Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Produced by Akira Kurosawa and Tomoyuki Tanaka
Written by Shinobu Hashimoto, Eijiro Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa, and Hideo Oguni
Cinematography by Yuzuru Aizawa
Lighting by Ichiro Inohara
Art Directed by Yoshiro Muraki
Music by Masaru Sato
Starring
Toshiro Mifune as "Nishi"
Masayuki Mori as Iwabuchi
Takashi Shimura as Moriyama
Ko Nishimura as Shirai
Kamatari Fujiwara as Wada
Takeshi Kato as "Itakura"
Kyoko Kagawa as Yoshiko
Tatsuya Mihashi as Tatsuo
. . .
"Wada, still ready to die for them and let them go scot-free? Don't you want revenge?"
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
The Public Corporation has entered into a partnership with the Japanese government to develop a sizeable chunk of land. One of their executives jumps out of a window. His death is ruled a suicide, but suspicions persist that he was driven to end his own life. Or maybe he was even thrown. The police investigate. Journalists ask difficult questions. An unknown informant passes notes to the cops. But hard evidence remains elusive.
The Bad Sleep Well depicts a world of perfectly rationalized corruption, deceit, and murder to the point where an executive level corporate villain-Iwabuchi-can rip off the public for millions, order the deaths of potential witnesses, and enjoy grilling with his family on the weekends. It doesn't matter that his daughter's wedding is crashed by journalists and cops. The graft is an open secret. But the big bosses never go to jail. Key witnesses end up jumping out of windows or running in front of trucks. The code of silence inflicts shame as a weapon driving men to end their own lives rather than testify in open court against their criminal masters.
Of course, if necessary, a hired assassin can be instructed to step out of the shadows and blast a troublesome weak link into the great beyond.
Our villain, Iwabuchi, isn't even the top of the power structure. He's just a highly placed middle man. Sure, he dreams of gaining enough executive clout to move into politics, but by the end of this tale I wasn't convinced he had the Wrong Stuff. Iwabuchi is effective and dutiful to his mostly offscreen masters, but that's also probably why he'll never rise much higher than Vice President. The offscreen power has Iwabuchi right where it needs him. Hey, it's the middle men who do all the work, right?
The informant is a man named Nishi, who has married Iwabuchi's daughter. Nishi's father was the guy who jumped out of a window. Nishi is Iwabuchi's executive secretary. Nishi has positioned himself to tear down the Public Corporation from the inside, but he needs hard evidence he can present to the prosecutor's office. To that end, Nishi engages in elaborate deceptions to ensnare one of the corporate officers so that he can gather the necessary evidence.
Nishi's elaborate deceptions include a huge cake shaped like the office building where his father was driven to suicide or murdered outright; convincing a crooked executive that he's being haunted by another recently dead colleague thereby driving him insane; and using a bomb shelter as his own private prison to starve yet another business criminal into giving up the locations of incriminating financial documents. Nishi doesn't use a gun, but he’s as ruthless as Mike Hammer or Charles Bronson in his own way.
Nishi is aided and abetted in his vigilante quest by his best friend Itakura. Nishi and Itakura were assigned duty in a munitions factory during World War II. This factory was bombed into rubble. Nishi and Itakura survived by hiding out in the bomb shelter that now serves as their secret prison. From the ruins of empire are born a pair of anti-corruption avengers, who fight to expose the false prosperity of their age as the product of graft, murder, and entrenched oligarchs . . . !
Oh, if only it were that simple.
After all, the title is The Bad Sleep Well.
Nishi is hard-boiled, but he feels guilty about deceiving his wife, Yoshiko. But that guilt isn't all-consuming. Although Nishi stops short of full-on murder, he never relents. At one point he castigates himself for not being able to hate his targets enough. One of the darker notions of this film is that Nishi is right. Normal people aren’t wired to operate like Iwabuchi and his offscreen masters. Normal people feel compelled by conscience to tell the truth, to not steal, and to not kill or drive people to self-destruction. Therefore, justice is totally fucked.
The Bad Sleep Well is shot in widescreen black and white, part of a cycle of works exploring film noir by filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Much of what transpires is driven by terrific performances that range from realism to Gothic expressionism. The heroes have grandiose motivations mixed with somewhat unlikely methods, while the villains are rather low-key, matter-of-fact, just doing their jobs. This contrast suggests the normalization of evil in the world. Kurosawa has no choice but to crowbar a pair of elevated, theatrical avengers into this grimly self-perpetuating reality as a form of defiance. It's not a million miles away from the more blatant fantasies of Astro Boy, Kamen Rider, Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man in its conception, but where it all ends up . . .
Hey, it's not called The Righteous Sleep Well, is it?
No. It isn't.
My favorite scene is where Iwabuchi speaks to his offscreen master on the phone. As he hangs up, he is literally bowing to the phone. That’s how powerful the force of evil is in this film. Iwabuchi isn't even bowing to a person but an instrument. Which is a strange image: one instrument bowing to another . . .
Alas, poor Nishi . . . did you ever have a chance in a world that runs on such murderous conformity?
