First, let’s talk about the contradictory individuals shown in the film.
At the beginning of the film, Mr. Yamashita, the male protagonist who received an anonymous tip-off letter, killed his wife who had committed adultery with others. The process of killing his wife was very bloody. Yamashita inserted the knife into his wife's chest one by one. The blood was sprayed on the camera from the angle of spraying down the mountain. The picture seemed to be covered with a piece of orange-red gauze. Although after the murder, he seemed to have no turbulence in his heart, and even hummed a little tune while riding a bicycle leisurely and turned himself in, but after being released on parole many years later, when he confessed his past crimes to Miss Guizi, he said excitedly:
"I killed my wife...I'm a murderer. I tried to forget it, but these hands taught me that I couldn't. Stab her in the flesh, stab her, teach me how to forget? "
Yamashita, who was released on parole, was calm and abstinent, and he was silent because he was afraid that others would know about his past. So he chose to open a barber shop in a desolate place and start a new life. Work diligently during the day, but still suffer from nightmares and insomnia at night. The people around him still knew about his past, and he cared about his past sins and was afraid of other people's glances. Therefore, he refused to accept Miss Guizi's admiration for him, and even thought about moving... The reason why he has been keeping eels is "it listens to me but I don't have to listen to it", which is a man with multiple contradictions in his heart. people.
Another parolee, Yamazaki, stands in stark contrast to Yamashita.
Yamazaki, who was released on parole, worked as a garbage collector. He recited the Buddha in his mouth every day, and hung a string of beads around his neck. Seemingly believing in Buddhism and repenting, but not forgetting carnal desires, he was jealous of Yamashita to the point of madness, and even attempted to rape Miss Guizi. Compared with Yamashita's control and repression of himself, Yamazaki publicized his own nature. Although he kept saying "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form", he also declared that he "will return to prison again for rape" because he "would rather recite Prajna Sutra under the warm crotch of a woman". He is also a person with a contradictory heart. Unlike Yamashita, Yamazaki's contradiction is relatively clearly displayed. Yamazaki was pushed into the lake by Yamashita in the climax of the push. Yamazaki pointed at Yamashita and shouted: "
You think jealousy is wrong, ugly. Even if you pretend to be jealous, jealousy is jealousy, and you are just a person!"
Speechless. Yamazaki is naked without disguise, and what about himself? Is it jealousy to kill a wife? ! Not all. If it wasn't all about jealousy, what was it? We don't know.
Second, the metaphors in the film are handled very well. Here as an example.
I thought that bento represented "love" in "The Eel". In the first part of the movie, when Yamazaki goes out fishing, he takes the bento made by his wife; but when Yamazaki decides to go home to catch the rape, he gives the bento to someone else. This "send" shows Yamazaki's determination. Later, Miss Guizi showed her love to Yamazaki, and took the prepared lunch to the bridge to wait for Yamazaki's small fishing boat to pass by. The first time she wanted to hand it directly to Yamazaki, but she didn't expect Yamazaki to pass under the bridge without squinting; the second time, she figured out a way to hang the bento with a rope and pass it to the fishing boat that Yamazaki passed by, but Yamazaki still didn't appreciate it. Yamazaki's refusal of bento these two times is actually a refusal of Guizi's "love". But at the end, Guizi took the bento and handed it to Yamashita, who had been revoked from parole and returned to prison (at this time, the close-up shot of Guizi suddenly changed to a panoramic shot), and Yamashita took a few steps forward and took the bento. This is Yamashita's acceptance of Guizi's love.
Director Imamura Shohei is good at portraying the true nature of human beings and recording the survival of humble people. Compared with "Narayama Festival Kao", "Eel" has more technical special effects, such as the blurred feeling of killing his wife and blood splashing on the screen at the beginning of the film and the psychedelic feeling when the mountain enters the fish tank to chase the non-existent informative letter. Although the addition of these surreal shots makes the color of the film better to set off the tone of the story, I feel that it has lost a bit of the realism of Jincun's characteristics.
Therefore, even though both won the Palme d'Or, I prefer the latter, which shows the true state of the "maggot man".
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