Onibaba (1964) - #226

I'm not a demon, I'm a human being!

Before the film delves into an eerie, supernaturally tinged sequence that delivers the electrifying moral of the story (from which the above line is quoted), Onibaba situates its message in about as earthy, raw and primal a context as one might care to devise for any story based on an old Buddhist folk tale. Director Kaneto Shindo adapted, or more aptly, profaned the traditional precept about a mother's divinely-ordained punishment for using cruel scare tactics to harass her pious daughter-in-law, who spent too much time praying to the Buddha at a nearby temple and not enough time doing chores around her home. To deter her son's wife from making further journeys to the temple, the older woman jumped at her out of the tall grass, shrieking and wearing a frightening demon mask. Her blatant dishonesty incurred the Buddha's wrath, as she found it impossible to remove the mask after her stunt had its intended effect. Only when she prayed for mercy would the mask come off, but it ripped her skin off in the process. The moral of the tale was to emphasize the Buddha's mercy, but also to warn listeners against presuming against it too much, since even with forgiveness comes certain irrevocably consequences.

It was a story that Shindo heard as a child, told to him by his mother as a vivid reminder of the need to be honest and truthful, to avoid hypocrisy in all circumstances. Though it seems doubtful that Shindo maintained strict fidelity to his mother's adherence to Buddhist practice, the principle of speaking plainly and directly appears to have been internalized, at least to the extent that it provides a unifying theme for the films of his that I've seen so far. Besides this one, the other two serve as bookends to his long and prolific career. The Naked Island (1960) was his major breakthrough, depicting in near silence the struggles of an impoverished family eking out their living in a nearly arid landscape. Postcard (2011), directed and released after he was 100 years old, was his final film, an elegiac autobiographical piece that pondered his unlikely survival after being drafted into the Japanese military in the final months of World War II, when nearly all of his peers died in futile combat. Though each of the films have memorable stylistic visual flourishes, Shindo's desire to speak with unvarnished directness remains a constant.

And such is the case here. While retaining the central motif of a mask that fuses itself onto the face of a woman corrupted by her own small-minded and cynical manipulation, Shindo secularizes his tale for the most part, shifting the focus from a dispute over religious observance to concerns much more carnal and savage in nature. In Onibaba, two women in medieval Japan are reduced to a state of desperate poverty in a time of war. The two of them (whose names are never given) live in a small thatched hut hidden away in the midst of a tall field of grass. The man who provided for their needs, son of one, husband of the other, has been away for a long time. Deprived of any other means of support, perhaps driven a bit mad by their isolation, the women make money by selling the armor of dead samurai warriors who seek refuge from combat in the grass field, but find themselves the victims of crazed females hiding in ambush. The bodies of their prey, once stripped of all valuables, are rudely dumped into a deep, dark hole in the ground.

One day their vile routine is interrupted by Hachi, a visitor dressed in the humble garments of an itinerant priest. However, the man turns out to be an imposter, donning the disguise as a way of avoiding conflict. He too is a warrior, but with no samurai armor to plunder, there's no point in killing him. Besides, he has information on the fate of the missing son and husband, now confirmed as deceased. And furthermore, he has something vital, powerful and desirable to offer - a man's companionship. The women are reminded that a virile stranger may yield longer term benefits than just the few handfuls of rice they might obtain through bartering the clothes and weapons purloined from his corpse.

But when the equation works out to just one man to serve the needs of two lusty women, that's where the complications set in. The daughter is ripe and nubile, just coming into her own as a woman, suddenly liberated from the burden of having to wait for her husband's return. After Hachi builds himself a hut on the other side of the grass field, she starts sneaking out for nightly hook-ups with her lover. The mother-in-law, while by no means a shriveled old hag, still has a difficult time competing for Hachi's attention - and when she tries to force the issue with a straightforward, come on laced with bitter resentment, she overplays her hand and ruins any chance of prevailing in this seedy little triangle.

Sexually frustrated and now fearful that her daughter-in-law will marry Hachi and abandon her, the older woman has a strange, late-night encounter with another wandering samurai, one who wears a horrifying demon mask to hide his appearance. He's one of the ruling class who initiate and profit from the war that has ruined her life and those of so many others. His remarks infuriate her, and the cover of darkness provides an opportunity for her to employ her criminal skills once more. The mother winds up with the mask, and as in the old fable, uses it to frighten her daughter-in-law back into a state of domesticated subservience - in this case, repressing the younger woman's emerging sexuality rather than curbing the supposedly excessive devotion shown by the daughter in the original version of the tale.

This shift in focus, from the source material's implicit concerns with a proper balance of spiritual and practical matters to an earthier exploration of primal sex drives and generational conflicts, is crucial in making Onibaba a film worth pondering for its message, above and beyond the admirable beauty of Shindo's poetic visuals. The core dispute driving the film is summed up in a brief exchange midway through the film, when the daughter proclaims that "it's no sin what men and women do - everyone does it!" Her comment comes in response to her mother-in-law's impromptu hellfire sermon about the punishments that await those who lawlessly succumb to their sexual cravings. The older woman hypocritically goes on to chastise her with an adage about the necessity of marriage to sanctify "the act," even though she's mere hours beyond propositioning Hachi from a quick and spontaneous indulgence herself. As an expression of its time, the movie was obviously taking advantage of some newfound liberties in its depiction of erotic passion, and I'm sure that element played a big part in making Onibaba a very successful export. The American poster at the top of this column offers some insight on how the movie was marketed, and this trailer also emphasizes some of the more easily sensationalized aspects of Shindo's story-telling methods:

I don't expect that I'd have any serious dispute from readers by asserting that, for the most part, there's not really anything likely to shock or startle first-time viewers in 2013 the way that Onibaba did nearly 50 years ago. Indeed, some of the jump scenes may come across as more comical now than Shindo and company ever intended or imagined. Still, there's a lot to appreciate in the stark, monochromatic atmosphere that we're given to immerse ourselves in; this environment of long, undulating stalks of grass, seemingly stretching on for miles, is a mesmerizing chaos of organic sensuality that provides a unique backdrop for the raw couplings and other basic instincts unleashed when life becomes an unambiguous struggle to survive.

The mood-shifting musical soundtrack and ambient earth noises that rumble around on the periphery give a palpable sense of being at least temporarily uprooted from our accustomed civilization. And my respect for the effort leapt dramatically when I learned of the heroic lengths to which Shindo and his production company went to make this film, building rudimentary on-site housing in which everyone lived under contract for three months in the summer of 1964, enduring pounding rains, floods, and nightly insect and crayfish invasions all throughout in order to realize this vision. The hardships were necessary from both a pragmatic angle - it was a cash-strapped, independent production financed by interest-bearing loans from the studio that basically wagered Shindo's future as a director (he won) - and as a means of fostering a disciplined, unified vision among the creative talents gathered for the project. Actor Kei Sato, a fixture in a dozen Criterion and Eclipse releases from this era - provided 37 minutes of Super 8mm footage shot behind the scenes during the making of Onibaba. It's one of the most intriguing supplements to be found on a second-tier discount DVD release like this. Here's a short sample of Sato's footage showing Shindo in action:

The extent to which one identifies on a personal level with the dilemmas facing any of the three troubled characters living at the fringes of Onibaba's dark, all-consuming hole will most likely determine the depth of the film's emotional impact on a viewer. Still, the film's aesthetic and stylistic merits are sufficient to justify repeat viewings and further exploration of Shindo's voluminous work, and its provocative question, asking us to consider what face lurks beneath the masks that we all choose to wear when it suits our advantage, probably yields more unsettling answers than most of us would care to admit.

Next: Gertrud