Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamp and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: today we're going to be talking about the nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: nine Japanese fantasy drama Demon Pond, directed by Massive hero
Speaker 3: Shinoda with music by Esau Tomida.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a film that had been on my
Speaker 2: radar for quite a bit, and I was eager to
Speaker 2: cover it when you brought it up, because in my
Speaker 2: memory I had watched a good chunk of this film
Speaker 2: on a flight maybe a year or so ago. Turns
Speaker 2: out I realized this once I started rewatching it. Oh,
Speaker 2: I actually watched the whole thing on the flight, but
Speaker 2: that might have been a red eye. I don't remember.
Speaker 2: But you know, it was one of these flights where
Speaker 2: I'm coming in and out and watching the film. You know,
Speaker 2: either there's some sort of distraction or I'm falling to sleep.
Speaker 2: And this is not a dig on this movie at all,
Speaker 2: but this is a very very easy film to fall
Speaker 2: fall asleep too. It's a film that invites transference into
Speaker 2: the dream realm because it has such an elegant soundtrack
Speaker 2: that's very soothing in many of its stretches. It also
Speaker 2: has this dreamlike visual vibe. Everything feels like the world
Speaker 2: feels like it is in a constant state of twilight
Speaker 2: or gloaming. So it is a sleepy film in all
Speaker 2: the best ways.
Speaker 3: It's a film that convinces you that you may already
Speaker 3: be dreaming. Yeah, so it's a little bit easier to
Speaker 3: slip into the actual state. We were talking just before
Speaker 3: we started about it. I for a moment was trying
Speaker 3: to make the case that, you know, it's got to
Speaker 3: be easier to fall asleep during the first half of
Speaker 3: the movie, before all the goblins show up and things
Speaker 3: get really crazy, you know, when it brings in all
Speaker 3: of the fantasy Kabooki elements, but not really even once
Speaker 3: all of the wildness starts, I think it's still kind
Speaker 3: of wants to pull you into dream world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. Now. You mentioned already that
Speaker 2: you could classify this as fantasy romance. I've also seen
Speaker 2: discussions of it as a work of folk horror. But
Speaker 2: I think at the end of the day, this is
Speaker 2: one of those films to just so much more than
Speaker 2: any classification. We could just you know, bust out and
Speaker 2: throw at it. Much has been written about exactly what
Speaker 2: Demon Pond is and where it stands in the history
Speaker 2: of Japanese cinema, but I guess in broad strokes, it's
Speaker 2: essentially a film adaptation of a very this was what
Speaker 2: a seventy eight film. No, seventy ninety film. It's a
Speaker 2: seventy nine adaptation of a seventy eight staging of a
Speaker 2: nineteen thirteen kabuki play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is interesting because this is also considered part
Speaker 3: of the I guess it would be becoming at the
Speaker 3: tail end of this but part of the Japanese New
Speaker 3: wave cinema movement. So it's it's very old and new
Speaker 3: at the same time, and you feel that in multiple ways,
Speaker 3: even in the story itself, but also in the elements
Speaker 3: that are coming together because it's taking this ancient art
Speaker 3: form as taking kabuki theater and I think some other
Speaker 3: older traditions as well, and wrapping it up in a
Speaker 3: very novel cinema style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's I think most discussions you're going to see
Speaker 2: about this film are talking about some sort of merging
Speaker 2: taking place generally, you know, like you said, new wave
Speaker 2: in old school new and old traditions, like more modern,
Speaker 2: westernized and western conscious Japan versus deeper Japanese traditions. Stage
Speaker 2: meets the screen. Traditional Japanese stage symbolism from both kabuki
Speaker 2: and no theater collide with the more naturalist film styles
Speaker 2: that are summoned in many stretches of this film, and indeed,
Speaker 2: the original play was apparently, in many ways a counter
Speaker 2: to naturalist theater in Japan. Naturalist theater in Japan is
Speaker 2: inspired by Western theater traditions. So modernity meets tradition, urban
Speaker 2: meets rural politics and folklore, and the human world collides
Speaker 2: with the natural world in ways that are both subtle
Speaker 2: and just utterly bombastic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, a very simple summary of the plot is
Speaker 3: that it concerns a man who goes out wandering in
Speaker 3: the countryside on holiday. It's a man named Gakawin, who
Speaker 3: is a school teacher, very much a man interested in
Speaker 3: the sciences, in rationalism. He's a school teacher, and he
Speaker 3: goes out to the mountains and the countryside, comes to
Speaker 3: a village that is parched with drought, and there he
Speaker 3: encounters a couple of people, a strange, enigmatic woman and
Speaker 3: her husband who turns out to be a long lost
Speaker 3: friend of his, a friend who vanished three years earlier,
Speaker 3: and reigniting his friendship with this man, and meeting and
Speaker 3: learning about his new wife, who is a woman from
Speaker 3: this village. The three of them sort of become wrapped
Speaker 3: up in this legend that concerns the village, a bell
Speaker 3: that hangs over the village, and an apocalyptic potential, you know,
Speaker 3: a great disaster and calamity that could come and fall
Speaker 3: upon the people of this valley here if traditions are
Speaker 3: not kept to. And this does involve the titular demon
Speaker 3: pond and the power that lies beneath it, And so
Speaker 3: it ends up bringing in a lot of different themes.
Speaker 3: When I started trying to count them up in my mind,
Speaker 3: I was like, Wow, this movie it has it involves
Speaker 3: more than you would think it does. I guess like
Speaker 3: you were just saying, like urban and rural ideas things
Speaker 3: about politics. I think, weirdly, this is a political film.
Speaker 3: It kind of from that description doesn't sound like one,
Speaker 3: but it is one. And yeah, ideas of tradition and
Speaker 3: modernity and science and rationalism and promises that how important
Speaker 3: it is to keep or pise keep promises and you know,
Speaker 3: even when it doesn't feel like they're important. And another
Speaker 3: thing that so interesting about it is the way that
Speaker 3: the movie jumps between tones.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That almost the entire first half of this movie is
Speaker 3: a quiet, subtle, strange character drama that is entirely realistic
Speaker 3: with no fantastical elements. It just has just has characters
Speaker 3: kind of exploring a landscape and talking to each other
Speaker 3: and getting weird vibes. There's a lot there is a
Speaker 3: lot of apprehension and feelings of the uncanny in the
Speaker 3: first half, but nothing actually supernatural happens. And then suddenly
Speaker 3: in the middle of the movie there is a hard
Speaker 3: shift into goblin world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Goblin starts showing up. It's a little
Speaker 2: jarring at first because it's because, as we'll discuss, like
Speaker 2: they have kind of the vibe of like goofy live
Speaker 2: action yokai characters from various Japanese jokai.
Speaker 3: Films broad comedic performances.
Speaker 2: And with the superior lighting in this picture, they also
Speaker 2: reminded me a little bit of the goblins in Ridley
Speaker 2: Scott's Legend, especially since you know they're engaging in cackling
Speaker 2: conversations about things.
Speaker 3: I would almost wonder if this movie inspired Legend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very possible.
Speaker 3: You know, it seems like it could have.
Speaker 2: Given the sort of film they were trying to make
Speaker 2: with Legend, I think this would be a natural thing
Speaker 2: to look at.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And so of course all of this character
Speaker 3: drama and the fantastical elements come together for you know,
Speaker 3: I don't want to spoil too much right here at
Speaker 3: the beginning, but just to let you know, we are
Speaker 3: going to be talking about the plot in exquisite detail
Speaker 3: as we go on. So if you want to see
Speaker 3: the movie without things being spoiled, this would be a
Speaker 3: good time to stop and you know, go watch it yourself,
Speaker 3: because we will talk in detail. But it builds up
Speaker 3: to a terrifying apocalyptic conclusion that really kind of had
Speaker 3: my jaw on the floor.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to note too that
Speaker 2: in addition to the you know, the lighting and the
Speaker 2: way that you can everything looks like it's in Twilight,
Speaker 2: everything is also really lush in this picture. And in fact,
Speaker 2: they filmed in Hawaii and Brazil in order to capture
Speaker 2: all of that that lushness of the of vegetation. And
Speaker 2: then ultimately some of the torrential aquatic elements that are
Speaker 2: going to be in play late in the picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the greenness of vegetation is a very important part
Speaker 3: of this movie. Yeah, as is water.
Speaker 2: All Right, at this point you might be wondering, well,
Speaker 2: where can I watch Demon Pond? Well, Criterion is going
Speaker 2: to be your main source for this film, one way
Speaker 2: or another. I'm to understand. For a very long time,
Speaker 2: this was not available until a four K restoration was
Speaker 2: put together with the approval of the director and its
Speaker 2: main star, And this is the version you're going to
Speaker 2: find out there in the world right now. So yeah,
Speaker 2: Criterion either via their physical release disc which I rented
Speaker 2: from Atlanta's own videodrome, or you can on the Criterion
Speaker 2: streaming channel, which is also a great source for this
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But on top of that, there are
Speaker 2: also some other streaming platforms that also allow you to
Speaker 2: rent or buy it.
Speaker 3: Did you happen to see the review online? Where was it?
Speaker 3: John from Videodrome who said he spent years trying to
Speaker 3: figure out what this movie was that he saw it
Speaker 3: a long time ago.
Speaker 2: I didn't read his review, but I like his reviews
Speaker 2: in general, and so that's a strong sign from him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But anyway, while I was thinking, also, it speaks
Speaker 3: to the idea that for a long time this was
Speaker 3: not particularly available. I guess there had been a VHS
Speaker 3: release a long time ago, but I think maybe a
Speaker 3: lot of people were in that situation of like having
Speaker 3: seen it in some way and a VHS release maybe
Speaker 3: and then not remembering what it was or not being
Speaker 3: able to find it on DVD or on Blu Ray
Speaker 3: until more recently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the version that's out now is terrific. It's
Speaker 2: also traveled around. There has been a chance to see
Speaker 2: it on the screen on the big screen in recent
Speaker 2: years and probably in the future as well. I believe
Speaker 2: Videodrome co hosted a showing of it at the Tara
Speaker 2: Theater here in Atlanta. I've also seen that it played
Speaker 2: at places like MoMA, So you know, it's made the rounds.
