DIRECTOR: Shohei ImamuraSadako is told to beware the family curse, and it's true she finds herself paying for the transgressions of one of her ancestors.
WRITERS: Shohei Imamura, Shinji Fujiwara, Keiji Hasbebe
CAST: Masumi Hurukawa, Ko Nishimura, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sinsaku Himeda
COUNTRY: Japan
GENRE: Drama
MISCELLANY: 150m; with subtitles; on DVD
Yet if Sadako is cursed, it's by the living, not the dead. By her husband, who betrays her, beats her, belittles her, and bosses her around. By her mother-in-law and her son Masaru, who also lord over her, calling her fat and lazy. By her husband's myopic mistress, who hypocritically stalks her with a camera in the hopes of capturing an indiscretion. By the thief who breaks into her home and rapes her, then decides he loves her and shows it by forcing himself on her again and again.
After the first assault, Sadako considers her options. Reporting the crime is ruled out; the shame would be unbearable. Suicide appears the honorable thing to do, but first she cleans the house. Soon, she's devouring a plate of cold food, deferring her death until she sees her child again. Sadako's feeble suicide attempts are portrayed with a gentle, life-affirming humor. Eventually, self-destruction turns to self-preservation.
After the assault, Sadako recalls a scene from her youth, when a suitor called up to her bedroom window. That she opened the window strikes her as important in retrospect. Though never spoken, there is a sense Sadako blames herself for the rape, and her passivity dares the viewer to blame her, too. Many characters mistake Sadako's humility for lack of intelligence, but the director discerns this meek woman's wisdom, and her will to live. It is hard to believe that a man made "Intentions of Murder," so sensitive and nuanced is the portrait of the heroine.
There is ever a thin line between fantasy and reality; does Sadako cease at a certain point to be a victim by making the rapist her lover? Imamura is not explicit, but takes pains to reveal Sadako's thoughts, through reflective voiceovers and striking images. When she meditates on the dead, a shirt hanging on a clothesline dances in the breeze. One of the most memorable images, evocative of Maya Deren's "Meshes" — Sadako's frightened face reflected in the surface of an iron wielded by the thief — is repeated when her husband forces himself on her. Another haunting image, the corpse of Masaru's pet mouse, eaten hollow by its cage companion, re-emerges in the child's murals. We get a glimpse of how this domestic drama is being processed by the boy through the lurid scenes he draws all over the home's sliding screens. Throughout the film, violent subterranean episodes show up in this way, as ripples on the surface of the family's life.
I left "Intentions of Murder" caring deeply for Sadako. Imamura's long-suffering heroine, like Fellini's Cabiria, is one of cinema's great survivors.
— Becky
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