustration over the deletion of the scene he called the “Rape of Christ,” in which Sister Jeanne masturbates using the charred femur of the deceased Grandier following his execution. Even without this though, Christianity’s perversion of its own spiritual icons rings loudly throughout The Devils, framing Grandier as a persecuted saviour being punished for the sins of the world. Vanessa Redgrave may steal every one of her scenes with Sister Jeanne’s hunched posture and seething contempt, but Oliver Reed’s commanding presence is a steady, unwavering force among Russell’s visual chaos, taking to the screen with the booming confidence of a seasoned theatre actor. As he is cruelly interrogated by the Church, he delivers monologues with resounding gravitas, shamefully confessing his flaws as a prideful, even lecherous man while meeting Sister Jeanne’s accusations of sneaking into her bed with righteous indignation.

“Call me vain and proud, the greatest sinner to ever walk in God’s Earth! But Satan’s boy I could never be! I haven’t the humility. I know what I have done, and I am prepared for what I shall reap. But do you, Reverend Mother, know what you must give to have your wish about me fulfilled? I will tell you. Your immortal soul to eternal damnation. May God have mercy on you.”

Grandier is far from sinless, but what man living at this time of religious corruption and violence isn’t? In their monochrome garments, Russell’s characters often blend in seamlessly with the clean white masonry and darkened rooms of Loudon, becoming one with the dominant palette that tangibly manifests their harsh moral binaries. The town of perfectly rounded arches and geometric skyline makes for a remarkable feat of production design too, combining the stark minimalism of The Passion of Joan of Arc with the architectural ambition of Metropolis, and formally drawing this austerity through rigorously blocked scenes of black-and-white crowds.

It is no coincidence that the one figure who doesn’t conform to Russell’s sparse visual design is the puppeteer of Loudon’s witch hunt, sitting high above the fray. Dressed in his blood-red robes and wheeled around by servants, Cardinal Richelieu appears to be the only true demon in this town’s vicinity, determined to destroy the man who stands between him and the demolition of Loudon’s walls. Where Sister Jeanne acts impulsively on a wounded ego and even attempts to hang herself late in the film, Richelieu carefully orchestrates Loudon’s descent into madness, chaotically underscored by a writhing, discordant cacophony of pipe organs, trumpets, and percussion. In this period setting, the anachronistic jazz of Peter Maxwell Davies does not seem so unholy as it does viciously anarchic, matching confronting scenes of nuns playing up their fake possession with an equally disturbing soundscape.

Only when Grandier has perished through fiery injustice at the stake does silence settle over the town again, albeit one that is despairingly lifeless. His refusal to confess to the false charges may be the only solace to be taken from this, as it is with his last breath that the walls of Loudon come crumbling down in chilling synchronicity, ushering in apocalyptic scenes of ruin and suffering. Right to the final frame, Russell’s theological symbolism continues to inform his magnificent visuals and narrative, as his camera sits on a long shot of Grandier’s wife Madeleine approach an opening in the town’s demolished fortifications.

No longer drawing a clean divide between its shades of black and white, The Devils’ bleak scenery sinks into a dirty greyscale, as the widow trudges over a mountain of debris and exits what was once a vice-ridden yet relatively sheltered Garden of Eden. No longer do the strings and woodwinds clash in fervent rhythms, yet still they whine and wander through dissonant harmonies as Madeleine shuffles forward into an uncertain future. The Devils may be set in 17^th century France, and yet with his final note Russell’s mourning of what religious tyranny has destroyed continues to escape a narrow relegation to the distant past, infusing his cautionary tale with a bitter, anachronistic timelessness.

The Devils is available to purchase from Amazon.

Max Ophüls | 1hr 45min

French noblewoman Louise regularly visits the local Catholic church in The Earrings of Madame de… to pray for prosperity, though the tenets of her faith do not fall in so neatly with the Christian doctrine of 19^th century Europe. The intended recipient of her invocations is not necessarily God, but rather a fatalistic universe which has already miraculously proven itself to be on her side, whether by chance or providence. As for the sacred charm which she venerates as an icon of good fortune, one needs to look no further than those precious diamond earrings which she had previously tried to part with to pay off her enormous debts, and yet have since returned through pure happenstance. This of course can’t just be coincidence, she decides, and thus these pieces of jewellery are imbued with a mystical sentimentality that she alone has conceived of in her mind.

