The eel
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The eel |
| Original title | Unagi |
| Country of production | Japan |
| original language | Japanese |
| Publishing year | 1997 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Shōhei Imamura |
| script | Shōhei Imamura, Daisuke Tengan , Motofumi Tomikawa |
| production | Hiso Ino |
| music | Shinichirō Ikebe |
| camera | Shigeru Komatsubara |
| cut | Hajime Okayasu |
| occupation | |
| |
The eel ( Japanese う な ぎ Unagi ) is a Japanese feature film from 1997, which is based on Akira Yoshimura's story Yami ni hirameku ( 闇 に ひ ら め , translated “sparkling in the dark” ). The multi-award-winning drama , directed by Shōhei Imamuras , is about a man who begins a new life after killing his wife and serving a prison sentence. The main role was taken by Kōji Yakusho .
action
The Tokyo office workers Takuro Yamashita receives anonymous letters in which his wife is accused of adultery. He goes fishing in the summer of 1988, but returns earlier than expected to check that his wife is really sleeping with other men. When the contents of the letters turn out to be true, he stabs his wife and turns himself in to the police.
Eight years later, he was released on parole. In the prison pond, he kept an eel that has become a conversation partner and friend. Yamashita renovates an abandoned barbershop in a rural area and works as a hairdresser. When he was looking for food in the swamp for his eel, which he took from prison and is now keeping in an aquarium, he sees a woman lying unconscious on the bank. The woman who reminds him of his wife wanted to kill herself. Yamashita hires Keiko, the woman's name, in his hair salon. They make the store more successful. Keiko falls in love with Yamashita and wants to approach him. However, she refuses.
A well-known Yamashita prison inmate works as a garbage collector in the area where Yamashita lives and runs his salon. Envious of Yamashita's apparent luck with Keiko and his hair salon, he tries to blackmail Yamashita by telling Keiko and others that he murdered his wife and served a prison term for it. He tells Keiko about Yamashita's past and tries in vain to rape her.
Keiko is pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, who is primarily after her mentally confused mother's money. The 34-year-old wants to have an abortion. Yamashita tells Keiko about his past himself.
Keiko goes to the bank where her ex-boyfriend works and where her mother's money is invested. She's getting the money. The ex-boyfriend angrily goes to Yamashita and wants to know where Keiko and the money are. A fight breaks out and the police are called. Keiko also joins them and reveals that she is pregnant by Yamashita.
Yamashita has been sent to prison for another year. Before doing this, he advises Keiko that she shouldn't have an abortion because he and her will look after the child. It has now become clear to him that the letters telling him of his wife's infidelity did not exist. He releases the eel into the sea.
reception
The film was shown on May 12, 1997 at the Cannes International Film Festival . In the same competition, one of the most important in the world, for the Palme d'Or as the best film, Der Aal emerged as the winner together with Abbas Kiarostami's The Taste of the Cherry . Shōhei Imamura had already won the Golden Palm for The Ballad of Narayama in 1983 .
The film was released in Japanese cinemas on May 24, 1997. Although it was not a great commercial success, it was in the favor of critics. At the 1998 Japanese Academy Awards, the film was nominated fourteen times, including Best Picture , and won three categories. Kōji Yakusho received the Kinema Junpo Award , the Hochi Film Award , the Blue Ribbon Award and the Japanese Academy Award for his performance . Shōhei Imamura won the Mainichi Film Competition directing award and a Japanese Academy Award for Best Director . Despite her rather insignificant role as the wife of the parole officer Yamashitas, Mitsuko Baisho also received numerous other prizes for The Eel .
The Golden Palm brought the film international attention. It started in cinemas in several countries by 1999. In France, where the film opened on October 1, 1997 under the title L'Anguille , it was seen over 175,000 times. In the United States, where he worked for the Independent Spirit Award as foreign Best Picture nominee, he played more than 400,000 US dollars a.
criticism
The New York Times called it "captivating" and "rousing" . “Yakusho and Ms. Shimizu deliver accurate portrayals in a fantastic film that draws hope from a desolate landscape.” The film-dienst wrote in the 03/1998 issue: “An impressive study of loneliness and isolation, the psychological under the surface of the narrative and social repressions and sees itself as an informative commentary on time thanks to its art-loving imagery. " The lexicon of the international film notes: " The meditative rhythm and an idiosyncratic narrative style committed to both the art of reduction and realism deny common viewing habits. "
Web links
- The eel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lumiere
- ^ The Eel: Passions That Seethe Under the Surface , The New York Times, August 21, 1998
- ↑ Dirk Jasper FilmLexikon ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ The eel. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 20, 2017 .