The Eel (Unagi, 1997)

One of my favorite actors is Koji Yakusho. He has a way of melting into his characters and becoming them in a very basic, natural manner. I hadn't realized he was in Unagi, (or had forgotten), so I was pleasantly surprised to witness another brilliant yet subdued performance on his part. Brilliant in 1997's Cure, acclaimed for his role in 1999's Charisma, 2000's Korei, his brief appearance in 2001's horror masterpiece Kairo, a Jeremy Irons-like duplicitous role in 2003's Doppelganger, his resume is one of the best. This was the first non-horror film I've seen of his. In Unagi, he plays Takuro, a white-collar salaryman who works in the city and resides in a small countryside village with his beautiful wife named Emiko. He has a long commute to and from his job and a seemingly dull or uneventful job (although we only get a minimal glimpse of it at the very beginning of the film). On a regular basis, he joins friends, acquaintances and perhaps colleagues to fish the sea on a pier outside of the close-knit village.

Takuro squeezes onto the same train everyday, probably in the same car... well, you get the idea of a regimented lifestyle, but one Takuro seems to willingly get by with. One particular day on the trip home, he pulls an anonymous note from his pocket and reads that his wife has been having an affair, usually whilst he is fishing. I wondered why the movie didn't set the affair to coincide with him being at work, but it makes more sense when you see it. He makes his walk down the narrow road to his home and greets his smiling wife. He ditches his suit , accepts a prepared, boxed dinner (lovingly wrapped) and leaves per usual for much fishing. It's eerie to hear Emiko ask "How long will you be gone?" as a viewer because we obviously know what's happening. Takuro doesn't miss a beat and responds that he'll 'be gone as long as usual'. Takuro spends a shorter time at the pier tan usual and bids the others farewell. On the way, he reminisces about the anonymous note; it also mentions what type and color the man arrived in. When he arrives to his home, he does find a white sedan parked and half-covered with brush next to the house. He sneaks around the house to a window and peeks through the window. What follows is the reason he's sent to prison, where (at another unknown point) he catches and begins to confide in an eel (he's lost all trust in people) which he keeps in a prison fountain with help from a few guards. The guards allow him to keep the eel when his parole officer assumes custody of Takuro upon his release. Takuro begins to reestablish himself by purchasing a rundown barber shop in a tiny coastal town full of interesting characters and soon a mysterious woman enters the town. She brings a mix of disruption, controversy and maybe hope to the residents of the small coastal town and Takuro himself.

To Unagi's benefit (or not), the story is told with an array of styles. It doesn't stray form it's intention to take Takuros plight seriously, but at times, it seemed to go off on a tangent concerning other characters. I believe this was detrimental to bringing Takuro's redemption to fruition. I'm not saying that developing the other characters is a mistake, I'm just saying that in this case it worked against a complete resolution. Hell, for all I know, that could of been the objective all along; for the ending to remain open-ended and unresolved fully. With characters like Akira Emoto's character Tamotsu (Maborosi, Doppelganger) as Takuro's level-headed, wise, father figure-type new friend, could conceivably live on past the ending. The film as a whole has that sort of natural feel to it and an uncanny sense of taking place in two different eras. Add a touch of hilarity now and then to ease the dramatic air and this turns out to be a surprisingly great movie.

Kourei (Seance, 2000)

While I certainly appreciate a good remake, it's also my belief that people should first and foremost take them for what they are — homages to their source film. That's being said, there are two legitimate reason for seeing this film: as a compare/contrast piece against Bryan Forbes' 1964 thriller Seance on a Wet Afternoon (would make for an interesting double feature), and more importantly Kiyoshi Kurosawa's direction. If you're not familiar with the other Kurosawa, or you're dying to get into Asian Horror, this is as good a place as most to cut your teeth.

Opening in the city, a small girl is (not so easily) coaxed from a playground by a stranger for the purposes of ransom. Cut to one Sato (Koji Yakusho of Doppleganger, Cure, and Kairo fame — I am, after all, watching this in the United States...), a humble sound technician, who ventures into the countryside to record natural sounds for a coworker in his studio, upon where he unknowingly takes possession of the girl originally kidnapped. Things become far more complex down the line when Sato's wife Junco, a self–described medium, involves her acquaintance Hayasaka —  paranormal studies student who often works in tandem with the police.

Both films are based on a Mark McShane suspense short story by the same name. Kourei, originally released to television, adopts a slower, more methodical style, which Kurosawa juices up with touches of Japanese folklore — remaining true to his style, as well allowing the movie to progress on its own accord. There are several tense and frightening moments, there's no question Kurosawa employs his somewhat trademark mix of confusion and fright — a style which appeared as far back as his 1992 gem The Guard from the Underground.

So needless to say, the direction is great. There's a particular scene inside the Sato home where Kurosawa uses alternating planes of lightness and darkness, in varying distances among the doorways which makes for a spine-tingling scene. It borders on, not only directorial, but film greatness. Don't ask me why, but it's just brilliant. The telling of the story, while staying faithful to the crux of the original, does, (I say regrettably), lose a bit of punch with the addition of the horror aspects. Some essential action and substance is replaced with Japanese elements that quite frankly detract from an already suspenseful story. Then again, I tell myself that it was made for a Japanese audience, not unlike the American Grudge remake — sensibilities bound by geography.

Doppelganger (2003)

In the open, the such described Doppelganger Production Committee asks its audiences: "What would you do if you ran into your perfect double, your "doppelganger" - someone who looks exactly like you?" In classic thriller fashion, the opening proceeds with added violins a-screeching and horns a-pulsing, yet this self-described "most frightening film yet" plays more like a hallucinatory, intellectual endeavor than that of the straight tingler the tag–line portends.

Doppelganger jumps to and fro between concurrent story-lines. Firstly, we see a woman, later known to us as Yuka (Hiromi Nagasaku), leaving a home improvements store as she waves to her brother Takashi, who appears to be aimlessly wondering theough the store's parking lot. Yuka offers him a ride back to the house they share (while he's studying), but he all but ignores her calls. Yuka returns home to a phone call which informs her that her brother, whom she has just seen, is at the area hospital...deceased! This, of course, is a shock. But, a now confused Yuka notices that Takashi is sitting in the next room, writing away on his computer.

Cut to an engineer named Hayasaki (the great Koji Yakusho). He's an idea-man at a large electronics company working to perfect his lasted project — an so–dubbed artificial body that will revolutionize the lives of the paralyzed. After a successful first series of tests for the company board, to secure further funding, Hayasaki is then criticized over the pace of the project and asked to either finalize the design or accept a do–nothing management position and let someone else finish his work. He, of course, refuses. Frustrated and insulted, Hayasaki heads home...  only to discover he's already there! The film then vacillates between Hayasaki's and Yuka's stories until a point when they find themselves sitting on opposite sides of the same table. How can they help each other?

Doppelganger is truly fantastic. Many will disagree. Kiyoshi Kurosawa isn't known to just slap together a film without purpose, and after a couple of viewings the brilliance dawned on me. Beyond the notion of a doppelganger in the first place, a duality erupting into being (under abnormal or stressful circumstances) and what is to be done in this event lies at the film's epicenter. What's even more outstanding is that the movie itself acts as the character which leads. The first half is tense, ambitious, and wrought with friction. It's dark. The latter half is quite different — one might say the opposite of the first. It spins irreverent, lively, and comedic — filled with light and life. Dare I say meaning?

Doppelganger is a much deeper film than most may be willing to give it credit for being, but none could argue its originality. I laughed out loud at the crazy times and gasped at every swing of some object bound for a certain lead character's cranium. A bold piece of work.