If destiny does exist within The Earrings of Madame de… though, then it isn’t one that can be influenced simply through prayers, wishes, or talismans. It is cold and indifferent, guaranteeing that whether it is Louise’s husband André or her paramour Fabrizio who ultimately wins their contest, she will be left heartbroken by the loss of the other. Max Ophüls may have been German-born, and yet these lyrical contemplations of fate’s ironic passages position him as perhaps the greatest inheritor of France’s poetic realism in the 1950s. Moreover, this lofty status is only strengthened by his use of Jean Renoir’s favoured cinematographer Christian Matras, crafting long, elegant tracking shots that carry the legacy of his cinematic forefathers.

There are few visual devices that match so gracefully to the film’s predeterministic perspective as this, seeing the camera trace the winding paths of objects and people before settling on extraordinary frames that Ophüls has perfectly arranged as the camera’s destination. Right from the very first shot, he is already laying the groundwork for this overarching aesthetic in a 2-and-a-half minute long take that begins on those fateful earrings, follows the movement of Louise’s hands through dressers and armoires, and finally catches her reflection trying them on in a small, oval mirror. As a result, she is immediately introduced as a woman defined by her abundantly lavish possessions rather than her innate qualities or relationships.

Ophüls is not one to cut corners on his production design either, consuming Louise in a cluttered opulence that evokes Josef von Sternberg’s busy mise-en-scène, yet without the harsh angles of his expressionism. Hanging around the edges of her bed are thin gauze drapes patterned with floral emblems, often framing her face or lightly obscuring it as the camera peers into her intimate domain, while elsewhere dining tables laden with candelabras, glassware, and bottles obstruct our view from low camera angles. Behind the seated guests, a giant mirror stretching the length of the wall turns the ballroom dancers into a lively backdrop, surrounding Louise with upper-class splendour on every side. Even when she grows depressed, she remains totally consumed by this material lifestyle, as Ophüls sinks her body into a large armchair that leaves only her head visible at the bottom of the frame. Just as exorbitant wealth incites Louise’s romantic interest, so too does it stifle relationships, including her marriage to André whose large bed sits in the same room far away from her own. Though she has taken his surname, Ophüls underscores its complete irrelevance to her identity all throughout The Earrings of Madame de…, frequently censoring it with diegetic interruptions and convenient camera placements.

That the earrings which Louise decides to sell were a wedding gift from André speaks even more to her disinterest in their marriage, motivating her pretend to lose them during a night out at the theatre, before actually pawning them off to local jeweller Mr Rémy. At least her husband returns the sentiment, or lack thereof, as once Mr Rémy secretly sells them back to him, he presents them as a farewell gift to his mistress Lola before she leaves for Constantinople. During her travels, they are again used to pay off personal debts, winding up in the hands of another jeweller who in turn sells them to a passing traveller – handsome middle-aged gentleman, Fabrizio. That he should later run into Louise twice in the span of two weeks and eventually fall in love with her seems too strange of a coincidence, and when he unassumingly gifts her the earrings that she once owned, she too recognises the remarkable journey they took to return home.

Within this web of affairs though, André is no fool. He indulges Louise’s pretence of losing her treasured earrings for some time despite knowing the truth through Mr Rémy, and his observations of her apparently platonic relationship with Fabrizio stoke suspicions. From his position of power and knowledge, he maliciously toys with her, and even forces her to give the earrings to his niece who has recently given birth. Quite remarkably though, Ophüls sees them sold to cover debts for a third time in his narrative, and thus Louise is given the chance to buy them back from Rémy much to her husband’s dismay. After all, no longer do they represent their matrimonial union, but rather her relationship with Fabrizio which has reliably conquered the stacked odds against it.

With Ophüls’ dextrous camera manoeuvring the ups and downs of this affair, it isn’t hard to fall prey to Louise’s romantic idealism either. The coordination of his cranes and dollies through scenes with multiple actors become a delicate dance of blocking – quite literally too in a montage that breezes through several weeks of illicit encounters at balls. As Louise and Fabrizio waltz through large crowds, the camera delicately weaves with them, drifting further and closer to their quiet conversations in rhythmic patterns. With each individual dalliance being linked by long dissolves, Ophüls creates the impression of one long, uninterrupted dance, blissfully contained inside a dream that Louise will keep prolonging for as long as destiny wills it to live.