Speaker 2: A lot of people have gotten to see this on
Speaker 2: the big screen, and again in the quality that it deserves. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the extras on that Blue Array are really nice, by
Speaker 2: the way, They're not a ton of them, but what
Speaker 2: is on there is very informative. Particularly, there's a really
Speaker 2: nice piece on the film by noted film scholar Dudley Andrew,
Speaker 2: and I'll refer back to some of the things that
Speaker 2: Andrew points out as we perceive.
Speaker 3: Okay, should we talk about the people who made this?
Speaker 2: Let's do it starting at the top with a director,
Speaker 2: Masahiro Shinoda, who lived nineteen thirty one through twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: Japanese director central to the Japanese New Wave movement of
Speaker 2: the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Now, Joe I had not
Speaker 2: seen any of his films before, so you'll have to
Speaker 2: jump in if you have more familiarity with some of
Speaker 2: these titles. Okay, his best known works, and clue, let's
Speaker 2: see sixty four's Pale Flower.
Speaker 3: Well, that's actually the other Shinoda movie I've seen. I
Speaker 3: just watched that one the other night, and that one
Speaker 3: is also amazing. It is a it's a realistic drama,
Speaker 3: so there are no fantastical elements in it. But it
Speaker 3: is a I think, I guess considered a neo noir.
Speaker 3: It's a noir film about a yakuza gangster who just
Speaker 3: gets out of prison and then gets involved with a
Speaker 3: woman that he meets at a gambling parlor who is
Speaker 3: on this thrill seeking streak. This woman is engaging in
Speaker 3: self destructive behaviors, seeking more and more dangerous, higher risk thrills,
Speaker 3: and this man is falling in love with her at
Speaker 3: the same time, and then I don't know, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of other interesting drama going on. So I thought
Speaker 3: that movie was fantastic, and maybe we can talk some
Speaker 3: more about it as we go on. But a really interesting, dark, complicated,
Speaker 3: character driven noir that I greatly enjoyed.
Speaker 2: Oh excellent. Let's see how the works include sixty nine's
Speaker 2: Double Suicide. This one is based on a puppet play,
Speaker 2: I believe, traditional puppet play, seventy one, Silence, seventy four's Somiko,
Speaker 2: seventy fives Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees, and eighty one's
Speaker 2: Island of the Evil Spirits.
Speaker 3: I have not seen any of those other ones, but
Speaker 3: I did want to flag I have seen Martin Scorsese's
Speaker 3: adaptation of Silence, the adaptation of the same novel that.
Speaker 2: Oh, of course, i'd forgotten about that connection.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that Shinoda's Silence is based on, which
Speaker 3: is about Catholic missionaries in Japan hundreds of years ago.
Speaker 3: And it's been a while, but I remember really liking
Speaker 3: Scorsese Silence, so I would be very interested to see
Speaker 3: Shinoda's take on it as well.
Speaker 2: All right, well, I was looking into some of these titles. Again,
Speaker 2: I have not seen any of them aside from Demon Pond,
Speaker 2: but Cherry Trees and Evil Spirits are I think they're
Speaker 2: generally considered to be either horror or at least whole
Speaker 2: adjacent with Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees concerning a mountain
Speaker 2: man who beheads his many wives to prove his love
Speaker 2: to an alluring woman he meets in an enchanted forest.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, and I would I would absolutely watch a
Speaker 3: Shnoda horror movie. I'm on board.
Speaker 2: And Island of the Evil Spirits. I've seen it, I
Speaker 2: say again, I've seen it classified as maybe horror adjacent.
Speaker 2: But this one is this is that this is a
Speaker 2: murder mystery, a detective story, a detective can duchy murder mystery.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, many other works as well from Shnoda,
Speaker 2: but Demon Pond certainly stands out as well. This is
Speaker 2: this is I think often held up is one of
Speaker 2: his best, and it's also one that is I think
Speaker 2: it has been celebrated more recently via this four K restoration.
Speaker 2: It's gotten to make the rounds. You know, a whole
Speaker 2: new generations of people have been exposed to this picture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so what. We'll have a lot more to say about
Speaker 2: about his directorial as we proceed here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I will just say, as of the past
Speaker 3: couple of days, my first exposure to his work, I'm
Speaker 3: a new devoted fan.
Speaker 2: Awesome now getting into the writing here. The original source
Speaker 2: material here is an older kabuki play by Koka Izumi,
Speaker 2: who lived eighteen seventy three through nineteen thirty nine. Japanese
Speaker 2: pre war novelist, writer and kabuki playwright. His work is
Speaker 2: often singled out for his romanticist supernatural tales that were
Speaker 2: influenced by much earlier Edo period works. Multiple films have
Speaker 2: been based on his writings a few during his lifetime,
Speaker 2: you know, from the nineteen thirties and then Demon Pond
Speaker 2: has been adapted more than once. I think most recently,
Speaker 2: I think there's a two thousand and five adaptation by
Speaker 2: Takeshi Mikhay, but I don't know. I don't know anything
Speaker 2: about it. I love that director as well, but I'm
Speaker 2: not sure he's varied enough in his outl but that
Speaker 2: there's at least from my standpoint, there's no telling exactly
Speaker 2: what that's like.
Speaker 3: Is it a silly version or a torture version or what.
Speaker 2: He Yeah, he contains multitudes. He's capable of so many
Speaker 2: different things, all right. Then the writers here that have
Speaker 2: adapted this older work, we have two names. There's so
Speaker 2: Tomu Tamura. I couldn't find any dates in this individual,
Speaker 2: but a Japanese screenwriter best known for The Ceremony in
Speaker 2: seventy one, Boy in sixty nine and Death by Hanging
Speaker 2: in sixty eight. And then also there's Horohiko Mimura nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty seven through two thousand and eight, Japanese screenwriter also
Speaker 2: known for sixty eight's I the Executioner.
Speaker 3: Now, Rob, I expect that, like myself, you were impressed
Speaker 3: with most of the cast. But I think the most
Speaker 3: striking performance in the movie that we're gonna have to
Speaker 3: talk about here is the double role played by Tamasaburo Bando.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Bando plays both the wife of one of
Speaker 2: our I don't know, expatriates of the the urban world, Yuri.
Speaker 2: And then this actor also plays Princess Shirayuki, who is
Speaker 2: of the supernatural realm as well.
Speaker 3: Learn yeah, the dragon princess of the Demon Pond and
Speaker 3: the enchanting possibly enchanted woman that Gakuin meets when he
Speaker 3: first comes to town.
Speaker 2: Right right, So, Bando was born nineteen fifty and remains
Speaker 2: like pretty much a superstar of the kobuk world. And
Speaker 2: of note, he is an on a Gata, and on
Speaker 2: Agata is a male actor who specializes in female kobuki
Speaker 2: stage roles. And this there's so I mean, there's so
Speaker 2: much to say about about this. We're not even can
Speaker 2: be able to really do more than dip our toes
Speaker 2: in this topic. But basically, the Onagata approach originated around
Speaker 2: sixteen twenty nine after female kabuki performers were banned by
Speaker 2: the Tokugawa Shogunate, so male actors had to step in
Speaker 2: and do all these roles and this and having male
Speaker 2: actors step into play the female characters. This ended up
Speaker 2: developing into its own highly refined performance art form, and Bando,
Speaker 2: still active today as of this recording on stage at
Speaker 2: any rate at the age of seventy five, has long
Speaker 2: been considered the predominant living embodiment of Onagada, and at
Speaker 2: the time this film was made. Was a superstar, like
Speaker 2: we have to just like we don't tend to think
Speaker 2: about this, I guess, you know, maybe in Western context
Speaker 2: to imagine like somebody representing like a really old school
Speaker 2: traditional performance style being a superstar as they are doing
Speaker 2: modern cinema. But he was a huge name and he
Speaker 2: had a lot of sway over the production.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to think of a comparison. I don't
Speaker 3: know if there really is one. I mean sort of
Speaker 3: like if there was a superstar opera singer in American cinema,
Speaker 3: but even I think that doesn't really capture it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The only thing I get like what
Speaker 2: if you had a superstar boxer playing a boxer in
Speaker 2: a movie. But then that's it's the difference. It's not
Speaker 2: a performance art, not directly a performance art.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and it doesn't have the interesting gender connotations here.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, And we'll come back to the gender
Speaker 2: comment to some of it here. But again, whole books
Speaker 2: have been written about this, even just like the gender
Speaker 2: studies aspect of this.
Speaker 3: But I do just want to emphasize again that Bando
Speaker 3: is a fascinating, spellbinding presence on camera here and you
Speaker 3: can tell how much went into making the characters he
Speaker 3: portrays just exude magic even when they're not speaking, and
Speaker 3: the more so when they you know, they have these
Speaker 3: strange monologues that are very different. They're not exactly the
Speaker 3: same character that, like Yuri is a very apprehensive, reserved,
Speaker 3: kind of haunted character, whereas the Dragon Princess is highly
Speaker 3: expressive and emotional and regal fight, yeah, regal and fighting
Speaker 3: against the constraints that are put on her. And so
Speaker 3: there are these very different characters, but both of them
Speaker 3: there is just enchantment pouring out of them, and a
Speaker 3: lot of that comes down to Bando.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Dudley Andrew pointed out that many viewers outside of
Speaker 2: Japan probably didn't and or don't realize that these two
Speaker 2: key female roles are played by a male actor. And
Speaker 2: I have to admit that on my first viewing that
Speaker 2: you know, on the on the airplane a year or
Speaker 2: so back, this was my case as well. I had
Speaker 2: gotten into this film relatively cold, just knowing that, you know,
Speaker 2: good things were thought about it. Yeah, And I had
Speaker 2: no idea until I came back from my rewatch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I knew before I went into the movie, So
Speaker 3: I can't say what I would have known other wise.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean the characters. The characters are fully embodied.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, we'll have a lot to say about Bando,
Speaker 2: and I'll come back to on a little more about
Speaker 2: on Agada here in just a second, but just talking
Speaker 2: about Bando's film career. His film roles include a supporting
Speaker 2: role in Sijen Suzuki's ninety one film Yumiji, and the
Speaker 2: role of none other than the writer is Zumi in
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty eight film Tokyo the Last Megalopolis. This
Speaker 2: is a film adaptation of the popular Japanese fantasy epic
Speaker 2: The Tale of the Imperial Capital by Hiroshi Atramata. This
Speaker 2: is a movie that I haven't actually seen it, but
Speaker 2: I've been aware of it for a long time, and
Speaker 2: I think a lot of international fans might know of it,
Speaker 2: especially due to a couple of factors. First of all,
Speaker 2: hr Giger worked on a particular design for this picture,
Speaker 2: so when you start pulling up Giger's film credentials and
Speaker 2: credits run across this title and you may dig deeper. Also,
Speaker 2: it makes use of a character that served as possible
Speaker 2: partial inspiration for the Street Fighter video game character that
Speaker 2: Western audiences know as m Bison.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Yeah, but captain, yeah, that kind of dark
Speaker 3: general character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so well we may have to come back to
Speaker 2: that if we ever watch a street Fighter film, we
Speaker 2: might there's there is, of course.
