KAIRO connections

[M Arnold]

>From: "Tom Mes" <china_crisis at hotmail.com>

>Some people are a bit too eager to elevate him above the level
>of a genre director,

As much as I want to call Kurosawa a horror director (I do love Cure), the 
more I see of his various "roots" the harder it is for me to define him like 
that.  Hebi no Michi, Kumo no Hitomi, Revenge, License to Live, Barren 
Illusion, and even Charisma; these aren't horror movies.  A few of his 
earlier films were horror but a number of others were yakuza stories (Katte 
ni Shiyagare series, Yakuza Taxi, etc), and if we go back to Kandagawa Inran 
Senso and Do-Re-Mi-Fa Musume no Chi wa Sawagu, we see movies that turn out 
like a cross between Nikkatsu porn and Godard.  He obviously knows a lot 
about the horror genre (his recent book has some interesting ideas on what 
counts as horror and what does not) and other genres, and he does have a 
talent for finding our scare zones, but I think his recent "horror" films 
try to examine the style with some other effect in mind.  To borrow a word 
from the Midnight Eye review of Charisma, maybe we can say they masquerade 
as horror films.

Kairo was surely aiming for the young horror film audience, but the story 
seemed to do something other than scare.  In contrast to the horror genre's 
tendency to keep the serial killer/ghost/disease in the shadows and struggle 
to do away with it, Kurosawa pulls the monster out and shows us that it is a 
manifestation of something else.  That may make the problem harder to solve, 
but it also takes some of the edge off the terror.  In the made-for-TV 
Kourei (now in the theater, I think?) the couple stops fearing their ghost 
and eventually it just becomes a nuisance.  They can't just exorcise the 
creature and expect it to disappear; they have to come to terms with their 
own acts (the ghost even looks like Yakusho Koji's character in one scene).  
Kairo is similar in that the "horror" is shown to be social phenomena 
(albeit vague) rather than just mysterious disappearances blamed on 
fantasies and ghosts.  Cure left more in the dark, and perhaps that's why it 
succeeded as a "horror film".  This doesn't mean the films aren't scary, but 
when I see a spooky Kurosawa-esque Hanako-san wiggling across the screen I 
also feel compelled to ask, what about this is scaring me and why?  I didn't 
get that feeling when I watched Ring.  There were a few scenes in Kairo when 
I thought to myself, "Wow, that looks really scary!"  However I didn't 
*feel* scared.

Kurosawa directed one episode in the recent spring Gakko no Kaidan TV 
special.  The story ended on a fairly interesting note--the one remaining 
young woman is backed into a corner by two different traditional horror 
"monsters" at once (Hanako-san and a bullied-ex-school-mate).  Hanako "gets" 
her (she disappears), and the ghosts sort of stand around for a few seconds. 
  We then see Hanako walking off into the city streets.

Sorry for the long post.  I've been watching a lot of Kurosawa recently.  
One last thing:  while we're on the subject, is it safe to call 
Zigeunerweisen and Kageroza "horror"?

Mike A

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