Review: Shindô Kaneto’s Onibaba Haunts Its Way Onto Criterion Blu-ray

This harrowing tale of human survival at all costs receives a superb Blu-ray upgrade, along with a new commentary track.

OnibabaWriter-director Shindô Kaneto’s Onibaba is a ferocious yet strikingly poetic examination of the human instinct for survival against all odds, cloaked in the guise of a moody monochrome ghost story. Only Shindô ultimately strips away, with a coruscating dose of irony, any notion of the supernatural, leaving in its stead a profoundly humanist statement about political oppression and sexual repression.

Set during Japan’s medieval Warring States period, the film quickly establishes a Hobbesian state of “war of all against all” where life truly is “nasty, brutish, and short.” The location is immediately evocative: an endless sea of tall grasses, with a thatched hut in its midst, and a deep, dark pit somewhere not far off. Its inhabitants are a pair of nameless figures who fulfill almost archetypal roles: a middle-aged woman (Okawa Nobuko) and her young daughter-in-law (Yoshimura Jitsuko) who are corrupted by desperation. We’re introduced to these characters as they matter-of-factly slaughter and rob a pair of wandering, wounded samurai before dumping their bodies down into the pit. The purloined armor and arms go to local black marketeer Ushi (Tonoyama Taiji) in exchange for a meager portion of millet.

Shindô seems to enjoy playing up the women’s almost feral existence. They gorge on food before collapsing exhaustedly in a stupor. At one point, they kill and devour a small dog. Besides murder and thievery, their only other occupation seems to involve endlessly beating their laundry dry with a large cudgel. After thoroughly establishing this primordial routine, Shindô introduces Hachi (Satô Kei), who returns from the wars clad in borrowed monk’s robes and with tales of impressment and brutal battle, including news that Kishi, the older woman’s son and younger woman’s husband, was murdered by a gang of peasants.

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More importantly, Hachi’s intrusion introduces into this homeostatic setup the unruly element of sexual desire, which Shindô metaphorically equates with the forces of nature by staging much of the subsequent lovemaking in the midst of the windswept grasses, complete with cutaway shots of flowers being pollinated. Where their frenzied coupling is consistently marked by signs of fecundity, the older woman’s awakening of frustrated desire is cannily captured when she desperately thrusts herself against a barren pine tree. The untrammeled course of all these unchecked powers culminates in a calamitous storm.

Shindô only introduces the idea of supernatural occurrences in the final act, before peeling away the veil to reveal the human factors lying behind them. While discussing the fate of those who die in battle, Hachi brazenly disavows any possibility of the afterlife, while the older woman tries to thwart her daughter-in-law’s unslaked desire by regaling her with tales of the Buddhist hells that await those consumed with lust. Her sermon works both as a clear acknowledgement that, in this world, religion works to keep the lowly in their place, and, at the same time, it’s an astute revelation of the older woman’s psychological repression.

The iconic mask worn by a proud samurai (Uno Jûkichi) who’s lost among the towering grasses only makes its appearance in the film’s final minutes. (Incidentally, it depicts a character from Noh theater, that of a jealous female demon, and so it’s ideal for its purpose here; it also inspired the design of the demon in The Exorcist.) He’s soon deprived of mask and life, all the better for the older woman to terrorize her daughter-in-law with it. The appearances of the demon floating through the grasses are some of the film’s most striking imagery.

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Onibaba concludes with several ironic reversals of fortune, which, taken together, demonstrate that there’s no safe haven in this world, and that the borderline between the all-too-human and the truly demonic is thin at best and nonexistent at worst. Whatever conclusions we may want to extract from the film, its final shots leave us quite literally in mid-air as to the fate of a major character. It’s a wavering, uncertain ambiguity that, in its own way, is as ironic as anything else in this clear-sighted paean to the survival instinct in us all.

Image/Sound

The Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray presentation of Onibaba, a “restored high-definition transfer” from a fine-grain film print, looks mighty impressive. Shindô Kaneto and cinematographer Kuroda Kiyomi prove themselves masters at composing for Scope, creating dynamic shots of wavering grasses and unusual (but always impeccably balanced) compositions that use every inch of the extra-widescreen frame. The image is clean of any artifacts. Blacks are deep and uncrushed; contrast is well-balanced; grain levels are suitably cinematic; and fine detail and clarity both come through impressively. The Japanese LPCM mono tracks puts all proper emphasis on composer Hayashi Hikaru’s elegantly eerie score.

Extras

Criterion carries over the limited bonus features from their earlier DVD release of Onibaba and add a commentary track (recorded in 2001) that features Shindô and actors Satô Kei and Yoshimura Jitsuko. The chatty track contains a wealth of production anecdotes, an intriguing comparison between the profession of actor and director, and more detail than you’ll ever want to know about the process of moxibustion. In a 2003 on-camera interview, Shindô discusses his early career, goes into the themes and visual strategies of Onibaba, as well as its release and reception. There are also nearly 40 minutes of silent Super 8 footage (both color and monochrome) shot by actor Satô Kei during the filming of Onibaba. More than just a rough assembly of raw footage, the footage is shaped to tell a tale, and offers some fascinating glimpses into the unique on-location living and filming conditions. Finally, the accompanying booklet contains a canny reading of Onibaba from critic Elena Lazic, a translation of the Buddhist fable that inspired the film, and a mission statement from Shindô.

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Overall

Criterion gives Shindô Kaneto’s harrowing tale of human survival at all costs a superb Blu-ray upgrade, along with a new commentary track with the filmmaker.

Score: 
 Cast: Okawa Nobuko, Yoshimura Jitsuko, Satô Kei, Tonoyama Taiji, Uno Jûkichi  Director: Shindô Kaneto  Screenwriter: Shindô Kaneto  Distributor: The Criterion Collection  Running Time: 103 min  Rating: NR  Year: 1964  Release Date: October 5, 2021  Buy: Video

Budd Wilkins

Budd Wilkins's writing has appeared in Film Journal International and Video Watchdog. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

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