Speaker 3: A particularly good one, maybe on a Thursday.
Speaker 2: So Bando began acting at a very young age seven,
Speaker 2: I believe, as part of his recovery from polio, and
Speaker 2: rose to become, in the words of Yuko Mashima, living
Speaker 2: proof of the vitality of kabuki, which, which again is
Speaker 2: a may sound like a very strong credential, but it
Speaker 2: seems to match up with this guy's celebrity and then
Speaker 2: just how how well everyone regards him in kabuki, especially
Speaker 2: his father.
Speaker 3: Sorry, my understanding is he didn't just do kobuki roles,
Speaker 3: in did mainstream cinema roles as well.
Speaker 2: Right, But I'm to understand that his father had forbidden
Speaker 2: him from acting in any thing besides kabuki, and it
Speaker 2: was only after his father's death. I'm to understand that
Speaker 2: Banda really began to break out into other forms of theater,
Speaker 2: other types of roles, including cinematic performances. But he would
Speaker 2: break out and portray even male characters, such as in
Speaker 2: the ninety four film Nostagia, in which he plays both
Speaker 2: a male and a female character. So I mentioned that
Speaker 2: the Bando was a huge star at this point, but
Speaker 2: also he'd never really done film before, so working for
Speaker 2: the first time here with extended close up shots, which
Speaker 2: of course don't really exist in live theater or certainly
Speaker 2: in the traditional context of theater, and so he was
Speaker 2: very particular about the way his face looked and requested
Speaker 2: a number of extra takes on things to get everything
Speaker 2: where he wanted it to get. So I think that
Speaker 2: that added to some of the complexity of the shots.
Speaker 3: But well, sometimes I think people might not realize this
Speaker 3: if you don't have experience acting, but acting for the
Speaker 3: stage and acting for film are actually quite different art
Speaker 3: forms because there's so much, you know, the camera being closer.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of subtlety that can be captured on
Speaker 3: film that doesn't really come across on stage. So this
Speaker 3: is an oversimplification, but in a lot of ways, stage
Speaker 3: performances have to be bigger, they have to be less subtle,
Speaker 3: they have to be louder. Your movements have to be
Speaker 3: you know, more projected to you know, reach people at
Speaker 3: a distance. And yeah, film performances bring in these new
Speaker 3: levels of kind of quiet variation and subtlety that can't
Speaker 3: be seen from the distance of an audience in a theater,
Speaker 3: and so they're different art forms to master. The lots
Speaker 3: of actors do both.
Speaker 2: Of course. Now I want to come back to the
Speaker 2: Onagada tradition for just a second.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: There are, of course, traditions of cross gender acting spread
Speaker 2: across various cultures and throughout time. I go as so
Speaker 2: far as to say it's an essential part of human
Speaker 2: performance and storytelling, but Onagata is particularly fascinating in its depth.
Speaker 2: I've read that there's like a particular like feminine energy
Speaker 2: that one has to bring into your daily life according
Speaker 2: to the philosophy of the Onagata way. And so naturally
Speaker 2: there's a lot to unload here on a gender studies level,
Speaker 2: because on one side you have the embracing of the
Speaker 2: feminine energy by male identifying performers to better perform these roles.
Speaker 2: And then there's the historic through contemporary exclusion of females
Speaker 2: from mainstream, mainstream traditional kabuki. So again, whole books have
Speaker 2: been written on this subject, and I did see one
Speaker 2: that looked particularly fascinating if anyone out there wants a
Speaker 2: deeper dig into all of this, and it is Onagata
Speaker 2: a Labyrinth of gendering in Kabuki theater by Maki Isaka
Speaker 2: looks looks like a great book. I was reading just
Speaker 2: a little bit of it, but didn't have time to
Speaker 2: really go deep. Yeah, and so again Deadly andrew and
Speaker 2: others have pointed out you could go into this film
Speaker 2: and not know anything about the only god of tradition
Speaker 2: and you would be perfectly entertained, and there would be
Speaker 2: plenty of other things to think about. But Deudlely Andrews
Speaker 2: stresses that you know, we we absolutely shouldn't overlook a
Speaker 2: pretty groundbreaking kiss in the film between the character of
Speaker 2: Yuri and the character of Akira ther her husband in
Speaker 2: the film. So this is this is essentially, you know,
Speaker 2: outside of the context of the of the film, this
Speaker 2: is a same sex kiss, not the first same sex
Speaker 2: kiss in Japanese cinema, but still a pretty important one
Speaker 2: and would have been, you know, groundbreaking for the time.
Speaker 3: This comes at a really pivotal moment in the film too,
Speaker 3: because the character you called him Accura. I've always said
Speaker 3: that name Akira. I don't know if I've been saying
Speaker 3: it wrong.
Speaker 2: I have also always said Akira is certainly thinking about
Speaker 2: the anime picture Akira and Akira Krasawa and so forth.
Speaker 2: Dudley Andrew was saying Akera, and I kept thinking I
Speaker 2: was hearing Akera in the Japanese language of the film,
Speaker 2: so I could be wrong. I may jump back into
Speaker 2: saying Akira here as well out of habit.
Speaker 3: If nothing else, well, I apologize if I'm saying it wrong.
Speaker 3: Akira is going to be easier for me to say
Speaker 3: because I've always said it that way, saying I will
Speaker 3: probably hope the character the character Akira in this scene,
Speaker 3: this is in the moment when so it happens in
Speaker 3: a flashback, and it's in the moment when he is
Speaker 3: explaining to his long lost friend Gaku and explaining how
Speaker 3: he fell in love with the character Yuri, who gok
Speaker 3: going up to this point has been very skeptical of,
Speaker 3: and so it's kind of the moment where they get
Speaker 3: over this disagreement about Yuri and Gacko and is kind
Speaker 3: of brought over to a curras side and understands how
Speaker 3: he loves her, and this kiss is like what cements
Speaker 3: it in the flashback through which the story is told.
Speaker 3: So it's a pivotal, dramatic moment and it's very important
Speaker 3: in the film, and it's powerful when it happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a real kiss. I was afraid on
Speaker 2: my rewatch, knowing about the gender roles. I was afraid
Speaker 2: they were gonna fudge it, you know. But it's a
Speaker 2: legitimate kiss. Yeah, all right. Well, speaking of the character Akira,
Speaker 2: Akira Hagawara is played by Go Kato, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight through twenty eighteen, Japanese actor whose other credits
Speaker 2: include sixty seven Samurai Rebellion and nineteen seventy two's Lone
Speaker 2: Wolf and Cub Baby cart Ta Haites. This is the
Speaker 2: third Lone Wolf in Cub movie in which he plays
Speaker 2: a Ronan character that I think is the central antagonist
Speaker 2: or an important antagonist in the picture. Okay, this is
Speaker 2: not one of the Lone Wolf and Cub movies that
Speaker 2: was edited together to make Shogun Assassin, which we previously
Speaker 2: watched on House Cinema. This would be the yeah, the
Speaker 2: third one after those two. Okay, but yeah, anyway, Kato
Speaker 2: heir Award winning Japanese actor who rose to fame in
Speaker 2: Samurai Rebellion sixty seven opposite Toshiro Mafuni. So he played
Speaker 2: Mafuni's character's son, and his other credits include sixty five
Speaker 2: Sort of the Beast, The Long Darkness in seventy two
Speaker 2: Let's See, and Death of a Tea Master in eighty nine,
Speaker 2: active until his passing. And he had a long TV
Speaker 2: career as well. All right, and then we have Gakawin,
Speaker 2: and Gokowin is really he's really our structural protagonist, even
Speaker 2: though he doesn't have top billing here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the movie becomes less about him as it goes on,
Speaker 3: but certainly for the first third were just with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And he is played by Sutomu Yamazaki, Award
Speaker 2: winning Japanese actor whose credits include multiple Kurosawa films, most
Speaker 2: notably sixty five's Redbeard in eighties Kaigamusha. Yeah, let's see,
Speaker 2: those are some of our main characters. We're not gonna
Speaker 2: be able to list everyone here, and certainly there are
Speaker 2: a lot of great crab and fish actors, yes, and
Speaker 2: you know, you know we can't. We can't list everybody.
Speaker 2: There is a priest character. Priest Shikami and he's played
Speaker 2: by Koji Nanbara, who of nineteen twenty seven through two
Speaker 2: thousand and one. He stood out to me because Japanese
Speaker 2: actor who played a crucial role in the ground breaking
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven sage in Suzuki Assassin film Branded to Kill.
Speaker 2: That's a big one. That's one that I've considered doing
Speaker 2: for weird house cinema.
