East meets west, and there's hell to pay

It may be a simple story, but "Onibaba" has a lot of meat on its bones that can be stripped away to reveal a marrow of truth that can prove quite satisfying to those willing to explore its deeper meanings. Here are the conclusions our CineVerse group reached on this 1964 classic of Japanese cinema:

WHAT DID YOU FIND UNEXPECTED AND MEMORABLE ABOUT “ONIBABA”?

·       The film features a lot of nudity for a 1964 film; Americans wouldn’t have been accustomed to seeing topless women in movies until the late 1960s, after the introduction of the ratings system and the loosening of censorship restrictions.

·       It’s an incredibly simple story, with very few characters, scenes and locations; yet, it’s riveting in its dark, horrific and noir-like atmosphere and its timeless triangular situations involving the two women and one man.

·       Interestingly, the women are not necessarily depicted as more threatening than the amoral and violent males around them. It’s important to remember that they are destitute, impoverished, hungry, and alone, and women are low in social status in this Japanese era. They aren’t even provided names, unlike the men. In other words, although they are cold, cruel and callous, this approach is required to survive in a time when, as a double standard, men are permitted to be hired killers.

·       This film is the antithesis of samurai movies of this era, which celebrated the heroic values and virtues of macho men who went off to battle; as a contrast to honor and virtue, this film spotlights desire, greed and passion.

·       The score is quite radical: the opening number is a jazzy, contemporary tune, but the main music used in the film employs a percussive, discordant, even guttural pattern of drums, simplistic woodwinds, strings, and some instrument or object that mimics the sound of wood snapped in half.

·       The movie adopts elements of film noir, such as the high contrast lighting scheme that produces deep darks and shadows, and the presence of two femme fatales who lead men (samurai) into danger.

HOW IS “ONIBABA” A BLENDING OF ANCIENT AND CONTEMPORARY VALUES, OF OLD AND NEW STORYTELLING, AND OLD AND NEW BELIEFS, ESPECIALLY FOR JAPANESE AUDIENCES IN 1964?

·       It’s adapted from a Buddhist parable intended to encourage females to attend religious services.

·       In this contemporary retelling, however, it becomes a cautionary tale warning of the dangers of consequences of passion, hunger, and desire, especially sexual desire.

·       Reviewer Mike Pinsky further suggests that “Shindo has completely transformed the original folktale from its search for spiritual fulfillment to the satisfaction of very human hungers: survival, companionship, and sexuality. Just as the Hole is not a gateway to some hell (since the hell has already come to Earth), the demon mask is not a gate through which spiritual evil (some "real" demon) might pass, but a marker of the ethical corruption that already surrounds the world like the endless stalks of waving, hissing grass.”

·       The film is topical for the 20^th century in its indictment of the devastating effects war has on humanity and civilized values.

·       It could also be considered a criticism of how women are treated as objects in Japanese culture.

·       You could make a case that this story is also a parable about the rape of the natural world and our heartless stripping of earth’s resources (think of how the women kill the men so callously, then strip them clean of anything of value).

·       Additionally, “Onibaba” employs a healthy dose of subjective camera shots (we’re right down at the women’s level, low in the grass and the mud, watching their prey ahead, for instance) as well as visually poetic close-up shots of nature and expressive human faces.

THIS IS A PICTURE REPLETE WITH SYMBOLISM. FOR EXAMPLE, WHAT DO THE MASK, THE HOLE, AND THE GRASS REPRESENT?

·       The mask and what it reveals underneath could be figurative of the mutilation and defacement of the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, which is what director Kaneto Shindo reportedly revealed. 

·       In a Freudian psychological reading, the hole could signify the danger and mystery of female sexuality to men.

·       In a wider reading, one reviewer said: “as the film progresses, it becomes clear that the hole represents a wider danger for humanity. At various times, people nearly fall into the hole - most notably Hachi, who teeters on the brink of it momentarily, having just been running through the grass in an ecstasy of lust for the younger woman. Various other people fall into it - mostly the unfortunate soldiers who have become the victims of the two predatory women. The hole represents some nemesis or catastrophe that is constantly there for those who are prey to the baser instincts of Man, in the absence of civilization.”

·       You could make a case that the grasses, which ebb and flow in the wind and move randomly and wildly, could stand for the general disorder and unpredictability of nature itself.

·       As posited by Pinsky: “Wounded men in Onibaba fight through a sea of whispering grass, like sharp phalluses, as if masculine power has been turned against them. Speared unseen by feral women, they are stripped of their armor and dumped in a great hole, thus completing the humiliation of their gender.”

·       There are many spaces implying claustrophobia in “Onibaba”: consider the hut the women live in and the cave. The filmmakers want us to feel hedged in and trapped, as the women are trapped in their condition, despite ironically living in the vast expanse of the wild.

OTHER MOVIES AND WORKS OF LITERATURE SIMILAR TO ONIBABA:

·       Japanese “kaidan” ghost story films, such as “Ugetsu” by Kenji Mizoguchi and “Kwaidan”

·       “Woman of the Dunes” and “In the Realm of the Senses,” also both from Japan

·       “Knife in the Water”

·       “Diabolique”

·       The “Twilight Zone” episode “The Masks”

·       Scary fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm

·       “Days of Heaven”, which also features a love triangle and extreme close-ups of tall grasses and shots of nature

·       Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal,” which is also set during a particularly bleak time in human history when death and destruction reigned, and which also includes an ominous omen figure of doom.