Before "The eel" I saw two other films of Shohei Imamura. "The ballad of Narayama" (1983), who won the Palme d'or in Cannes, and "Black rain" (1989). Imamura belongs to the new wave generation of Japanese directors after the war generation (Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi) and the post war generation (Kobayashi, Ichikawa and Shindo) had put Japanese films firmly on the map of the world of cinema. Imamura was at its peak during the eighthes (beginning with "Vengeance is mine" (1979)) and nineties (ending with "The eel" (1997)).
With "The eel" Imamura won the Palm d'or for the second time and it was also a favorite movie of a film teacher regularly performing in my local arthouse cinema. Especially the last mentioned reason made me curious to see the film.
"The eel" is a film about crime, punishment and redemption. Especially about redemption as the crime and punishment elements are dealt with in the first quarter of the movie. A man finds out about the adultery of his wife, murders her in a fit of rage, turns himself in to the police and serves eight years in prison.
His release from prison is in effect the real beginning of the movie. It is obvious that the man (Takura played by Koji Yakusho who also played in "Shall we dance?" (Masayuki Suo) the year before) has been damaged psychologically. When released he continued to walk at marching pace for a while and he only talks to his pet eel.
After a while he meets a woman (Keiko played by Misa Shimizu). She obviously likes him, but he keeps treating her very detached. When she makes him a lunch box for his fishing trip he simply refuses to accept. What is the reason behind his behaviour? Resembles the new woman his former wife too much? After all his former wife also made a lunch box for his fishing trips and subsequently betrayed him with her lover when he was out fishing. Or does he no longer trusts himself in a relationship with a woman? Is he of the opinion that he does not deserve a second chance in love? And what about the woman? Why does she hang on to a man that treats her so coldly?
A lot of questions about these two persons slowly growing towards each other and towards a normal life. The problem is not so much that the film does not give clear cut answers. The problem is that the film distracts too much from this (in my opinion central) relationship by a lot of crazy actions by crazy people, especially in the last 30 minutes.
Finally a compliment for the photograpy. Making beautiful images of a beautiful landscape is easy. Making beautiful images of a somewhat littery landscape is much harder. The images of the nightly fishing expeditions after the release from prison are very atmospheric.