Speaker 3: Is this one? This is the Shinto priest. The one,
Speaker 3: yeah is he's sort of one of the ones most
Speaker 3: on board with the diet member. Is a plot to
Speaker 3: do a human sacrifice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's yeah, he alongside yea, the diet member. Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's a whole host of human characters in the village
Speaker 2: and then a whole host of supernatural characters in the
Speaker 2: underwater realm. And yeah, everybody's great in their role. Be
Speaker 2: it something that is in The human characters tend to
Speaker 2: be a lot more believable and naturalistic, and of course
Speaker 2: the spirit characters are ranged from being somber and theatrical
Speaker 2: to just like outright goofy you know, so, yeah, it
Speaker 2: varies greatly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, also, I think the moral coding of the
Speaker 3: different character groups is interesting because you might think based
Speaker 3: on the structure that the Dragon Princess is like the
Speaker 3: villain of the film. You know, she's the great evil
Speaker 3: baddie to overcome, but not really, She's somewhere in between.
Speaker 3: She's just a complex character with her own desires that
Speaker 3: is neither really good nor bad. She just wants something
Speaker 3: that's kind of oblique to her involvement with humans and
Speaker 3: her responsibilities to them. I would say, if the movie
Speaker 3: has a real human villain, it is the bloodthirsty diet member.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, let's skip ahead behind the
Speaker 2: camera for just a couple of credits here. This is
Speaker 2: definitely a visual effects picture, and there's actually a feature
Speaker 2: rite about the visual effects on the Criterion collection disc.
Speaker 2: I ended up not really diving into that one because,
Speaker 2: weirdly enough, despite this being a film with great special effects,
Speaker 2: I feel like the special effects are almost the least
Speaker 2: notable part about it. There's so much else to talk about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but they're really well done. And it's a high budget affair.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, some great other world underwater sets where you
Speaker 3: can't even identify exactly what this is supposed to be.
Speaker 3: Are they in a cave under the pond? What is it?
Speaker 2: I don't know, and then we have that great water
Speaker 2: spout laid in the picture. You know, we'll come back
Speaker 2: to that. But the visual effects are credited to Minora Nakano,
Speaker 2: who of nineteen thirty nine through twenty twenty one. Lots
Speaker 2: of great Japanese SI special effects credits for this guy,
Speaker 2: beginning with mathra Versus Godzilla in sixty four. Oh, okay,
Speaker 2: which we've talked about. That's one of our selections.
Speaker 3: Clearly, there is a lot of great miniature work in
Speaker 3: this so you can see the interface with giant monster movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I think particularly he did optical effects
Speaker 2: in animations in mathra Versus Godzilla, and then his subsequent
Speaker 2: films include the nineteen seventy four Thai co production Hanaman
Speaker 2: versus seven Ultraman, which we also watched perfect yep. Seventy
Speaker 2: seven is the Last Dinosaur. Seventy eight's the Bermuda Depths. Oh,
Speaker 2: that's one we've talked that we've talked maybe talked about it.
Speaker 3: It's not good, it's kind of jawsy, but it's I
Speaker 3: think that's the one with a killer sea turtle.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Is that the one with Carl weathers? Oh?
Speaker 3: Wait, that sounds right, Okay, maybe we'll put a question
Speaker 3: mark wearing very very short short.
Speaker 2: And then oh, this guy also worked on seventy eight's
Speaker 2: Message from Space, which was another early Weird House Cinema selection,
Speaker 2: and then after that he did Demon Pond and his
Speaker 2: other credits include eighty eight's Doomed Megalopolis. The last one
Speaker 2: Megalopolis Akira kurosaw was Dreams in nineteen ninety, which we
Speaker 2: also covered.
Speaker 3: On Weird House.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, the Cat in nineteen ninety one, and then
Speaker 2: a film from ninety seven titled Cat's Eye that has
Speaker 2: no relation to the Stephen King adapticians Japanese film.
Speaker 3: So completely without our knowledge, we have been running a
Speaker 3: Minoro Nakano fan podcast. Yeah, like we're just doing his
Speaker 3: whole catalog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all those films have great special effects, all right.
Speaker 2: Then finally, this film famously features a score by he
Speaker 2: Saw Tomita, who lived nineteen thirty two through twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: This is actually our second to meta score. We previously
Speaker 2: discussed him in our episode on the sixty eight film
Speaker 2: Black Lizard, which is a great, beautiful weird picture, but
Speaker 2: the music on that one is on the for the
Speaker 2: most part, I think non electronic and as we discussed,
Speaker 2: like the story goes concerning Tamita, is that around nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight or shortly thereafter, he heard the Windy Carlos
Speaker 2: album Switched on Bach And is.
Speaker 3: This the one famously featured in Clockwork Orange or related
Speaker 3: to it? Well, related to it, yeah, because of the
Speaker 3: Beethoven in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and with the Moge synthesizer work. So the story
Speaker 2: goes that to me, to heard this work and almost
Speaker 2: immediately flies to the US to bring a Moge synthesizer
Speaker 2: back with him. I don't know how immediate it is,
Speaker 2: but like in my mind of imagining, he hears the
Speaker 2: album and just head straight to the airport. Yeah, doesn't pack,
Speaker 2: just brings back the synth, but love it. However it
Speaker 2: actually went down. Yeah, Tomita gets into it and becomes
Speaker 2: a pioneer in his own right of electronic music and
Speaker 2: space music. Like I've read that with tomto Like one
Speaker 2: of the things is that he he kind of like
Speaker 2: Wendy Carlos is a legend and and and her work
Speaker 2: is you know, absolutely undeniable, but like to meet is
Speaker 2: one of those who like kind of takes it then
Speaker 2: and goes to like another level with it as well,
Speaker 2: like ends up going into this spaceier zone, like certainly
Speaker 2: doing his his spin on the classics as well, but
Speaker 2: then finding this like sort of sci fi space zone
Speaker 2: in which to explore as well.
Speaker 3: And you get both in Demon Pond. You get electronic
Speaker 3: adaptations of classical symphonic works and then you also get
Speaker 3: just weird wacky space music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it gets funny at times. There's a couple
Speaker 2: there are a couple of moments where the music is
Speaker 2: really goofy, in that moge synth goofy way. Like. There
Speaker 2: are a number of like electronic pioneers would get into
Speaker 2: this sound a little bit, and sometimes I don't know,
Speaker 2: for my own part, it's a little harder to listen
Speaker 2: to those, because I, you know, I just want to
Speaker 2: hear like the really like serene samples of early synth work.
Speaker 2: But early synth work can get really goofy as well,
Speaker 2: and it's it's great in its own way.
Speaker 3: There were this is gonna sound like a horrible comparison,
Speaker 3: and I don't mean it this way because I love
Speaker 3: to meet us score here. But there were a couple
Speaker 3: of parts in the movie where the like the funny
Speaker 3: music when the goblins were doing their antics. Reminded me
Speaker 3: of the synth the synth score in the Star Wars
Speaker 3: Holiday Special when you've got you know, when there's like
Speaker 3: I think it's acrobatics or something are happening, that kind
Speaker 3: of thing. There was a bit of that.
Speaker 2: The synth world is going to have to come back
Speaker 2: to that sound, I think, And then you know, ten
Speaker 2: years down the road, that's all anybody's going to be
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 3: I can't wait.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the Jen Alpha style, but to me of course,
Speaker 2: and goes on to become a legend in his own right,
Speaker 2: known for such works as Let's See Electronics, Electric Samurai,
Speaker 2: Switched on Rock, seventy six is the Planets, and seventy
Speaker 2: eight's Cosmos You'll.
Speaker 3: Find the Planets. Sorry, is that Holst? Do you know?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure off the top of my head. Maybe
Speaker 2: I'd have to look up that work. Okay, But because
Speaker 2: he again, he did do a certain amount of taking
Speaker 2: older works and then giving them the synth treatment, and
Speaker 2: you'll find loads of his work wherever you get your music.
Speaker 2: I don't think this particular score has ever received proper release. However,
Speaker 2: I was looking around for it. It looks like there's
Speaker 2: there's some sort of collaboration that he did with Bando
Speaker 2: around seventy eight, but I don't think it's direct. It's
Speaker 2: not the score, it's not the soundtrack or anything, but
Speaker 2: they should put it out. I'd love to listen to this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah again. This score is great. It has these
Speaker 2: spacier segments, but then he also makes use of contemporary
Speaker 2: European motifs from music from the period the film takes
Speaker 2: place in, so in particular Mazorski and WSA music. You'll
Speaker 2: hear that multiple times.
Speaker 3: The Mussorgski that's going to be Night on Bald Mountain.
Speaker 3: So that comes in in fact in a particularly hilarious
Speaker 3: musical moment where we're watching some of the goblins go
Speaker 3: about their business and we're first getting the comedic dup
Speaker 3: to dupe music and then for it with no warning,
Speaker 3: hard shift into electronic Night on Bald Mountain.
Speaker 2: It's great. I would totally listen to most of the
Speaker 2: score if it was released properly, but you know, when
Speaker 2: in the context of the film, it's a pretty great
Speaker 2: way to listen to it as well, because then you
Speaker 2: get the sonic experience and these fabulous.
Speaker 3: Visuals Another thing I want to point out about to
Speaker 3: me to score that's so wonderful in this movie is
Speaker 3: that it sounds like the visual and conceptual themes. The
Speaker 3: movie is about a demon pond and a creature that
Speaker 3: in many ways embodies water. Water is a core texture
Speaker 3: of the film. About the lack of water or an
Speaker 3: excess of water is so much of what the story
Speaker 3: is about. And the music sounds like like water. There
Speaker 3: are these musical motifs that sound like whirlpools that have
Speaker 3: a swirling quality. There are musical motifs that sound like
Speaker 3: bubbles rising through water. It's amazing how watery the sound is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then obviously there is the added element of
Speaker 2: this being like the bleeding edge of modern technological music
Speaker 2: combined with these elements of much more deeply rooted performance tradition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's board the train, let's walk the bridge, let's
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, And warning once again, folks, this we're going to
Speaker 3: talk about the plot in a lot of detail. So
Speaker 3: if you want to go in without spoilers, go without.
