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Oct
05
2006

REVIEW OF THE CRITERION COLLECTIONS JIGOKU

Posted by Canfield at 1:51pm.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Exploitation, Horror, Asia, USA & Canada.

jigoku3.jpg

I have a huge pile of Halloween type titles I’m reviewing at present- ain’t life good! But the problem with writing about what you love in bulk is finding time to say everything you want. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I write about Nobuo Nakagawa’s masterpiece Jigoku. Scary for reasons tht go way beyond it’s violent depiction of souls in torment this Buddhist take on hell takes the subject of sin very seriously and the art of filmmaking to levels of brilliance. An essential part of any J Horror collection.

My first encounter with Asian Horror cinema was the masterpiece Kwaidan. Next came the massive wave that all horror fans have experienced in the last decade. In the middle of that another piece from about the same time period- Onibaba, left me almost in a state of awe. Only Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse or better yet Cure, or perhaps the original Ringu seemed to achieve (if only for moments) the same sort of cinematic space where art and dread joined forces to haunt the viewer in a way rarely encountered. They were apocalyptic films that paradoxically signaled that horror was alive and well in the East and waiting to be tapped into. They made Dracula’s famous phrase come alive “There are things worse than death”. Jigoku joins that short list. Translated directly as “Hell” the film could loosely be called an Asian Dante’s Inferno but this might give a potential audience the impression that the film is inaccessible, too arty, and nothing could be further from the truth. Instead what we get is a complex a multilayered rumination on life and death redemption and damnation and most of all the inescapable guilt we feel about sin. Of course ultimately Jigoku’s worldview is Buddhist rather than Christian and yet it’s vision of hell is a truly universal one.

A young theology student keeps bad company- a truly wicked friend who involves him in a hit and run. After the incident he is tortured by his own guilt and his wicked twin but unable to accept true responsibility for what he has don. All roads in Nakagawa’s universe end in Jigoku.

Nakagawa is often thought of as the father of the Japanese Horror film. I suspect this isn’t far from the truth. More than even the look of the film (incredibly violent for it’s time) is the roots of the story in a folklore, a collective belief system. Even if audiences of its central place and time considered such beliefs antiquated or somewhat quaint (and this is probably not as much the case as many Westerners think) Jigoku no doubt was foreboding in a way that American horror cinema almost never has been. It seems based in an inescapable reality that is at once spiritual and real an incarnational understanding of the world. Not pantheistic but deistic where all truth haunts captures, sublimates. This also underscores the violence of Nakagawa’s vision. These are souls who suffer pointlessly because of evil rather than allow suffering to serve in their redemption.

As with virtually any Criterion release the Special Features truly are. “Building the Inferno,” a new documentary on director Nobuo Nakagawa and the making of the film is extremely informative for anyone who wants to study the beginnings of J Horror or the themes of the film and includes interviews with Nakagawa collaborators as well as Kiyoshi Kurasawa. They are buttressed by the included booklet which offers an essay by Bangkok writer Chuck Stephens as well as a Theatrical trailer and galleries of posters from selected Nakagawa and Shintoho studio films.

To say that the film looks absolutely gorgeous and is presented in it’s original aspect ratio of 2:35:1 might give you the idea that it’s pretty to look at. Trust me Hieronymus Bosch has nothing on Nakagawa when it comes to capturing the suffering of the damned.

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Reader Comments

  1. logboy 10/06/2006 @ 1:44am

    oh no! you labelled it j-horror, and worse still, mentioned the “C” word - “collection” - obscene!!!

    anyway, this is, from the extras and having watched the film / DVD, the last shintoho film and was put together in that atmosphere, with little money too. nakagawa seems to be an exception at that time, managing to go a little further than churning films out in a “that’ll do” fashion.

    jigoku uses western ideas and concepts of hell, and it does have surprisingly graphic sequences in it, but it’s about the spiralling situations of irresponsible actions and draggin other people into those situations - it’s a good film, looks clearly 1950’s in its production style (feels oddly american too, to my eyes). for me, the best parts are in the last section of the film, the large soundstage sequences which vibrant lighting and echoing sounds - imagine that in a cinema, unexpected as it might well have been - the rest of the film, although odd and extreme in its ideas, is a good contrast but probably not as effective.

    the disc though, great documentary on there, but the transfer is getting knocked as a little lacklustre, and theres conerns about criterions recent policies and output in that department. still, £12.99 to see a great presentation of a film regarded as a classic, though i’ve certainly seen films i think are more suited to me and which i think have surpassed jigoku’s execution that have been made in the decades since, for what its reputation is, and for the ideas… good film. worth seeing.

  2. Jasper 10/06/2006 @ 7:13am

    Actually, if you look at many of Shintoho’s films from this period, you’ll see that Jigoku boasts a rather large budget. Nakagawa himself sunk a fair amount of his own money into it.

    It wasn’t actually Shintoho’s last film either. Shintoho lasted several more months after its release, and managed to put out several other titles, including Nakagawa’s final film at the company, Kaa-chan, a grimy depiction of family hardship in occupied Tokyo. This was a company that were churning out at least 5 titles a month in its heyday, just like all the other majors such as Toei, Daiei, Nikkatsu and Shochicku. Whether it was Jigoku that actually finished the company off is a moot point, as the rot had pretty much set in before then - all of the majors were coming under threat from TV round this time, but Shintoho were a far smaller company in the first place, so had less to fall back on.

    Not sure where you get the “jigoku uses western ideas and concepts of hell” from - the imagery is clearly Buddhist, and there’s nothing about Nakagawa’s background or oeuvre to suggest he was a Christian. Christianity is a pretty marginal religion in Japan after all.

  3. sonny gaunt 10/06/2006 @ 7:45am

    Awesome film. Great review. In regards to the transfer I don’t believe it to be up to par with other transfers of this era of Japanese cinema.

    I would love other viewers to explain to me the essay in the booklet. Had the author seen the film with subtitles? He poses questions about the film that are clearly answered within the film through the dialogue. It boggles my small mind as to how he could not grasp the answers to his questions.

  4. nitty 10/06/2006 @ 8:00am

    Watched this the other night and loved it.The thing that kept going through my head was this was made in 1960.Audiences must’ve freaked.

  5. logboy 10/06/2006 @ 9:43am

    the imagery is bhuddist it seems, the definition of hell seems unfamiliar, kiyoshi kurosawa mentions in the interview on the DVD about jigoku having a western concept of hell (something like that, cant remember the exact words), and although i felt the film was particularly japanese in its approach at the time, when i listened to what he said it felt as though there was a certain amount of adoption of western philosophies or something similar. perhaps my memories foggy, i am sure it says the studio was closing at the time of production, and the film was issued after it became defunct? perhaps theres more to your knowledge of it than is shown in the criterion docu, jasper? i dont know… i am just giving my clouded impressions from one viewing and little other knowledge.

  6. Toni 10/06/2006 @ 11:40am

    hi !

    can anybody tell me about the transfer by criterion in comparison to the already available JapanR2-DVD of this movie ?

    I own the japanese and thought about buying the Criterion as well,

    but only if the transfer is really better.

    I dont care about special features, I only care about

    Cropping, color-accuracy, length and good subtitles.

    thanks

  7. logboy 10/06/2006 @ 12:25pm

    beaver visual review of jigoku

    http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews24/jigoku_dvd_review.htm
    -----

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