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| Eel, The |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 117 |
| Public Rating: 10.00 (1 votes) |
Director: Shohei Imamura |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Foreign/Drama |
Year: 1996 |
| Writer(s): Shohei Imamura, Motofumi Tomikawa, and Daisuke Tengan, based on |
| Reviewed by: Goatdog |
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This odd, affecting little film follows the attempts of a convicted murderer (played by Koji Yashuko) to reintegrate himself into normal life after an eight-year sentence for murdering his philandering wife. While in prison, he captured and kept as a pet the titular eel, which becomes the only living thing Yamashita feels like he can talk to. He sets up shop as a barber, having learned the trade in prison, and attempts to keep to himself. This is difficult because he is quickly befriended by the local eccentrics. Life is peachy until he comes upon a woman (played by Misa Shimizu) attempting to commit suicide. After her recovery, she foists herself upon the taciturn Yamashita as a helper, turning the barber shop into a popular place with her good cheer. She comes to love him, but he won't let himself get close to her, afraid that another relationship would end up the way his marriage did. Problems arise when some of her secrets raise their ugly heads, as does a garbageman who knows Yamashita from his prison days and threatens to ruin his life by telling everyone.
The best way to describe this film is "quirky." Most of the characters are oddballs, with the main character (whose best friend is an eel) leading the pack. There's a local boy who builds a shrine to attract UFOs, for example. The filmmaking style is quirky, too. In a really interesting trick, director Imamura superimposes visuals over the eel's tank, ghostly representations of whatever Yamashita is talking to his slippery friend about.
The film is a remarkably mature portrait of how much people can change. It doesn't attempt to justify Yamashita's violence; even though his wife was cheating on him, the film clearly presents his actions as not a crime of passion but coldhearted murder. I think the look on her face as she calmly accepted her fate haunts him, so that even after eight years in prison, he makes no claims of having paid the price for his crime. His life is almost an extension of his sentence. He is afraid that the violence is still in him, so he is hesitant to get involved with the beautiful young girl who so obviously adores him. The garbageman who was in prison with Yamashita is a perfect foil, because he does all the accepted things to atone: he prays, he burns candles, he does penitence. None of them work, because his heart really isn't in it. Yamashita's silent penitence is much more meaningful because his anguish is apparent in every gesture and expression.
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