Speaker 3: You know, the spoilers we've already done. Go now, go go,
Speaker 3: you come back later. So we begin with a text
Speaker 3: legend and this bubbling effervescent electronic score, and the text
Speaker 3: in translation reads on the border between Fukui and Gifu,
Speaker 3: there is a pond called Demon pond. According to an
Speaker 3: ancient legend, a dragon dwells at the bottom of this pond.
Speaker 3: And then we open on a scene which is this
Speaker 3: large pond surrounded by forested mountain sides with lush green
Speaker 3: trees all around, and the slopes on either side framing
Speaker 3: this u shaped horizon that shows just the sky beyond.
Speaker 3: And then on the bank on the nearest side of
Speaker 3: the pond, there is a single lone architectural feature. It's
Speaker 3: a Japanese tory e. You've probably seen these at Shinto
Speaker 3: shrines and other places in Japan. This is a little
Speaker 3: structure that looks like a doorway leading from nothing to nothing.
Speaker 3: It's made of two vertical posts a few feet apart,
Speaker 3: and then a couple of cross posts joining at the top.
Speaker 3: And these can be simple like this one is, or
Speaker 3: it can be more complex with kind of a flaring
Speaker 3: of the posts or shingles or other decorations. But it's
Speaker 3: like a doorway standing in the middle of nature and
Speaker 3: these are symbolic gateways that indicate the transition from a
Speaker 3: mundane space to a sacred space.
Speaker 2: And that's pretty much what this whole first for opening
Speaker 2: moments of this film is about where we're venturing into
Speaker 2: the sacred.
Speaker 3: So the text on screen continues, it says the time
Speaker 3: was the summer of nineteen thirteen, and then we get
Speaker 3: a title and the credits come in, and the music
Speaker 3: swells and becomes really huge and regal, with these heavy
Speaker 3: hollow bells ringing and a climbing theme that sounds like
Speaker 3: voices and adulation. So it's a very powerful musical moment
Speaker 3: at the beginning. But the action resumes in a train car.
Speaker 3: We see passengers watching out the windows as the train
Speaker 3: rolls through the country, and there is a bespectacled man
Speaker 3: in a linen suit and a hat that looks sort
Speaker 3: of like a pith helmet. It's got a very Safari
Speaker 3: looking hat, and he is closely inspecting a topographic map
Speaker 3: with a magnifying glass. He kind of zooms in on
Speaker 3: a place on the map that shows a body of
Speaker 3: water called Demon Pond, and then later we see him
Speaker 3: looking through a reference book of drawings of various plant species.
Speaker 3: So the feeling we get about this guy is that
Speaker 3: he's a man of the sciences and he's interested in
Speaker 3: plant life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a naturalist.
Speaker 3: So we will learn that this man is named gaku
Speaker 3: and Yamasawa. He is a school teacher, an amateur botanist,
Speaker 3: or maybe a professional botanist, I'm not quite sure. A
Speaker 3: school teacher and a botanist from the big city. He's
Speaker 3: out rambling in the countryside for his summer vacation. At
Speaker 3: a remote stop, he gets off the train with this
Speaker 3: big backpack and he begins hiking further up into the
Speaker 3: mountains on a footpath. There's this feeling of leaving civilization
Speaker 3: further and further behind. This is actually a something I
Speaker 3: really associate with Japanese fantastical films in general, kind of
Speaker 3: step wise retreat from the world of the city and modernity,
Speaker 3: where you see multiple stages of becoming less and less
Speaker 3: connected to the city world, with like first you're on
Speaker 3: the train, then you get off the train, and then
Speaker 3: you go into a more isolated place, and then from there,
Speaker 3: like the first place he goes to on this footpath
Speaker 3: is this big rope bridge spanning a ravine, This long
Speaker 3: bouncy rope bridge and we see him walking over it
Speaker 3: and see the water rushing below. But then after this
Speaker 3: there's even less kind of human infrastructure, Like he emerges
Speaker 3: into this swamp or marsh and he's looking at specimens
Speaker 3: under a microscope, and then we see him crossing some
Speaker 3: kind of desert with this scrubby vegetation and parched white earth,
Speaker 3: with these mirages of heat rising from the ground. So
Speaker 3: it's like at each step he's just getting more and
Speaker 3: more into a different world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: There's a part in the middle of when he's in
Speaker 3: the desert here where he drains the last of the
Speaker 3: water from his canteen and he happens to notice nearby
Speaker 3: a porcelain baby doll discarded and lying on the ground.
Speaker 3: And so he hikes on from this desert into another
Speaker 3: forested highland and eventually comes to a mountain village that
Speaker 3: seems almost as dry as the desert below. There's vegetation
Speaker 3: all around, but there's a kind of camera filter that
Speaker 3: creates a CPA tone, so everything looks dead. All the
Speaker 3: vegetation is dead and dry, so the plants are desiccated,
Speaker 3: and the field crops or these gray husks, and at
Speaker 3: one point Goaquin collapses on the road, but he manages
Speaker 3: to pick himself up and keep going. And there are weird,
Speaker 3: eerie soundscapes here, like in one place extremely loud bugs
Speaker 3: like cicadas screaming, and in another place a sound. It's
Speaker 3: uncanny because there is a sound like howling wind, but
Speaker 3: we see on the screen that nothing is moving like
Speaker 3: visually the air looks still. And in this howling but
Speaker 3: still place, Gokuin encounters a lone cow just wandering and
Speaker 3: lowing on the road. It seems almost like a cow
Speaker 3: that is suffering or in pain, maybe for need of water.
Speaker 3: But it's very disconcerting atmosphere. And then he wanders further
Speaker 3: into the village. The whole time he's there he sees
Speaker 3: no one the houses. All around there are houses, but
Speaker 3: nobody's coming in and out of them, and the streets
Speaker 3: are empty. Eventually he finds a well and he runs
Speaker 3: to the well with excitement. He's eager for water. But
Speaker 3: when he gets there, he drops a rock in waiting
Speaker 3: to hear the splash, and there is none, as just
Speaker 3: a dry clack when it hits the bottom. So disappointed,
Speaker 3: he walks further into the village past a banner that
Speaker 3: says prayer for rain, until finally he crosses paths with people.
Speaker 3: The people seem to be in a funeral procession. They're
Speaker 3: marching past in a column, wearing kimono with faces painted white,
Speaker 3: and they're holding huge, tall bouquets of fake flowers and
Speaker 3: other plants I think made out of paper or some
Speaker 3: of the craft. And with them is a two wheeled
Speaker 3: cart bearing an open coffin with a dead man inside,
Speaker 3: surrounded by a kind of silver tinsel looking substance. And
Speaker 3: the procession stops briefly when a bon show bell sounds
Speaker 3: from a perch on a hill above the rest of
Speaker 3: the village, and we get a kind of cutaway. We
Speaker 3: see the belfry up above the village. It's you know,
Speaker 3: it's within visual distance, but it's a good ways up
Speaker 3: and somebody, an old man, appears to be ringing the
Speaker 3: bell with this big log that's on a rope, and
Speaker 3: Gakuin checks his pocket watch it is six o'clock. And
Speaker 3: then the procession moves on and here the wind begins
Speaker 3: to blow and it kicks up dust. They get stuck
Speaker 3: in Gakuwin's eyes, so he's holding a handkerchief to his
Speaker 3: face and he runs inside a nearby building for shelter.
Speaker 3: Once inside the building, he sees a group of men
Speaker 3: sitting in a circle talking and they're talking about the bell.
Speaker 3: One is like, not that bell again, there's no need
Speaker 3: to ring it, and then another one says, but the
Speaker 3: demon pond will overflow, a flood will come, and then
Speaker 3: another says that's just superstition, but whether it's true or not,
Speaker 3: at this point of flood would be welcome. And then
Speaker 3: the people in the house finally notice Gochowin in their
Speaker 3: entry way. He explains that he's got dust in his
Speaker 3: eye and he asks for water to wash it out,
Speaker 3: and the men are like, what you want water? Are
Speaker 3: you kidding? And then a woman comes out from the
Speaker 3: other room and kindly offers to help him. She's like, here,
Speaker 3: let me help you. And her solution is she offers
Speaker 3: to express breast milk into his eyes. Yes, and Gogowin
Speaker 3: is disturbed. He tries to be polite like he thanks her,
Speaker 3: but he quickly leaves. So something has gone horribly wrong
Speaker 3: at this village related to water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is such an awkward and largely uneerrotic
Speaker 2: interaction here, Like, clearly Gagawin is just completely thrown off
Speaker 2: guard here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he leaves the village and wanders into the
Speaker 3: woods further up the mountain side. He's still holding the
Speaker 3: handkerchief to his eye. But these woods do not appear
Speaker 3: parched like the village below. Here, it's shady green under
Speaker 3: the tree canopy, and there are all these ferns and
Speaker 3: small plants on the forest floor. And then Gakawin hears
Speaker 3: the sound of trickling water, so he hunts it down
Speaker 3: and he finds a little stream, washes his face, removes
Speaker 3: the dust from his eye, fills his canteen, and takes
Speaker 3: a drink, and we see him kind of stand up
Speaker 3: and his face is just covered in water. He's like
Speaker 3: he has been infused with essence of wetness and feels
Speaker 3: very revived. So if it's this green just up the
Speaker 3: hill from the village, why is the village so parched.
Speaker 2: It's a mystery one we'll have to to investigate.
Speaker 3: So he feels very revived, and he ventures further up
Speaker 3: the mountain as the sun is setting, and he comes
Speaker 3: across a little hut and a shrine. This is the
Speaker 3: house where somebody was ringing the bon schow bell earlier
Speaker 3: at six o'clock when he saw the funeral. So there's
Speaker 3: the belfry there on the side, and the area around
Speaker 3: this little house is very wet. There's like a small
Speaker 3: pond and a trickling brook with lush water grasses all around.
Speaker 3: So the drought has not reached this place that's just
Speaker 3: a little bit away from the rest of the village.
