Yuzuru Aizawa – Sat In Your Lap

The Corporations Sit There In Their Corporation Buildings And See, They’re All Corporationy And They Make Money

***This Review Contains Spoilers***

The Bad Sleep Well (悪い奴ほどよく眠る/ Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru, which translates to The Worse The Villain, The Better They Sleep) is Akira Kurosawa’s loose adaptation of Hamlet. By replacing the kings and queens of ye olden days with the chairmen of mega corporations, Kurosawa transports Shakespeare’s tale to the (then) contemporaneous sinister underworld of corporate Japan (in which the opening music score by Masaru Sato infuses jazz in with primal toms-toms as a perfect musical metaphor for this deadly urban jungle). Koichi Nishi (Toshiro Mifune) marries Yoshiko (Kyoko Kagawa), the daughter of wealthy industrialist Iwabuchi (Masayuki Mori), in an attempt to avenge the death of his father, of whom he believes Iwabuchi and his corporation are to blame. This, however, is only scratching the surface of a bizarre revenge scheme. Is Nishi’s wild and crazy plan to be or not to be?

The Bad Sleep Well has one of cinema’s most intriguing and unique first acts. The plot, characters and relationships are established through the wedding of Nishi and Yoshiko. This is not your average ceremony, however. Rather, it is a public, voyeuristic and somewhat dystopian affair swarming with journalists in which the main focus is not on the coming together of two families but rather a focus on corporate business. The wedding not only acts as the tying of a union between a man and a woman, but more so the amalgamation of the fictional entities of Dairyu Construction and Public Corp. Whereas in Hamlet the titular protagonist stages a play referencing his father’s murder, watching for the King’s reaction to the scene to ascertain whether he did commit the crime in question, in The Bad Sleep Well Nishi (unbeknownst to the attendees) has the most bizarre and superlative wedding cake delivered. A cake which is modelled after the company headquarters with a rose marking the window from which Nishi’s father plunged to his death. Aside from the intriguing, bizarre nature of this opening 20 minutes, the sequence is also made highly effective by the chatter of the onlooking journalists as well as the wedding narrator, acting as an effective way to deliver exposition – as a viewer, you become just as curious as the onlooking media men. The sequence concludes with a fitting meta-reference by two of the journalists: “Best one act I’ve ever seen.” “One act? This is just the prelude.”

The not-so-benevolent conglomerate that is Public Corp are sending officials instructing people to take their own lives or else an assassin will be sent out to do so. This is seen early in the film when a man is told by company officials, “You’ll carry this through until the end”, and immediately proceeds to throw himself in front of a moving car. With this threat in place, a government official named Wada (Kamatari Fujiwara) attempts to commit suicide by throwing himself into a volcano (and I thought Hara-Kiri was hardcore), but is prevented from doing so by Nishi (in order that he can use Wada to expose Public Corp). I might be able to accept Nishi knows about Wada’s attempt to commit suicide, but how does he know the location where he intends to do so? Likewise, at the volcano itself, Nishi waits until he can make a bad-ass entrance, even though Wada has had the opportunity to go ahead and jump into the volcano – typical movie-land logic.

In The Bad Sleep Well, Mifune is clean-shaven and suited up with specs. Yet, Mifune has the ability to play such a dorky-looking character and still look cool (“Well, well, a big muscle-bound nerd”). Likewise, he is playing a male secretary in Japan circa 1960, although no reference is made to working in a traditionally female job being beneath him. Nishi, however, is not a man you want to get on the wrong side of. From his unsettling use of a whistle motif (similar to that which is seen in Fritz Lang’s M), to going full Christian Bale’s Batman through extorting a man by hanging him out of the same window his father supposedly committed suicide. He even torments the already suicidal Wada even more by showing him his own funeral (itself a dystopian affair in which a corporation itself shows its respect by laying two huge wreaths).

