Onibaba Reviews

(OK) Minimal, agressive, straight but perverse, fantastic and realistic in the way fantasy is presented. Running for sex in the hot atmosphere is convincing...

''You want to see a face that you could fall in love with?''

During the Nanboku-chō period, a woman (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura) live in a small hut in a susuki grass swamp.

Nobuko Otowa: Kichi's Mother

Onibaba (鬼婆, literally Demon Woman) (1964) is a Japanese horror film based on a Buddhist parable. Directed by Kaneto Shindō, the film is set in rural Japan in the fourteenth century and features Nobuko Otowa and Jitsuko Yoshimura as a woman and her daughter-in-law who attack and kill passing samurai, strip them of their valuable armour and possessions, and dispose of the bodies in a deep pit.



Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba is the sort of challenging, hypnotic work to awaken spurges of inspiration and splatterings of horror. Until its Criterion DVD in the US, not many people had heard of Onibaba, this is simply an outright shame: Onibaba is a horrifyingly visual masterpiece with depth.
As well as being a visual masterpiece, Onibaba is also the sort of story that contains questions poised at morality and principles driving the desperation, lusts and hunger humanity is spurned with.
It is the sort of story made for contemplation; Mysterious and so blissfully unconcerned with self gratification, driven by a primally raw score from
Hikaru Hayashi.
The mask to the face story concerns a woman and her daughter-in-law as they muster and lead a brutal existence amidst tall, wind swept grass and lost wandering samurai. Having no real source of income or sustenance, the two hide among the swaying reeds and kill the unsuspecting samurai, selling their clothes and armour for food. After the bodies are stripped, they are tossed into a hole where, we learn eventually, is littered with previous victims. The women kill, strip, and sell without emotion or even the hint of a troubled conscience, as they are, in the final equation, driven to murdering by the necessity to survive. Their lives appear to be nothing more than eating, retrieving water, retaining patience, and bargaining with their stolen goods. Suddenly, a strange man appears, revealing himself to be a friend of the young woman’s husband, whom we learn has been killed in battle. The friend is now looking for food and quite possibly, a little more...

''You turned into a demon! Now stay that way.''

Entrance of the man sends the story into a decidedly erotic spin, exposing the buried desires of each woman, as well as their competitive and lustful instincts. The mother, now past her prime, demands that the young girl stay away from the stranger, but naked lust dictates other behaviours from her. Each evening, while the mother pretends to sleep, the young girl slips away and runs — in an almost insane frenzy — to the man’s hut. She is insatiable to be sure, and the sexual escapades are quite graphic for the time. Not only do we see exposed breasts, but the coupling reveals an often ignored element of human sexuality — pure, inescapable need void of morality and grace. An interview with the director addresses the central importance of sex, for at this time and even today, what else is there? Perhaps when the trappings of civilization are laid bare, that is all we have to remind us of our temporary physical existence.
This is not a spiritual journey in the conventional sense, as the characters reveal their beliefs in an indifferent cosmos on several occasions. As a character shouts, "I am a human being, not a demon..." (context is vital here, however), revealing the essential humanism of the director’s vision. Who we are and what we become as we face the essence of survival become the only vital questions worth asking.

The imagery and cinematography, from Kiyomi Kuroda, is among the best I have seen, for if cinema is anything, it is the combination of the visual and the aural to create an overall sensation with audiences. Thus here we have a distinct world, impartial from any other seen, and despite its unfamiliarity in terms of experience, it retains comfortability and reassurance with the viewer. Whether one takes the film as an allegory or even literally, these characters are fascinating to behold; As they make moral and ethical decisions that do not reduce the world to rigid dichotomies.
Onibaba, for numerous reasons, sparked personal emotions as well as any intellectual appreciation regarding metaphors and symbolism. Therefore, it is increasingly exceeding admiration, releasing this high level of entrancement; This piece is gloriously visceral. Onibaba is cinema, then, in the best sense — moving, striking, honest, and devoid of pre-tense. The film aspires to be more than escapism, but it achieves its fundamental deadlines, avoiding the pitfalls of so many that strive to be self-consciously artsy. Love, sex, desire, death, superstition, and the perils of age — perhaps all, perhaps none. Onibaba is so important because it lingers on in the mind, leaves us enthralled and thinking, which is exactly what film lovers expect from a layered work of art. This is one of the best horror films not just in Japanese Cinema but in World Cinema and rivals anything to come out of the East or West since.

''I'm not a demon! I'm a human being!''