Speaker 2: And this is definitely a scene where we get an
Speaker 2: overwhelming sense of that sunset, twilight gloaming vibe. And in fact,
Speaker 2: at this point I also actually felt a little bit
Speaker 2: of anxiety because this reminded me very strongly of the
Speaker 2: sky and the lighting in house in that scene where
Speaker 2: where the head comes up from the well. So I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, man, something weird is about to happen,
Speaker 2: and something is weird is about to happen in some ways,
Speaker 2: but not on the level of cackling bottom biting head
Speaker 2: from the bottom of the well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: light becomes tremendously orange and it's the silhouette of the
Speaker 3: mountain is ominous. But anyway, so behind the house on
Speaker 3: the hill there's a woman kneeling in the grass at
Speaker 3: the water's edge. I think she's washing produce or washing food,
Speaker 3: and she begins speaking to Gacawan without turning around. She
Speaker 3: tells him the bell he heard ringing earlier is rung
Speaker 3: only three times a day, at dawn, at dusk, and
Speaker 3: late at night, and it may not be struck any
Speaker 3: other time. She says, if you are walking by, please
Speaker 3: do not strike it with that stick in fun, do
Speaker 3: not be mischievous. So it's interesting she knows he has
Speaker 3: a stick, even though she has not turned around to
Speaker 3: look at him. And there's a slow zoom on Gakawan.
Speaker 3: Very quiet, eerie music starts to play. He becomes curious,
Speaker 3: like there's drought in the village below, but up here
Speaker 3: at the house there's plenty of water, and he asks
Speaker 3: the woman about this, and she explains that it gushes
Speaker 3: from a spring. And then they have this moment where
Speaker 3: they talk about how when the water, when the flowing
Speaker 3: water hits a rock, it tinkles, and the way they
Speaker 3: say it, the way they say it in Japanese has
Speaker 3: a little automatopoia. They say like it's ding ding ding ding,
Speaker 3: like a ringing bell or like a harp, and then
Speaker 3: they talk about how the valley that they're in I
Speaker 3: think is the valley that plays a harp or the
Speaker 3: valley of harp music. But then she goes on to
Speaker 3: explain that the real source of the water that's around
Speaker 3: their house, that's coming out of the spring is Demon Pond.
Speaker 3: The water comes from Demon Pond, and Gakuwin takes interest here.
Speaker 3: He tells her that he saw Demon Pond on the
Speaker 3: map and he came here in part because he wanted
Speaker 3: to see it. And she tells him that there is
Speaker 3: a legend that a dragon sleeps at the bottom of
Speaker 3: the pond. Quote it carries poison. The villagers say that fearfully.
Speaker 3: The rocks change color in the water to purple and
Speaker 3: green rouge granules seen at times. It's very beautiful. The
Speaker 3: villagers say the dragon's scales have been shed. They say
Speaker 3: it is fishy, dirty, uncanny, and that the water is poisoned.
Speaker 3: I like the ambiguity of the description here. I don't
Speaker 3: know exactly what's causal from one statement to the next,
Speaker 3: but it's a little bit hair raising, especially since he
Speaker 3: already drank the water. He becomes very concerned. He's like, well,
Speaker 3: I drank the water from the stream, I washed my
Speaker 3: eyes in. It is something going to happen to me.
Speaker 2: I do love the idea of the dragon scales. The
Speaker 2: shed scales are in the water. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the woman, you know, he's concerned, but she says,
Speaker 3: you know, the villagers are suspicious, but we drink the water,
Speaker 3: meaning her and the people who live at this house.
Speaker 3: We haven't met anybody else there yet, but we drink
Speaker 3: the water and nothing happens to us. So that makes
Speaker 3: the villager suspicious of them, Like, you know, if the
Speaker 3: water is poisoned, but they drink it and they're fine.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're witches or something. That's the implication. And Gakuin
Speaker 3: drops his compass into the water by accident. The woman
Speaker 3: retrieves it for him, and then finally, here we get
Speaker 3: a revelation of the woman's face as she uncovers her
Speaker 3: hair turns to look at Gakawin. This is the woman
Speaker 3: played by Tamasaburobando, and the film suggests that something strange
Speaker 3: is happening. We don't again, it's not clear exactly what
Speaker 3: it is, but upon seeing this woman, Goquin is shaken
Speaker 3: and the music is again bubbling swirling, effervescent and magical,
Speaker 3: and this is one of the parts where Tomita really
Speaker 3: manages to make the music sound like water. So they
Speaker 3: have this strange, enchanted form of eye contact, and Gakowin
Speaker 3: asks if he can stay for a cup of tea.
Speaker 3: The woman says yes, she's trying to be a good host,
Speaker 3: and so she goes inside the house. And then Gakawin
Speaker 3: looks down at the compass of his that fell into
Speaker 3: the water, and it's spinning all around like in Bermuda
Speaker 3: Triangle movies. I bet there's a scene like this in
Speaker 3: the Bermuda depths.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all but smoking here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So inside, the woman who we learn is named Yuri,
Speaker 3: talks with her husband Akira or Akira, the handsome young
Speaker 3: man with silver hair, and Akira asks Yuri to ask
Speaker 3: the traveler if he has a good story to tell,
Speaker 3: and we see that Akira is working over a text
Speaker 3: called Collection of Old Legends, so this is a narrative guy.
Speaker 3: He's looking for legends. All through these scenes, Rob, I
Speaker 3: wonder what you think about this. I feel like there
Speaker 3: is consistently something strange about Uri, not something bad, like
Speaker 3: she is portrayed as polite and a good host. There's
Speaker 3: nothing nefarious about her, but there is an uncanny distance
Speaker 3: and hesitation in her behavior, like she is out of
Speaker 3: place or living in the wrong world, but also with
Speaker 3: these dimensions of anxiety, like she's living in fear of
Speaker 3: something that cannot be spoken of. Do you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think that's a good point. This is also
Speaker 2: the scene though, is there's a lot to unpack here
Speaker 2: because she's also behaving and she's she's treating a wanderer
Speaker 2: who has come up and is asking for aid, and
Speaker 2: so like she's navigating certain social norms here. But then
Speaker 2: we quickly see that there is the white haired gentleman
Speaker 2: is is remaining hidden, and she's somehow navigating this as well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, all of these elements make for a scene
Speaker 2: that is on one level, like very straightforward, like a
Speaker 2: wanderer is being greeted with tea and then later some fruit,
Speaker 2: But then there's also something else going on, perhaps on
Speaker 2: multiple levels.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, so she's she is displaying kindness and hospitality,
Speaker 3: but there's also this level of apprehension. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: So Gakuwin sits with your EA outside on the veranda
Speaker 3: and they have tea and chilled pairs while they talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we see him eat one, but it later sounds
Speaker 2: like maybe he ate like six pairs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like maybe he's had a lot of
Speaker 3: fair Also, Gaquin is a skilled peeler of pairs. Do
Speaker 3: you see he takes the entire skin off in the
Speaker 3: one the one long strip? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been trying to lick my apples that way
Speaker 2: these days, but I still end up making a mess
Speaker 2: that I guess I haven't refined it.
Speaker 3: I like to eat the apple peels. I'm a big
Speaker 3: peel fan.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, well I've been Yeah, I still eat
Speaker 2: the peels, but I've been trying to do the whole.
Speaker 2: Like I'm gonna sit here and like use a knife
Speaker 2: to like cut off little slivers of the apple and
Speaker 2: eat it.
Speaker 3: Oh I do do that. Yeah, I'm not a bite
Speaker 3: into the apple person. I like to cut off pieces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've largely been a bite into the apple person.
Speaker 2: But then sometimes like I'm ot at the computer I'm working,
Speaker 2: I'm biting into apple, sprays apple juice on the screen.
Speaker 2: I gotta clean that up. But now I'm trying to
Speaker 2: cut the apple and I'm still slinging juice around the room.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. I've got to work on my form.
Speaker 3: So actually what I'm doing recently is we've gotten my
Speaker 3: daughter likes apple, but only the inside doesn't want the peels.
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to cut it in a way that
Speaker 3: creates peel pieces and non peel pieces and equal measures
Speaker 3: so that I can, you know, do one and then
Speaker 3: the other and I eat the peel pieces.
Speaker 2: As she's seen one of those the apple peelers, where
Speaker 2: you like lock it into the device, and.
Speaker 3: We've actually got one of those, we just haven't used it.
Speaker 3: It's like it takes some setting up.
Speaker 2: I remember from the past. It only makes sense if
Speaker 2: you're doing like large scale apple peeling for some sort
Speaker 2: of a culinary project.
Speaker 3: Wow, this has been peel talk, Yeah, Robin Joe. So
Speaker 3: back to the movie. So we learned that we learned
Speaker 3: from the conversation between Gacawin and Uri that this house
Speaker 3: used to be a temple storehouse, but the temple burned
Speaker 3: down long ago, and that's why there is a sacred
Speaker 3: bell here because it used to be a temple. I
Speaker 3: feel like this detail it's only mentioned in Passing and
Speaker 3: doesn't come up again. There's something about the idea of
Speaker 3: the temple burning down long ago and this Belfrey being
Speaker 3: a remnant that kind of ties in with themes that
Speaker 3: will become more important later on about what really is tradition,
Speaker 3: what types of tradition are worth honoring, and you know,
Speaker 3: do we does do the obligations of the past still
Speaker 3: linger and things like that. But again, uh, Gakuin is thankful.
Speaker 3: He tries to be a good, you know, a good
Speaker 3: guest and tries to pay for the hospitality. At one
Speaker 3: point he says something about this being a tea house.
Speaker 3: So I don't know if he if there is confusion
Speaker 3: about whether this is just somebody's house that he's being
Speaker 3: offered tea at, or if it is a tea house
Speaker 3: that serves customers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he says something of the effective like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's a temple. I knew it wasn't just a tea
Speaker 2: house or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, maybe that's what it was. Yeah, But he
Speaker 3: tries to pay for the hospitality. Uri says that she
Speaker 3: will not accept payment in the form of money, only
Speaker 3: in the form of him telling her a great story
Speaker 3: of the strange from his travels, and this seems to
Speaker 3: raise Gakuwain's suspicions. We will learn why in a bit,
Speaker 3: But he starts to tell a story from etches In
Speaker 3: Province about a dumpling that was transformed into something that
Speaker 3: gets interrupted by the next big plot beat. Though I
Speaker 3: wanted to hear the dumpling.
