The Eel (1997)

The Eel tells a story about a Japanese man who copes with his guilt after committing a crime. (I won't go into details on the crime, that's for you to find out) The way he does this is what makes this movie a great one in my book. Not only does he turn himself in after the crime (with a great way of response by the police) he even makes a friend out of an eel in prison. Hence the name of the movie. Once outside the prison he tries to build up a barber shop and get his life back on track.

The film is carried by its character interactions. Apart from these there is nothing else in this film, so for those who don't like dialogue don't bother with this film because you'll be bored.

For the others, who like a story carried by characters, this surely is a must. The only flaw for me was the presence of a quirky UFO nut, but that's minor.

And please watch the original version with subs and not some gruesome dubbed version. I never understood the appeal of a dub.

Fmovies: 'The Eel' proved how the director Shohei Imamura is good at describing life-sized characterization and mental state. The main character's suspicion, madness, kindness and love, are closely related to what we have inside. Which made me sympathetic and devoted to the character. Shohei Imamura described the main character's complication by using the character's delusion. And, the usage of psychological and fantastic images strongly helped to express the human mind. 'The Eel' is a unique human drama.

THE EEL borders on dark humour when a man, who after eight years in prison for the murder of his wife, is released from jail. He sets himself up in a barber shop by the river and trouble comes knocking on his door and he can not seem to get away from it. Simple, yet effective, a very mature piece of work and pleasing overall.

The Eel fmovies. Takuro Yamashita, played very effectively by Koji Yakusho, gets an anonymous letter telling him that his young, pretty wife is entertaining another man while he is out fishing at night, this after she lovingly prepares and packs his supper. He goes fishing but returns home early in time to catch her in medias res. In a cold rage he knifes her to death. He bicycles to the police station and turns himself in. Eight years later he gets out of prison. This is where our story begins.

Yamashita, now embittered toward others, especially women, is on parole. He sets up a barber shop in a small town. He keeps a pet eel because he feels that the eel "listens" to him when he talks. One day he discovers a woman (Keiko Hattari, played by the beautiful Misa Shimizu) in some nearby bushes who has taken an overdose in a suicide attempt. He brings the police to her and she is saved. She becomes his helper at the barber shop and is so efficient that the barber shop prospers. She falls in love with him but because of his shame and bitterness, he cannot return her love.

This is a film about human sexuality. It is not pretty. The eel itself (a wet "snake") symbolizes sexuality. When this sexuality is confined it is under control. When it is let loose it is dark and deep and mysterious. Director Shohei Imamura's technique is plodding at times, and striking at others. His women are aggressive sexually even though they may look like little girls. His men can be brutal. Their emotions, confined by society as the eel is confined by its tank, sometimes burst out violently.

For many viewers the pace of this film will be too slow, and for others the sexuality depicted will offend. For myself and others who are accustomed to seeing the faces of the players in long close ups on TV and in Western movies, Imamura's medium shots and disinclination to linger on the countenances of his actors will disappoint. Yakusho's face suggests the very depth and mystery that Imamura is aiming at, yet I don't think the camera lingers there enough. Also disappointing is how little we really see of Misa Shimizu's expressions. Chiho Terada, who plays the murdered wife, is also very pretty and completely convincing, but we see little of her. Her expression just before dying, a combination of shamelessness and resignation, funereal acceptance even, was unforgettable.

This is very much worth seeing, but expect to be annoyed by the how slowly it unravels and by the central character's stubborn refusal to forgive both himself and his late wife and his inability to embrace the life that is now his.

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This film deals with the theme of faith, its loss, its recovery. It has strong images, as usual in Imamura's films. It has also a well thought out plot development. But... it hints at directions that are never fully explored. There is a suggestion that the main character is insane. There are hallucinations. Keiko's behavior is also a little obscure at times. But as the core of the movie is melodrama, surreal aspects are only hinted at. That leaves a slight sensation of unachievement.

The Eel does something so imaginative and effective in the way it tells its story. It really makes the audience interact. Explaining this would ruin its effect, a sort of thing rarely experienced anymore in filmgoing. It's difficult to find movies that actually redirect your thinking and stimulate you and make you suffer in that great, fulfilling way. So, I will leave you to take my word for it. What is amazing about what The Eel does is how it really enlightens the audience when it comes to the judgment and expectations of characters. The Eel probes meticulously and sneakily the strange progression of a person.

Shohei Imamura, the film's cunning, subtle, and seemingly offbeat director, fashions the opening murder with what is in the first nanosecond of reaction aggravating and promptly recognized as a brilliant little effect. As the movie's main character stabs his cheating wife to death after slashing her frightened adulterous lover, blood sprays all over the camera, the scene becoming skewed and blurred through the bloodied lens, forcing us naturally to want to peer around it to see as clearly as we can the violence the character continues to commit. And at that point we realize, as is Imamura's intention, that we are the audience and that there is the movie, and that we are voyeurs who so badly anticipate such things as the passionately vindicating slaughter of a coldly adulterous lover. And from there, Imamura exploits the weakness he knows we have, but in what way cannot be predicted.

Later in the film, Imamura stages a ballistic, ungraceful fight that includes many characters, but with a relentlessly stationary camera. No matter how intricate certain actions get, he refuses to let it be anything more than observed. His intentions are all to make us conscious of what we are thinking as we watch these scenes. It's a creative intelligence applied more and more rarely all the time.

The cast is very carefully balanced. Certain characters are animated, some eccentric, some very stoic, and some are combinations of all three, yet they never become even remote resemblances of clichés. They are all meant to oppose or serve as comparison to each other in nature and chemistry.

Another plus is the film's purposely awkward, infectiously gawky musical score that, like most music in Japanese films, is recurrent and sustained, a repeated series of only a handful of melodies that are very memorable.