Nishi’s plan, however, is complicated by the fact that he inadvertently finds himself falling in love with Yoshiko, stating he can’t take advantage of the girl after being “touched by her innocent nature on their wedding night”. Yoshiko is particularly vulnerable due to having limb length discrepancy (one leg is longer than the other), due to a motorcycling accident. In a film full of humanity at its worst, the sweet and sentimental love story within does act as a counterbalance. We get classic aborted kiss cliché, but I do appreciate films of many decades past never partaking in the dreaded liar-revealed cliché. Yoshiko’s feelings towards Nishi are reciprocated even when she is fully aware of his plan, rather than having that scene in every contemporary rom-com (you know the one); “No Yoshiko-chan, I can explain!”. Nishi, however, is not alone in his revenge plan, as he is assisted in creating a fake identity by his long-time friend and war buddy, Itakura (Takeshi Kato). There is something endearing about their bromance in that friends could be so tight to the point that he is willing to assist in such an elaborate plan. Like, yes, I will help you switch identity and use my car-repair store as a hideout in order to help you marry into a family so that you can expose an evil corporation.

The most contentious aspect of The Bad Sleep Well, however, is that of Nishi’s death. His murder occurs off-screen and is described to the viewer by Itakura, in a reverse of the classic “show, don’t tell rule” of storytelling. I am off two minds on this aspect of the story. On the one hand, it comes as a big shock to be told Nishi has suddenly been killed, and like the characters hiding out in the bombed-out factory, you can feel their palpable sense of anger and disappointment. On the other hand, for a movie which in many ways was very over the top with its jumping-into-volcanoes levels of shenanigans, it does feel quite anti-climactic. Yet, in a way, this anti-climax feels somewhat appropriate. After all, this is a story in which the bad guys win. The Public Corporation Vice President, Iwabuchi is a perfect representation of the banality of evil. While he has a human side when he is seen being a homely, domestic figure as he cooks dinner at home for his children, he is the head of a corporation which literally Jeffery Epsteins anyone how could speak out of turn with their Clinton-style body count and can shut down stories in the media, Hunter Biden laptop style (it’s hard to watch The Bad Sleep Well and not find analogies through the lens of 2020’s online political discourse). Iwabuchi speaks of his plans to run for political office, so it’s your best guess at what happens next.

Good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.

Wait A Minute, There Were No Scattered Clouds In Scattered Clouds!

***This Review Contains Spoilers***

The plot synopsis of Scattered Clouds (aka Two In The Shadow or its original Japanese title Midaregumo) sounded fascinating and had me asking myself, how does such a scenario play out in a believable and non-contrived manner? A man falls in love with the widow of a man whom he killed in a car accident and eventually, she falls in love with him in return. Sounds like the type of intriguing fodder for a daytime talk show, I can just imagine the Jerry Springer-style title – “I’m In Love With The Man Who Killed My Husband”. However, the closest counterpart to Scattered Clouds is Lloyd C Douglas’ 1929 novel Magnificent Obsession (itself later adapted into a 1954 film by Douglas Sirk).

There is a little-known acronym for a person who is responsible for the accidental death or injury of another known as a CADI (Caused Accidental Death Or Injury). The term has no official recognition but to date is the closest term in existence for such an individual. Mishima Shiro (Yūzō Kayama) accidentally kills another man by the name of Hiroshi Eda (Yoshio Tsuchiya) in a car accident, leaving his wife Yumiko (Yōko Aizawa) widowed. The accident itself is not portrayed on screen nor does it have any build-up, it is just announced out of nowhere 8 minutes into the film, making its impact all the more shocking and reflective of reality. Mishima is later found in court to be not guilty of negligence (lost control of his vehicle due to a burst tire) and the film shows the negative toll it takes on the CADI with his company forcing him to relocate which in turn ends his current relationship and leads to depression. At the same time, his guilt and compassion result in him paying money in monthly installments to the newly widowed Yumiko even though he has no legal obligation. That said, Mishima doesn’t have the wisest of intentions when he chooses to actually attend the funeral of the man he accidentally killed (even if it is to pay his respects), and easily gives away that he is the man responsible (keeping in mind he hasn’t been acquitted at this point). Evidently, his unwise decision-making extends to later in the film with his cringe-worthy attempt to woo Yumiko with a Tommy Wiseau-level line (“You were so cute, like a child, when I surprised you. Actually, you were amazingly sexy too”).

