Directed by Shohei Imamura
Written by Keiji Hasebe and Shohei Imamura
From a novel by Shinji Fujiwara
Cinematography by Shinsaku Himoda
Edited by Mutsuo Tanji
Art Direction by Kimihiko Nakamura
Sound Recorded by Koshiro Jinbo
Music by Toshiro Mayuzumi
Produced by Masayuki Takagi and Jiro Tomoda
Starring
Masumi Harukawa as Sadako Takahashi
Ko Nishimura as Riichi Takahashi
Shigeru Tsuyuguchi as Hiraoka
Yuko Kusunoki as Yoshiko Masuda
. . .
"Oh no! The little mouse ate the big one. He must have been hungry."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
You grow up in a rural part of Japan. You find out about the big city of Tokyo, and all that it has to offer: jobs with decent wages; exciting nightlife; access to culture and learning; the prospect of romance played out against city lights; escape from stifling traditions-
But, alas, you're just a poor girl from a poor family. You'll be spared none of the monstrosity inherent within the deeply misogynist culture that envelops you, that closes in to suffocate you, to crush you, to besiege you on all fronts-
Sadako is a poor girl from the countryside who finds herself in a kinda-sorta marriage to a college librarian named Riichi. They still live quite a ways out from Tokyo, so there's a daily commute involved, but the train system is strong and reliable, if noisy to those who live near the tracks. Sadako and Riichi live near the tracks. Which is probably fine by Riichi who gets off on yelling at and assaulting Sadako. The roar of the train covers up no end of intimate crimes.
I say that Sadako and Riichi are in a 'kinda-sorta' marriage because while they go through the motions of being a hubby'n'wifey due to the specifics of Japan's family registry system-which I do not claim to fully grasp-Sadako has been denied full acceptance into Riichi's family. The point is that a complex tradition with a force of law behind it is used to ensnare Sadako in an oppressive relationship to Riichi. Riichi gets to make all sorts of patriarchal demands upon Sadako while also fucking around on her with his subordinate library colleague, Yoshiko, and maintain the fiction that he is a perfectly faithful husband. Meanwhile, Sadako is treated as a live-in domestic servant by Riichi and his family.
Riichi is a thoroughly despicable, nagging, condescending pest of a man-child who demands total submission from Sadako. He's constantly bitching her out for minor transgressions, and demanding that she show him the receipts for various financial expenditures. Sadako is the manager of the household's finances, despite Riichi's nagging. Riichi also forces himself on Sadako sexually, even while demanding that she minister to his chronic asthma. Sadako functions as a live-in nurse to the malingering, abusive Riichi on top of everything else. Riichi's career as a librarian isn't so much about a love of knowledge as it is about the pursuit of status. Riichi comes from a rural farming family who lost most of their men to the war. Presumably, Riichi's asthma saved him from military service and, therefore, death in battle.
As if this all weren't bad enough, a burglar named Hiraoka attacks Sadako in her home, and rapes her. And then this rapist develops a sick notion that he's actually in love with Sadako and that she should love him back. This rapist stalks her, and Sadako, fearing for her life, tries to appease him. She feels trapped by shame. She has no one she can trust. Sadako even attempts to end her life, but this does not go as planned. Sadako soldiers on through the endless ordeal of her days and nights.
Intentions of Murder is a kind of horror film wherein the horror springs from perfectly real causes: tradition, misogyny, violent crime, rigid gender roles, loveless marriages, the drudgery of domestic labor, and the stifling lack of choices available to impoverished victims of abuse. The moody black and white widescreen cinematography offers not open vistas but rather shadowy overwhelming enclosures through which Sadako wanders, guided by an all-but-extinguished will to survive. Sadako never quite fights back, but neither does she totally sink beneath her heavy fate. She comes close to poisoning Hiraoka, but cannot bring herself to follow through. Sadako is not a figure of bloody vengeance. Intentions of Murder offers no spectacle of payback to the audience as relief from oppression. Sadako just isn't a violent person even if We the Audience root for her to retaliate against her tormentors. Much of what Riichi demands of her is sanctioned by the larger society which confers unjust advantages upon husbands over their wives. Moreover, Sadako herself has internalized this putrid status quo due to a complex mixture of poverty, community indifference, trauma, and lack of access to information and money. Sadako knows that she deserves a better life even as she adopts a devastating fatalism regarding her suffering.
Intentions of Murder exudes a smothering feeling of sinister fate that reminded me of the irresistible evil power at work in the movie Hereditary, but minus the supernatural. Like I said, it could be viewed as a sort of naturalist horror story. This naturalism is amplified by gritty location shooting accented with some eerie in-camera hallucination sequences as Sadako cracks up due to her traumas.
Sadako does endure, though, despite the attacks from Riichi and Hiraoka. Whether she has any chance of escaping her situation is left ambiguous. Both of her tormentors are afflicted with serious health defects: Riichi's chronic asthma; Hiraoka seemingly steals to pay for heart medication. There's something approaching a Dick Tracy-esque moralistic logic at play here, wherein the villains have grotesque physical outer manifestations of inner failings, while our heroine, despite her descent into despair, retains a comparative vitality. These violent men are, ultimately, profoundly weak, and are only selected for survival by a bogus system of male supremacy-the same system that led the nation into a calamitous war, it should be noted. Sadako does start to earn some income as a seamstress by film's end, a task she has chosen for herself, but that's all we know for sure. In a world this cruel raw survival constitutes its own form of heroism.
