Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)

A haunting examination of repression, passive-aggressiveness and the police procedural genre, Cure is, for the most part, brilliantly conceived and executed in a way that makes my own meager ideas filled with envy. The plot involves the potential of hypnosis, and the idea that within everyone (or, at least, all Japanese people) there is a repressed, hungry desire to lash out at the people they feel closest to. That Japan's extreme emphasis on politeness and the shamefulness of extravagant expressions of emotion creates a building resentment that can unleash itself at any time -- and the only way to be free of it is to let all that is inside be on the outside. The film also equates the methodical actions of the, uh, killer hypnotist with the film's protagonist, a police detective, and then again with a doctor attempting to investigate symptoms. In this way the film plays on ideas of power relationships, between people who ask questions and people who must answer them, regardless of their desire not to. The film's "villain" is so frightening partly because of the way he confounds would-be investigators, displaying an emptiness that makes him impervious to being known by others. The film suggests that telling other people things gives them a power over you, but that not being able to tell people things is somehow equally frightening. Perhaps it's suggesting not so much that telling people things is bad, but that our distrust of it, and the way we have come to shape it as something that gives them power and should be avoided, is the real problem. That open dialogue is not here, and the fact that it isn't is something to be feared.

Stylistically, the film also goes to great lengths to prove to the viewer that hypnosis exists and it does so by often lulling the viewer into a state of hypnosis while watching the movie. This, I think, is what sets the film apart from almost any other that I can think of. It proves its assertions within the film so perfectly, that often viewers probably don't even realize what's being done to them.

A small thing to note, and I'm not quite sure how to feel. I always thought that, for such an ambiguous movie, the ending was too neat. That it set things up in a much too A-B-C manner. Now, having recently watched and discussed this movie for my film class, I'm not so sure that's the case. I seemed to be the only person in the class that came to the conclusion I did about what was happening at the end. Maybe I'm actually going crazy and the ending I've seen is not at all what the movie is supposed to be saying? Anyone who has seen it and would like to chime in, please do so.