The tragedy of Yumiko Eda on-the-other-hand actually reminded me of George Bailey from It’s A Wonderful Life, a character whom the world is their oyster with the prospect of travelling and seeing the world, only to have it taken away and instead find themselves stuck living in a dead-end town. Before his untimely death, Yumiko and Hiroshi were set to move to Washington D.C. after he got the job as an ambassador for the company he works for. This plight of a woman who was dependent on her late husband also results in the disappearance of her unborn baby, only in the womb for three months at the time of her husband’s accident. Shortly afterwards she goes to a hospital in which all that is shown is a doctor telling her to count to seven, after which there is no mention of the baby: miscarriage, abortion, stillborn? Abortion was and still is legal in Japan if the mother meets an economic threshold of poor living conditions. Prior to this scene in the hospital, Yumiko is forced to endure dehumanizing bureaucracy following her husband’s death (not to mention there are even discussions of Hiroshi’s replacement at his own funeral) in which she is told “No additional postnatal allowance will be paid for a pregnancy under five months” – make of that that what you will.

The plot in Scattered Clouds does have some reliance on coincidence bringing the characters of Yumiko and Mishima together. In particular, Mishima is relocated by his company to the town in which Yumiko grew up and decides to move back following her husband’s death (that being Aomori in the prefecture of the same name) but does so without the contrivance getting in the way. Scattered Clouds does a remarkable job of conveying the naturalistic evolution of their relationship, going from Yumiko’s inability to even look at Mishima to the pair eventually falling in love. Much has to be commended for the chemistry of the two actors in making this transition believable but the real turning point in the relationship is when Mishima finally challenges Yumiko on the way she treats him despite all the amends he has tried to make, only then does she herself begin to feel a sense of guilt. I believe the other aspect which aids the believability of this unorthodox romance is the Florence Nightingale syndrome from when Yumiko spends the night caring for Mishima after he catches a fever. Scattered Clouds can serve as a companion piece to Mikio Naruse’s earlier film Yearning (Midareru), with both films featuring Yūzō Kayama in a highly unlikely will they/won’t they relationship.

Scattered Clouds also has an odd distinction of featuring quite a few “put-downs” of various eastern hemisphere cities. Aomori, where much of the picture takes place (not to mention filmed) is described as having people who are blunt and unfriendly as evidenced by the waitress at the café, serving coffee with no care. Then the city of Lahore in western Pakistan (from which Mishima is to be transferred) is described as an “awful place” as well as the movie claiming it is the birthplace of cholera. I can’t find any evidence this is the case so was this a misconception in Japan at the time (I suppose it doesn’t help when your city sounds like the name of a French prostitute)? To wrap things off, whether justly or unjustly, the film describes Dhaka, Laos, Saigon and Karachi as places no one wants to go.

Scattered Clouds was Mikio Naruse’s final film of a 37-year career and can go down as one of the finest directorial finales. Scattered Clouds is only Naruse’s 3^rd film in colour and only work in the post-black & white era and while the picture does have a more cotemporaneous feel than had it been made a few years earlier, there is still a dreamlike quality present. I just have to enquire as to what is the meaning of the film’s title as nowhere in Scattered Clouds are scattered clouds present. Well, the original Japanese title Midaregumo actually translates to Turbulent Clouds (which are present within the film during a key scene in which Mishima comes down with a fever). I guess Scattered Clouds has a more romantic ring evoking classic melodrama.

Tag: Yuzuru Aizawa

Scattered Clouds [Two in the Shadow/Midaregumo] (1967)