Speaker 2: Stone, I know I was. I felt the same way,
Speaker 2: like what does it transform into? Because I've I've read
Speaker 2: some stories from I can't remember offhand off it was
Speaker 2: of Japanese origin or Chinese origin, but of dumplings coming
Speaker 2: to life and essentially running around as little people.
Speaker 3: So he says something about it going under the veranda
Speaker 3: or something. But yeah, it doesn't finish the story because
Speaker 3: as Gakuwin speaks inside, Akira is listening and he hears
Speaker 3: his voice and he's he freezes. Akira is deeply troubled
Speaker 3: because he recognizes Gakuwin's voice, and at one point he
Speaker 3: peeks out through the door and Gakawin sees him. Gaquin
Speaker 3: seems to recognize him as well. So here I'm gonna
Speaker 3: shift a bit from the more moment to moment narration
Speaker 3: into some summary of what follows. So it turns out
Speaker 3: Akira and Gakuin are long lost friends. They were once
Speaker 3: like brothers. But three years ago Akira disappeared without a trace,
Speaker 3: not a single word to his friends or family. Gakuin
Speaker 3: knew that a Kira a disliked city life and thought
Speaker 3: he may have fled to live in the country, but
Speaker 3: nobody knew for sure, and many were afraid that he
Speaker 3: had died. It turns out, in reality, what happened is
Speaker 3: that Akira went traveling north from Tokyo to collect strange
Speaker 3: local tales and legends for a book he was writing
Speaker 3: because he's some sort of folklore scholar. And then, just
Speaker 3: like Gakawin, Akira had been drawn to this village because
Speaker 3: he saw the demon pond on a map and wanted
Speaker 3: to see it in person. Except when he arrived. At
Speaker 3: this point, all we learn is that he met Uri,
Speaker 3: They fell in love, and they got married, and they
Speaker 3: have been living here together ever since. But why didn't
Speaker 3: Akira let his friends and family know there is something
Speaker 3: strange going on here again, an unspoken tension or reticence.
Speaker 3: For example, Akira's he's got silver hair when we first
Speaker 3: see him, and he later reveals to Gaqawain that it's
Speaker 3: a wig, Like, why is he in disguise in his
Speaker 3: own house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, out in the such a rural setting. Yeah, who's
Speaker 2: gonna see him? Who's he hiding from?
Speaker 3: Also, Uri in particular seems to be afraid of Gakuwin
Speaker 3: finding out Akira's identity. Yuri says, you know, with this,
Speaker 3: with this kind of pitiful fear. She says, if you
Speaker 3: go away with him, I'd be and then she just
Speaker 3: trails off in fright, like something terrible will happen to
Speaker 3: her if he's not there with her. H And at
Speaker 3: first Yuri manages to talk Akira out of revealing himself
Speaker 3: to Gakawin, but eventually Akia can't stand it. This is
Speaker 3: like after Gakuwin has already left and it starts raining.
Speaker 3: Akira goes after him, finds him in the woods and
Speaker 3: admits who he is, So he invites his old friend
Speaker 3: to stay the night at their house, and they spend
Speaker 3: a long time that evening catching up. Gakuwin has a
Speaker 3: lot of questions about Uri, rob I wonder what you
Speaker 3: make of like what is the source of initially of
Speaker 3: Gakuwin's suspicion about her, because she's been nothing but nice
Speaker 3: to him, and and in fact, even in the first
Speaker 3: time they meet. He seems rather taken with her, like
Speaker 3: he's kind of entranced by her, but also a little
Speaker 3: bit unsettled. So is it just that she's just giving
Speaker 3: off vibes? Is it magical kind of frightening energy or
Speaker 3: is there something specific?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it is a general thing like that,
Speaker 2: you know, she has a kind not like a straight
Speaker 2: up spooky vibe, but there is an ethereal nature to her.
Speaker 2: There's the whole disappearance of Akira, and then maybe there's
Speaker 2: also a bit playing with the folkloric elements that the
Speaker 2: trope that we see in at least some Japanese folk
Speaker 2: tales of some sort of a spirit bride that comes
Speaker 2: into someone's life and changes that life one way or another.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there will be other character elements that come in
Speaker 3: later that I think may explain part of this, and
Speaker 3: we'll talk about that when it comes up. But yeah,
Speaker 3: at this point I wonder to what degree he really
Speaker 3: is afraid of her being magical in some way because
Speaker 3: he asks a He's like, is she a sorceress? And
Speaker 3: Akira is like no, what makes you say so? But anyway,
Speaker 3: they talk and they decide that since Gachowin came here
Speaker 3: to see the demon pond. They are going to go
Speaker 3: out tonight and see it together. So it's a five
Speaker 3: kilometer walk through the woods, and then there is a
Speaker 3: there's a very gun on the mantelpiece, you know, Chekhov's gun.
Speaker 3: You kind of seen where they're like, there may be
Speaker 3: bamboo and vines to cut through on the way to
Speaker 3: demon pond. So we must take our sickles and oh no,
Speaker 3: the sickles are dull, Yuri, would you please sharpen our sickles?
Speaker 3: So like Uri working the sickles on the wet stone
Speaker 3: in the spring while the two men put on their shoes.
Speaker 3: There's it's an eerie moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we know it's going to pop up back up
Speaker 2: again for sure.
Speaker 3: One of them says it looks really sharp now. So
Speaker 3: also in the scene, Gakuin makes little comments to Akira
Speaker 3: about escaping, and Yuri is frightened about them leaving. She
Speaker 3: says that she's going to feel so lonely. She actually
Speaker 3: clutches a doll. It's a pitiful thing, like, you know,
Speaker 3: clutches a doll, Like there's a kind of return to
Speaker 3: childhood and her fear here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, already there's so many you could begin
Speaker 2: just taking little bits of string and mapping them out
Speaker 2: different elements of the plot. Because we have this doll here,
Speaker 2: we have that doll in the desert that we saw.
Speaker 2: The doll in the desert looked very European, and this
Speaker 2: doll looks more authentically Japanese, at least in my eye.
Speaker 2: There's also this like this escape element.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: We have characters that we've discussed as escaping the urban
Speaker 2: world to venture into the rural, escaping the modern to
Speaker 2: go into the traditional, and now the reverse is being discussed.
Speaker 3: So we should note. On the night that our main
Speaker 3: characters meet, there is a brief rainstorm, but it's so brief.
Speaker 3: By the time the villagers are able to get out
Speaker 3: their buckets and pails to catch the rain, it's over,
Speaker 3: so it's like the weather is taunting them a lot
Speaker 3: of disappointment. Then there is also a very important scene
Speaker 3: here where the politician shows up, the local member representing
Speaker 3: the village in the Diet. The character's name is Koso
Speaker 3: and a Kuma, but I think I'm just going to
Speaker 3: call him the Diet member. The politician arrives by car
Speaker 3: with bags of rice for the villagers and there is
Speaker 3: much rejoicing because of the rice. So he comes in
Speaker 3: and you know, the people take the rice out there.
Speaker 3: There's like one guy in the village who's the big
Speaker 3: tough wrestler guys. I think he's helping them move the
Speaker 3: rice in. Uh, and they like spill the rice all
Speaker 3: over the floor of the house they're moving them into,
Speaker 3: and the villagers are just scooping it up by by
Speaker 3: with their hands in a frenzy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so there's almost all there's a lack of decorum,
Speaker 2: even such as their excitement for the rice.
Speaker 3: There is also a scene where a man is out
Speaker 3: hunting a fish that flops in the shallow mud of
Speaker 3: a pond under a sign that says no fishing aloud,
Speaker 3: and he's singing a great song. This is the translated
Speaker 3: lyrics of the song are there's no lack of goblins,
Speaker 3: which is just like, I want that to be a
Speaker 3: book title, album title.
Speaker 2: Great. I was thinking this could be straight up a
Speaker 2: rocky ericson song right here.
Speaker 3: Just yeah, there's no lack of goblin. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 3: lack of goblins. They come in many shapes, one eyed monster,
Speaker 3: water imp goblin, cat, bucking echo, goblin, cat Goblin of
Speaker 3: the sea. Then there's that one with an egg like face,
Speaker 3: and I think we see that one, think we do. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's spooky.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the fisherman, I don't know if he's actually a
Speaker 3: fisherman or just in this moment opportunistically has caught a
Speaker 3: fish in his hat. I'm gonna call him the fisherman.
Speaker 3: He catches a fish in his hat and decides he's
Speaker 3: gonna sell it to the assemblyman and get a good price.
Speaker 3: On the way back to the village, though, he's carrying
Speaker 3: this fish in his hat, and he stops to peek
Speaker 3: in the window of Yuri and Akira's house, and he
Speaker 3: sees Yuri by herself, and then she slowly turns to
Speaker 3: look at him through the window, and then suddenly he
Speaker 3: is frozen with fear and then shouts in pain because
Speaker 3: a crab has crawled onto his foot and pinched him.
Speaker 3: So he, I think, takes this as some kind of
Speaker 3: horrible sign. He drops the fish into the little pond
Speaker 3: beside the house, and then we see the crab crawling
Speaker 3: down a rock into the pond as well, and then
Speaker 3: he's gone. He takes off in terror, and we're about
Speaker 3: fifty minutes into the movie at this point, and then
Speaker 3: it takes a turn because now we get our first
Speaker 3: encounter with supernatural creatures. Clear like whatever's going on with
Speaker 3: Uri she it could just be weird energy. Up to
Speaker 3: the you know, there's nothing explicitly magical, but now we
Speaker 3: get our first explicitly supernatural creatures. The music becomes strange
Speaker 3: and whimsical, and we zoom down into the magic of
Speaker 3: pond World and meet the humanoid spirit embodiment of the
Speaker 3: fish that was caught. Is this the carp spirit, the
Speaker 3: one they call car plators? Oh yeah, yeah, the of
Speaker 3: the carp and the crab that saved him. And so
Speaker 3: the fish spirit is a inhumanoid form, is a gleaming,
Speaker 3: slime covered black mass in the moonlight who looks like
Speaker 3: he's got this giant, soggy bloom of hair around his head.