As far is Louise is concerned though, this is barely an obstacle. “Will we meet again?” Fabrizio asks on their second chance run-in, to which she replies with absolute confidence, “Fate is on our side.” Of course, this faith rests on flimsy foundations, imbuing material objects with arbitrary meaning in much the same way her friend applies clairvoyant readings to ordinary cards. Ophüls’ formal construction of this character through multiple belief systems is impeccable, eventually rolling them into one when she returns to the shrine of St. Genevieve in the closing minutes of the film, and leaves behind her earrings as an offering to whichever God may be listening.

Is it fate then which coincides Fabrizio’s death with her relinquishing of these jewels, or was this merely the random winds of chance delivering a long overdue tragedy to a woman who has never known true heartbreak? Perhaps this vast, erratic cosmos does not care so much for the life of any one individual after all, with the only meaning in it being imprinted by those actively seeking out patterns. Imposing formal structure upon chaos may very well be Ophüls’ job too as a storyteller, but in what is likely the strongest shot of The Earrings of Madame de… he also recognises the human soul’s slow fade into insignificance with romantic poignancy, watching the scattered shreds of a torn-up love letter blow out a train window and join a flurry of snow. Just as it is impossible to find any meaningful configuration in their singular paths, their destinations are similarly unknowable, and yet to follow their journey upon gusts and breezes in this beautiful, fleeting moment is to truly comprehend the inscrutability of life’s unpredictable paths.

The Earrings of Madame de… is streaming on The Criterion Channel and is available to purchase from Amazon.

Akira Kurosawa | 2hr 31min

When dessert finally arrives at the wedding reception of Yoshiko and Koichi Nishi, it would surely seem as if someone is pulling a cruel prank on the father of the bride, Iwabuchi. The day has already been tainted by the arrest of the senior businessman’s assistant Wada in full view of the guests and reporters, and now as the cake is wheeled out to reveal an elaborate design modelled after the Public Development Corporation headquarters, a single rose sitting in a top-floor window draws hushed whispers. It is no secret that this is where Assistant Chief Furuya jumped from some years earlier, bringing a standstill to the investigation that implicated Iwabuchi and several other executives. Meanwhile, suspicions that his colleagues pressured him into taking his own life are only ever uttered behind closed doors, with absolute confidence that no one is eavesdropping.

Only by methodically peeling back the layers of conspiracies guarding the upper-class plutocrats can the truth be revealed, though this is not a job for the police, courts, or even the media. True to his fondness for Shakespeare, Akira Kurosawa places this colossal objective on the shoulders of a single man seeking retribution for his deceased father, and thus reveals The Bad Sleep Well to be a contemporary, noir-tinted adaptation of Hamlet starring Toshiro Mifune as the vengeful son. Posing as Iwabuchi’s secretary, Koichi Nishi stands alone against the corrupt corporate culture of mid-century Japan, working from the shadows as he blackmails, intimidates, and investigates his way to the top.

Even by Kurosawa’s standards, The Bad Sleep Well’s plot is remarkably dense, sprawling across a vast ensemble of characters who bring personal stakes to each gear in the narrative vehicle. The wedding itself is a tremendous setup, introducing the relevant parties through a Greek chorus of journalists offering backstory and commentary, while remarkably steering clear of convoluted exposition. In his meticulous arrangement of these nameless reporters among the masses of wedding guests, Kurosawa’s extraordinary eye for blocking bodies across the full horizontal length of his widescreen canvas is immediately revealed, developing a sharp aesthetic that carries through virtually every frame of the film with astounding consistency.

The shapes and lines that form in Kurosawa’s crowded staging here effectively draw our eyes to the subjects of his focus, highlighting even the smallest details within his ensemble such as Nishi’s quiet surveillance of his guests, and the suspicious reactions of executives when the cake makes its damning appearance. “Best one act I’ve ever seen,” a reporter wryly acclaims at this grand twist, and if this were a short film he wouldn’t be wrong – yet the witty response from his colleague might as well be Kurosawa impishly promising to follow up with an even more magnificent pay-off.

“One act? This is just the prelude.”

