Violence at Noon, 1966
Shino (Saeda Kawaguchi) is working as a housekeeper/domestic in the home of a couple when she is surprised by a man she knows, Eisuke (Kei Satô). Eisuke sexually assaults Shino, and then goes on to rape and murder the woman Shino works for. But when the police come to investigate, Shino is evasive. She instead conveys what happened to Matsuko (Akiko Koyama), Eisuke's wife. The film then follows as the tangled past between Eisuke, Shino, and Matsuko is revealed.
Most people fall prey, to a certain degree, to the conceit that they are the hero at the center of their own story. And while there's nothing wrong with caring about your life and pursuing your own happiness,
Violence at Noon takes this perception to a real extreme as the two central characters process their own emotions and pasts via the attentions and affections of a man they both know to be a rapist and a murderer.
The film does a great job of portraying an almost pathological pair of self-centered people by maintaining a sense of empathy for the reasons that they are willing to go to bat for someone who has not only victimized multiple women, but victimized them as well.
There's some really deft work at play here, balancing the perspective that the women have on Eisuke and the reality of the man. For both women, there is a desire (and maybe more accurately a need) for him to be a complex person with depths. If there is no depth or complexity to him, then the things he did to them also lack complexity. In one sequence, Eisuke rapes a woman while she is unconscious. Trying to understand his motives later, she keeps running up against the reality that he did it because he wanted to and he could. When she later further tries to give weight to this moment, imagining that it must have inspired a longing in him that's led to his later crimes, this notion too is shot down. Where does this leave what happened to her? Is it just an ugly thing that robbed her of her autonomy and humanity? No wonder she's like to imagine it as a piece of something grander.
As both of the main characters hem and haw about whether or not to tell the authorities that they know the identity of the High-Noon Attacker---and Eisuke continues to rack up a horrific body count, including an assault in which he hits a pregnant woman over the head with a rock--the film doesn't try to hide the very human cost that the attacks are having. Shino herself encounters a woman in the hospital, having been slashed across the chest by Eisuke as part of an attack. The woman is disgusted by Shino's pestering, and the white bandages are stained by blood that is slowly seeping through.
In lesser hands, this entire plot would come off as a kind of "b*thces be crazy* *shrug* kind of narrative. And I do have to admit that I found myself thinking "What is
wrong with you?!?!?!?!?!" about both women many, many times during my viewing. But both women have come to center incredible damaging relationships with men as a big part of their personal identities. (In addition to the abuse she suffers at Eisuke's hands, Shino is also part of a demented romance with another young man from her village). Even if I couldn't necessarily get onboard with their viewpoint, I could at least understand how they had come to foster an unhealthy dependence on this violent presence in their lives.
All of the performances are great. Kawaguchi's Shino is perpetually tottering around the edge of different emotions. Her energy is manic and grows more and more unhealthy as the film goes on. Koyama portrays Matsuko's barely-held control, really showing how she must compartmentalize as Matsuko takes a group of children on a field trip as the details of her husband's crimes are broadcast over the radio. Sato does right by the story by robbing Eisuke of any real charisma. He has a detached confidence that allows you to understand why someone might find him appealing at first, but he is truly indifferent to the emotions of everyone else. His only genuine excitement comes from seeing the fear of his victims.
This dynamic between the characters is amped up to a crazy degree by the style of the film. It walks a very thin line between being exhilarating and exhausting. There is a cut about every second or two, and the cuts are accompanied by panning movements. At times it feels like trying to watch a movie while on a carousel. We pan over Shino's face. Cut. We move the same direction to Shino again. This stylistic element works best with the character of Shino, because it seems to hit her manic headspace best. When we learn that she is only 20 years old, it seems even more fitting.
The violence in the film also lands in just the right spot. Oshima does something that I tend to appreciate especially in films that feature sexual assault, which is to find ways to portray the debasement and violation of the act without exploiting the body of the victim. In this case, there's a repeated use of seeing the rapist's sweat drop onto his victim's body. *shudder* For a film that is mainly interested in the damage (short term and long term) done in the aftermath of such an attack, it does a good job of showing us just enough of the terror of the moment and then shifting most of our attention to what comes after.
A lot to think about and process with this one. It's definitely incredibly memorable in both the way that it de-centers the villain and in how it is shot and makes use of flashbacks.
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