The theme is about jealousy, the dark side of human beings, how to control or even destroy this emotion has become the dark thread of this film. The bright line of the film is about how Yamaguchi lived again after he was released from prison.
I feel that Imamura likes to use surrealism very much. There are many scenes in the movie that use these surreal processing, or stream-of-consciousness techniques. For example, in the scene where Yamaguchi confessed to Keiko that he was a murderer, the lights behind the stairs went on and off with emotion. There is also the fact that Yamaguchi is placed in an eel water tank, implying that Yamaguchi never got out of the shadow of killing his wife, or that he did not dare to face his jealousy.
Masters like to use some indifferent shots, such as the two close-ups of toads that appear in the film, and the shot of the bride at the end, does it represent a new beginning?
In fact, I still don’t understand the intention of the eel very well. Contacting the habit of the eel to lay eggs in reverse flow represents a new life? Redemption? Going upstream, like our life? Although there will be countless people killed in the middle, but some of them will persist to the end? Hahaha
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