Onibaba (1964) "The Hole" - CRITERION Remaster

Deep within the wind-swept marshes of war-torn medieval Japan, an impoverished mother and her daughter-in-law eke out a lonely, desperate existence. Forced to murder lost samurai and sell their belongings for grain, they dump the corpses down a deep, dark hole and live off of their meager spoils. When a bedraggled neighbor returns from the skirmishes, lust, jealousy, and rage threaten to destroy the trio’s tenuous existence, before an ominous, ill-gotten demon mask seals the trio’s horrifying fate. Driven by primal emotions, dark eroticism, a frenzied score by Hikaru Hayashi, and stunning images both lyrical and macabre, Kaneto Shindo’s chilling folktale Onibaba is a singular cinematic experience.


In war-torn medieval Japan, two women survive in a sea of grass by killing stray samurai. When a friend of their son and husband returns, a tale of lust, jealousy, and mysterious supernatural forces unfolds. Kaneto Shindo tells his lurid story, based on a traditional Japanese folk tale, with rare visual flair. A gripping, hypnotic film, presented in the sumptuous manner we have come accustomed to by the Criterion Collection.


Onibaba is set during a brutal period in history, a Japan ravaged by civil war between rivaling shogunates. Weary from combat, samurai are drawn towards the seven-foot high susuki grass fields to hide and rest themselves, whereupon they are ambushed and murdered by a ruthless mother (Nobuko Otowa) and daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura) team. The women throw the samurai bodies into a pit, and barter their armour and weapons for food. When Hachi (Kei Sato), a neighbour returning from the wars, brings bad news, he threatens the women's partnership.


Erotically charged and steeped in the symbolism and superstition of its Buddhist and Shinto roots, Kaneto Shindo's Onibaba is in part a modern parable on consumerism, a study of the destructiveness of sexual desire and filmed within a claustrophobic sea of grass one of the most striking and unique films of the last century, winning Kiyomi Kuroda the Blue Ribbon Award for Cinematography in 1965. The memorably frenetic drumming soundtrack was scored by long-time Shindo collaborator Hikaru Hayashi.


Mr. Shindo's symbolism, which undoubtedly is more of a treat to the Oriental than the Occidental eye and ear, may be oblique, but his approach to amour is direct. Not the man to indulge in excessive dialogue, he has his laconic principals' actions speak louder than any words, adequately translated by English subtitles. The lusty bouts between the robust and comely daughter-in-law, Jitsuko Yoshimura (she was seen here previously as the teen-ager in the Japanese "The Insect Woman") and the ill-fated deserter, played in rough, gruff obvious style by Kei Sato, are as frank and torrid as any exposed here in the recent past. As the mother-in-law, Nobuko Otawa, who also was starred in "The Island," makes an oddly appealing and tragically lone figure competing for and with men in a world of famine, immorality and destruction.


The director's brooding tale is abetted by Hiyomi Kuroda's cloudy, low-key photography and Hikaru Kuroda's properly weird background musical score. But despite Mr. Shindo's obvious striving for elemental, timeless drama, it is simply sex that is the most impressive of the hungers depicted here.


This XviD version has been ripped to fit on one third of a single-layer DVD.
There is no audio commentary on the original DVD.
For the uncompressed DVD9 with extras, please see CerealRipper's original post.