Crime movies based on true events naturally become more animalistic and social in the hands of Imamura Shohei. This is Shohei Imamura's forte. Humans are animals, and food and sex are the foundation of survival. Killing is the death instinct, as is suicide. Getting money to kill is to satisfy food and sex, but Gu Jinyan's family does not belong to the class that is worried about food, so the film reserves a lot of space for sex. Imamura Shohei's films are indispensable in sex, naked sex is the most intuitive and effective way to show desire, whether it is art or life.
The film is among the many narratives of Gu Jinyan's conversations with the police at the time of his arrest and the police's inquiries about his relatives, friends, and lovers who knew him before they caught him, as well as Gu Jinyan's childhood memories and his adult life of crime and escape. conduct. It will seem a little jumpy and messy at first, but from the incestuous impulse of the father and daughter-in-law in the hot spring, the narrative thread of the film begins to become clear. Shortly at the beginning of the film, Gu Jinyan frantically kills two men driving a truck. Imamura Changhei didn't do too much editing, but recorded the whole process of his murder calmly like a documentary. The scene where he washed his hands with urine after killing people was eye-opening... Then he took the money from the deceased.
After being questioned by the police, we learned from my father that when Zhu Jinyan was a child, he hit the soldier's leg with a wooden board in order to rush to the navy that his father had recruited. out of the ship. In the conversation between Zhu Jinyan and grandma that night, we learned that his father's "weakness" made his father's tall image collapse in his heart... At the same time, Zhu Jinyan's violent tendencies had also been shown in his childhood. Since their family was a Christian, and the government only sought ships from Christian families, this prejudice against religion also left a mark of rebellion in Gu Jinyan's heart.
During his enlistment in the army, Gakujin Yan forcibly took possession of Kazuko, a village girl. He then wanted to marry Kazuko, but was opposed by his father, but he rebelled, ignoring his patriarchal power and eventually married the pregnant Kazuko. After marriage, Gakujin Yan was imprisoned for fraud, and her father went to Kazuko's residence to hope that she would not divorce. Kazuko, who didn't love Gakujin at all, took the initiative to let her naked father knead her breasts in the naked hot spring... Ignore Ethical sexuality was running high at the moment, but the father finally stopped everything and returned to reason. The sensible father let another male friend forcibly take Kazuko. After Kazuko learned that everything was arranged by her father, just to satisfy her sexual desire when her husband was not around, she calmly accepted... Sex that ignores morality is in Imamura Changping's films can be seen everywhere. For example, the incestuous family in "The Desire of the Gods", in comparison, this film is not bad... After being released from prison, Gu Jinyan learned from his mother about his wife's derailment and his ambiguous relationship with his father. Faith becomes ridiculous again, and he runs away from home to check into an inn running a prostitution business as a fictional professor. The female owner of the brothel, A Chun, has a bad relationship with her husband. The husband is looking for a woman, and A Chun is also looking for a man. Ah Chun's mother was also a murderer and was released after serving 15 years in prison. In order to destroy A Chun's business, her husband secretly gave A Chun's mother money to peep at the sex trade in the brothel, which eventually drove all the prostitutes away. And the frustrated A Chun also had a relationship with Zhu Jinyan and lived together. Gu Jin killed a lawyer and hid the body in the lawyer's closet. Then he pretended to be a lawyer and defrauded an old lady of large sums of cash. He tried to commit suicide with a rope around his neck at the lawyer's house, experiencing the thrill of death, but gave up in the end. When A Chun and his mother learned that Gu Jinyan was a wanted criminal, A Chun still hoped that Gu Jinyan would take him away. A hopeless and humble life is no different from a prison. Everyone lives like maggots. What about murderers? Morality cannot bring happiness. It is better to reevaluate all values. But the pregnant A-Chun was strangled to death by Qi Jinyan. Before his death, A-Chun said "Take me to a beautiful place"... The film is always full of cries of death instinct, to himself and to others. Later, when Zhu Jinyan went upstairs to kill A Chun's mother, he passed by his own mother. The camera then showed the scene of Zhu Jin Yan's mother appearing at his father's house. At this moment, A Chun's brothel and his father's house merged into one. Such a surreal scene is quite imaginative and sad.
At the end of the film, the visiting father said to Gu Jinyan, "You won't kill me, because you won't kill the person you hate." Gu Jinyan didn't kill his father, but his life, his behavior, his rebellion , his disdain for religion is another form of patricide. He killed his father all his life, and his father's soul lives in the body of every dead man. Imamura Shohei has made so many anti-ethical family relationships, but this film can be said to be the most in-depth psychological description and innuendo. This is a cold film full of death instinct from beginning to end.
View more about Vengeance Is Mine reviews
