When Murata was dying, he repeated repeatedly: "Dad, I'm afraid of pain."
Before that, he was a murderer, and whenever he and his wife killed someone, they would transport the body to a hut in the woods, decorated inside and out with crucifixes, Madonnas, crosses, and candles.
They lit candles and dismembered the bodies, cutting them into pieces just big enough to swallow. After washing, they would drink a cup of coffee, then go to the backyard to burn the bones, lift the ashes, and throw the cut corpses into the river to feed the fish. All in one go.
When he returns to the real world, back to his aquarium-like fish shop, he becomes a confident, rich, powerful and passionate middle-aged man again.
The protagonist, Sheben, meets him by accident. Sheben, a man who is a loser in many aspects of patriarchy - weak temperament, little courage, dissatisfied with sex, and the fish business can't be said to be successful.
It seems that he sees himself shrinking in the shadow of his abusive father in his childhood in the society itself. Murata decided to make Shemoto his right-hand man. He was good at controlling people: first, he created a good atmosphere for the first meeting, talked with the other party, and tentatively touched the other party's pain points and weaknesses with a gentle attitude; then suddenly resorted to violent means , forcing the other party to obey obediently - it is the control mode of giving sugar first and then slap.
In this way, he controlled Shemoto's wife, Taeko, and "semi-raped" Taeko. The "semi-rape" here refers to the fact that he forced Taeko by violent means in the first half, and Taeko even obeyed obediently in a surrendered attitude, and even showed a state of willingness and enjoyment.
He also controlled Sheben—when he and his wife were dismembering their bodies, Sheben brewed coffee for them, he taught Sheben how to burn bones, and he taught Sheben to throw the corpses into the river to feed the fish.
The scene of throwing corpses by the river is the climax of the whole film. It was a ceremony of handover of power under patriarchal rule. Murata personally cultivated the society into a new "Murata". And the new "Murata" in this scene, under Murata's provocation about sex and power, kills Murata himself in an extremely cruel way.
Murata's wife Aiko is a very extreme and shocking female character - a woman who loves power - she obediently dismembers her husband's body under the command of the new "Murata", kneels in a pool of her husband's blood and kisses him. The "Murata", crowned him - she is nothing but a toy in the hands of a power-holder, a toy that responds appropriately to just fiddling with her clitoris.
In this film, almost all the characters have died under the structure of patriarchy: the former rulers are killed by the new ones, the women who are extremely obsessed with power are killed by the rulers, and the obedient women are also killed. , The new ruler also suffered and finally committed suicide. Only Sheben's rebellious daughter who pursues independence and freedom eventually survives.
Resist the goddamn patriarchy. It is more extreme than patriarchy, it oppresses everything and even itself. And this is the world we really live in, a world where we can't even say "Dad, I'm afraid of pain".
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