Shot in only eight days–in-between Ju-on and its American remake, The Grudge–Takashi Shimizu created a surrealistic, existential love story which, much like life and love itself, is forced to content itself with its own ambiguities, as the work–as much an Eastern interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft as it is Michael Powell’s Peeing Tom– renders a multitude of rewarding, multifaceted readings.
Masuoka (Shinya Tsukamoto) is a Tokyo videographer obsessed with two things: the phenomenon of fear and capturing the emotion via camera. When he is on location, he tapes Arei Furoki (Kazuhiro Nakahara) committing suicide after glimpsing something or someone no one else sees in a subway tunnel. Fixated which discovering the impetus for the stranger’s terminal decision, he finds a labyrinth of passageways beneath the city before stumbling upon a nude, emaciated girl (Tomomi Miyashita), whom he calls “F”. After rescuing and placing her in his apartment, a mysterious woman (Miho Ninagawa) accosts him, accusing him of keeping his daughter in captivity. It is during this time that Masuoka realizes that F will only consume human blood and commits to providing the vital fluid to sustain her.
Shimizu’s film unveils one of his primary motifs, voyeurism, during its opening frames as we discover Masuoka is watching, not only his own apartment, but also recordings of society as well as live feeds of the city. Thus, we are granted a profile of a character who is only comfortable with confronting the external world, including his own, through the safety of a lens. Masterfully, the viewer’s objectivity is challenged in that we are likewise watching a video, thus are involuntarily aligned with the central character’s worldview. Shimizu’s selection of Tsukamoto in the role of such a character is all the more ingenious in this respect for the actor is also a renowned director. Shortly after the opening credits, it is revealed that the character’s motive for such action is also due to his fascination with the phenomenon of fear, recalling Michael Powell’s antagonist, Mark Lewis, in Peeping Tom as the plot is gingerly foreshadowed. Interestingly, “Marebito” is loosely translated as “stranger from afar” as the dualistic nature of the character and the film’s premise gives way to one of its chief influences: the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.
Not only does the plot faintly resemble the gothic American writer’s short tale, “The Outsider,” but once Masuoka enters into the underground, Shimizu reveals an inspiring city in and of itself. The terms “agartha” and “hollow earth” (Richard Shaver’s Deros sparsely populate the land) are voiced by Masuoka and his Virgil-esque tour guide, a being who may or may not be Furoki’s ghost, as the former refers to the secluded land as “the mountains of madness.” Furthermore, we watch as the central character finds himself committing murder for the sake of the ambiguous creature F–whom he readily rationalizes can only be considered a pet due to her limited ability–as he entertains the notion that he himself may be in a state of degradation or, more properly, deevolution, another theme which is prevalent in Lovecraft’s works. Yet, however thematically similar Marbito may be to the Lovecraft’s mythos, Shimizu’s work is solely his own as he uses the writer’s motifs and theories as a segue into his own vision: a surreal love story whose power lies in its own inexplicable nature.
What is most fascinating about the manner in which Shimizu presents his tale–moreso than the standardized interpretation that the vampiric and ghostly underworld thriving beneath Tokyo is representative of the metropolis above ground–is the unanswerable existential attraction (seemingly Platonic) between the two main characters, which is masterfully guided in this regard by Toshiyuki Takine’s minimalistic score. The perpetually eerie and intriguing, but never disconcerting, Camusian tone of the unknown is further compounded by the suspicious, but not definitive, disclosure that the girl in captivity is named Fuyumi, atop Masuoka being overtly aware that he has committed murder (for a person whom he admittedly has no resounding attachment) and might have even done so unknowingly (he is told that he killed his mother as well, which, perhaps absentmindedly, he later admits to). Perplexedly, after leaving his newfound existence in order to gain a sense of objectivity–though he comes to no ready, reliable answers–he returns to F.
The power behind Takashi Shimizu’s Marbito is the comfort and control that the director exhibits throughout as he not only succinctly treads the line between issuing us a neurotic caricature with his central character, but also his ability to discern when ambiguity is essential and when it is gratuitous, unlike many of his native peers behind the camera. One of the most interesting facets of the work in this respect hinges upon the acknowledgement that Masuoka’s mental state is arbitrary to the storyline in that the world itself fails to adhere to logic. What results is an ephemeral, Mulholland Drive-esque realm which, instead of being nervously subconscious about its lack of uncertainty and control, readily engages in its own sense of wonder. (Even this motif is aptly symbolized when Masuoka pulls back F’s lips to reveal a set of fangs as he peers at them wondrously instead of reeling back in fear.) What the viewer is left with is akin to a goose bump-raising cool breeze which is nevertheless quietly soothing.
-Egregious Gurnow
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