Indeed, The Bad Sleep Well is only just getting started, as from here Kurosawa effortlessly shifts between multiple narrative threads and carefully weaves them into Nishi ‘s single-minded endeavour to take down his father’s killers. After Wada is released from police custody and rescued from a suicide attempt atop a live volcano by Nishi, he quickly becomes one of our protagonist’s greatest resources, faking his own death and psychologically tormenting contract officer Shirai by appearing as a ghost. Unfortunately, Nishi is not so quick to save company accountant Miura from his superiors, who demonstrate their chilling efficiency through a single, written message – “I know you will see this through to the bitter end.” It might as well be a bullet from a sniper’s rifle, one reporter comments, as it isn’t long afterwards that Miura willingly runs in front of a truck.

With Venetian blinds imposing severe backdrops inside corporate offices and Masaru Sato’s band of brass and percussion rhythmically carrying through a dark, jazzy ambience, Kurosawa’s admiration of Hollywood film noirs bleeds through his nihilistic take on Hamlet, positioning Nishi himself as a morally questionable antihero. This is a man who didn’t even realise how much his father loved him until after receiving a huge inheritance in his will, and yet has nevertheless taken it on himself to sacrifice innocence bystanders, marry a woman he doesn’t truly love, and implement cruel methods of torture to avenge his murder. “It’s not easy hating evil. You have to stoke your own fury until you become evil yourself,” he ponders in a shot that sinks his profile in darkness, flanking him with Wada and his friend Itakura in the background like two conflicting sides of his conscience. Even when Itakura is furiously chastising Wada in another tightly framed composition, Mifune continues to dominate the shot from the foreground like a hardboiled Humphrey Bogart detective, coolly smoking a cigarette and radiating a bitter stoicism.

By this point, keen-eyed viewers will have picked up on a visual device that reliably teases out the complex character dynamics in Kurosawa’s blocking, and subtly underscores Nishi’s position as a covertly powerful player in this game. In many of The Bad Sleep Well’s most crucial scenes, Kurosawa prominently features three individuals in triangulated compositions, with each point being defined by its relative position and movement around the others. When Shirai becomes Nishi’s newest target in his scheme for instance, Kurosawa’s camera holds on a long take of his panicked discovery of stolen money planted in his briefcase, and follows him edgily through the office as his supervisor Muriyama grows more suspicious of his behaviour. Of course though, this scene would not be complete without Mifune’s confident, unobtrusive presence in the background, sitting lower in the shot as he quietly observes the disturbance. He does not say a single word, and yet this painstakingly geometric approach to composing the frame ensures that he is always at the front of our minds, crediting him as the man responsible for Shirai’s guilt-ridden, psychological breakdown.

Still, the cunning manipulations and exorbitant privilege of Japan’s wealthy elite are not to be underestimated either. As Nishi hides out with his small crew in the dark, dank ruins of a bombed out factory, Iwabuchi operates from a well-resourced office with countless disposable minions working beneath him, ready to get their hands dirty. Like Nishi, he too proves that he is willing to manipulate and even drug his daughter Yoshiko to save himself, drawing a dead heat between them in terms of sheer determination.

Even once all parties have finally caught up to each other and the finish line has come into view in the final act of The Bad Sleep Well, the competition between Nishi and Iwabuchi remains neck-and-neck. Within the Public Development Corporations’ bank books is the undeniable proof of Furuya’s assassination – all it comes down to is whether Nishi or Iwabuchi will win the race to their respective targets, infusing the climax with an uneasy suspense that Kurosawa finally resolves with a brutal, cynical gut punch. We are not even given the closure of witnessing the train collision which flattens Nishi’s car, set up by Iwabucha’s lackeys as a drink driving accident. Instead, Kurosawa simply leaves us to observe the lifeless wreckage of its aftermath, with the only survivors who know the truth being those too powerless to do anything about it.

That Nishi should suffer the same fate as his father at the hands of the same men makes for a poetically devastating end to this saga, though within Kurosawa’s cutthroat world of corporate collusion, the ruling class’s total subjugation of the underdog is merely the way society works. At Iwabuchi’s press conference, the reporters who opened the film return to bookend it as well, reflecting upon Nishi’s life with a wary acceptance of the Vice President’s cover story in much the same way they once spoke of Furuya’s tragic suicide. Perhaps they are conscious of the corruption that runs deep in Japan’s bureaucracy to some extent, and yet its bloodied foundations remain shrouded in myth right to the end, resting upon the obedience, sacrifices, and bloodshed of disposable civilians.

The Bad Sleep Well is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD and Blu-ray are available to purchase on Amazon.