Speaker 3: And the crab spirit is very crabby. He's painted bright red.
Speaker 3: He has these huge claw hands, prosthetic claw hands, and
Speaker 3: he walks with a hunched posture. He is more aggressive,
Speaker 3: the more aggressive of the two rob I don't know
Speaker 3: if you have any other notes on on our first
Speaker 3: goblins here, but they're wonderful.
Speaker 2: They are wonderful, there's a death. These are not necessary.
Speaker 2: There's not really yokai. But again they remind me a
Speaker 2: lot of yokai movies, live action yokai movies from Japan.
Speaker 2: There is, they look great, but there is not an
Speaker 2: attempt here to make the crab man look more than
Speaker 2: like twenty five percent crab. I don't know, right, you know,
Speaker 2: Like he's it's very obviously a man with crab arms.
Speaker 2: And then the fish spirit is looks mostly like a
Speaker 2: grimy human. But they have the essence of these animals
Speaker 2: that they are portraying, and it would works, but it's
Speaker 2: very well, it strikes a very comedic cord for sure.
Speaker 3: The crab guy is, he's just like a wild guy
Speaker 3: with crab claws painted red. And the fish is the
Speaker 3: fish could be like a member of the band corn
Speaker 3: covered in like crude oil. Yeah yeah, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 3: And they have spirit banter too, like they're they're buffoonish characters.
Speaker 3: They get angry at the discarded sedge hat that the
Speaker 3: fishermen had used to catch the fish in, so they
Speaker 3: stomp on it, and then they decide that it's not
Speaker 3: actually the hat's fault that the fish was caught Also
Speaker 3: the hat starts talking, the hats like, not my fault.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you just saw this sequence, you would have
Speaker 2: a totally different idea of what Demon Pond would be about.
Speaker 3: You would not at all get the strange, quiet, haunted
Speaker 3: feeling of everything that's happened up to this point. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so it becomes very goofy and funny. The hat says,
Speaker 3: it's not my fault, and then they throw the hat
Speaker 3: in the air and lands on the head of a
Speaker 3: shrine statue. They say, look how it flies, just like
Speaker 3: a man's head, suggesting that sometimes they behead people and
Speaker 3: throw their heads. So, I guess these are I don't know, dangerous,
Speaker 3: dangerous crab and fish spirits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're not overly kind concerning humanity, and we'll
Speaker 2: see more of them a bit.
Speaker 3: No, they don't like humans. And they so they say
Speaker 3: they're going to travel to the fish's parental home, which
Speaker 3: we assume is Demon Pond. They're going to Demon Pond,
Speaker 3: and they talk about the Princess of the Pond. They say,
Speaker 3: does she have any intention to let it rain? And
Speaker 3: they say, ah, the drought, it's none of her business,
Speaker 3: it doesn't concern her. And then they start talking about
Speaker 3: something that will become important dragon princess lore. They say,
Speaker 3: she loves the young man of Singja Pond at King Gamine.
Speaker 3: She thinks of him constantly. They say, why can't she
Speaker 3: just spread her sleeves and fly to go see him,
Speaker 3: Because she can't do that because if she leaves Demon Pond,
Speaker 3: there will be a terrible flood and the whole valley
Speaker 3: will be submerged. But then the crab says, oh, what
Speaker 3: of it, that would expand my habitation. Let the village
Speaker 3: become a muddy marsh.
Speaker 2: Gotta love crab.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And they also passed the bell. They talk about
Speaker 3: how if the bell is not wrung, the flood will
Speaker 3: be unleashed and the world will become a paradise for them.
Speaker 3: So they're kind of looking forward to this, And this
Speaker 3: is the moment when the music they're like regarding the bell,
Speaker 3: and suddenly the music goes from this whimsical boot dey
Speaker 3: boop stuff into the night on bald Mountain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're switched on Mazorski at this point, I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So they're cavorting in the moonlight and they sing
Speaker 3: a song, actually a kind of eerie song called turn
Speaker 3: the mountain into a river. Later, we see them encounter
Speaker 3: another animal water spirit on a journey to the Demon Pond.
Speaker 3: This is an old man hobbling through the woods with
Speaker 3: these catfish barbles hanging from his face. We learn that
Speaker 3: he is called Black Catfish Priest, a catfish who was
Speaker 3: turned into a monk. And he's got a letter from
Speaker 3: the gentleman of Sinja Pond to deliver to the princess
Speaker 3: of Demon Pond.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, yeah, and I love Black Catfish Priest. He's tremendous.
Speaker 2: He's great, great makeup here.
Speaker 3: So Also at this point, Akira and Gakowin are on
Speaker 3: their journey to the Demon Pond, and Akira recounts the
Speaker 3: legend of the pond to Gakuwin. It goes like this
Speaker 3: quote men fought the water. The village seemed doomed at
Speaker 3: that time. A holy man can find the Dragon God
Speaker 3: to that pond. The dragon the dragon God said, my
Speaker 3: freedom is lost, as I pledged to save men from drowning.
Speaker 3: Cast a huge bell, ring it thrice each day to
Speaker 3: awaken me and remind me of my promise. I long
Speaker 3: for freedom to move around, to have my own way,
Speaker 3: to forget the pledge making the water of this pond overflow.
Speaker 3: In gaining freedom, I care not how many men and
Speaker 3: beasts perish. And yet the pledge will be kept. But
Speaker 3: I must be reminded of it lest I forget. Do
Speaker 3: not neglect to ring the bell. Okay, So the story
Speaker 3: again is, Yeah, the dragon god is confined against its
Speaker 3: will to the demon Pond and I, and it wants
Speaker 3: to get out, and if you let it get out,
Speaker 3: it is going to cause a flood. But it has
Speaker 3: promised it will not leave, and you've got to remind
Speaker 3: it of its promise three times a day with the bell.
Speaker 2: So an ancient, an ancient pact, an ancient promise preventing cataclysm,
Speaker 2: and tradition is essential to secure the pact.
Speaker 3: That's right. Also, we get some flashback here where Akira
Speaker 3: tells the story of how he came to take over
Speaker 3: the bell. So he says that an old man tended
Speaker 3: to the bell for fifty years before he arrived, and
Speaker 3: when Akira first came three years ago, he stayed with
Speaker 3: the man in his house. This is the house Akira
Speaker 3: now lives in. But one night, upon returning from ringing
Speaker 3: the bell, the old man collapsed and the dying man
Speaker 3: begged a Kira. He's like, take over my duties. If
Speaker 3: no one rings the bell, everyone will die. And at
Speaker 3: first Akira he agrees to this promise, and he does
Speaker 3: it just to placate a dying man. He intends to
Speaker 3: ring it only once and then convince someone from the
Speaker 3: village below to take over for him. But when he
Speaker 3: explains the legend to the villagers, the villagers are not
Speaker 3: bought in on this. They just laugh in his face.
Speaker 3: No one believes the story, and so nobody's willing to
Speaker 3: do it. So it falls to Akira. He has to
Speaker 3: go back and keep ringing the bell because nobody else
Speaker 3: will take over. A few other scenes in here, there's
Speaker 3: a scene where we get to see the villagers feasting.
Speaker 3: They're going and gorging themselves on the polished rice that
Speaker 3: the politician brought. But I was wondering what did they
Speaker 3: cook it with? They don't have any water, Like, did
Speaker 3: they have to use breast milk to make their rice?
Speaker 2: Maybe they were able to get just enough rain water
Speaker 2: for this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the fishermen who got pinched by the crab
Speaker 3: spirit is here and we learn in this scene that
Speaker 3: he has a reputation about town as a scoundrel, like
Speaker 3: the men mock him for always hanging out by the
Speaker 3: belfry hoping to see Uri. And then also at this time,
Speaker 3: we see Yuri at home having a weird communion with
Speaker 3: the moon and with her doll. She talks about how
Speaker 3: the night is so long and she is alone, and
Speaker 3: then she repeats the song she heard the spirits singing
Speaker 3: through the wall. She starts singing, turn the mountain into
Speaker 3: a river, which is a little bit frightening, and it
Speaker 3: implies that there is some connection between the spirit world
Speaker 3: and the physical world. I mean, I guess we already
Speaker 3: saw that in that the crab spirit did pinch the fishermen,
Speaker 3: and also Yuri has been hearing their songs sings it too.
Speaker 3: So Crab Karp and Black Catfish Priest make their way
Speaker 3: down into the layer of the Dragon Princess under Demon Pond,
Speaker 3: and they pass through this wonderfully bizarre cave set that
Speaker 3: is kind of hard to describe, but it's full of
Speaker 3: these roots and mud, and it's populated with all sorts
Speaker 3: of humanoid spirit creatures where you've got various fish, turtles, frogs,
Speaker 3: crab and then other less watery demons, just assorted demons
Speaker 3: and goblins of muck that I can't really see an
Speaker 3: animal comparison for.
Speaker 2: That, kind of like egg face dude is here.
Speaker 3: He's kind of Cyclopean with a cone head or an
Speaker 3: egg head, and he's making like a vulcan salute with
Speaker 3: his fingers. And the catfish priest here before he meets
Speaker 3: the dragon princess he makes he becomes anxious about the
Speaker 3: contents of his letter. He's like, what if it tells
Speaker 3: the dragon princess to cut him up and eat him?
Speaker 3: And then he remembers a story of a time when
Speaker 3: he got in trouble with his own pond lord because
Speaker 3: he was watching a beautiful woman bathe naked in the water,
Speaker 3: and the other spirits think this is hilarious. A lot
Speaker 3: of like crab and fish spirit antics here again, these
Speaker 3: these comedic performances. And then the crab decides to use
Speaker 3: its scissors to cut open the letter box so they
Speaker 3: can read what's in the letter. But before they can
Speaker 3: read it, a voice cries out and says, away with
Speaker 3: you creatures of mud, like, oh no, here she comes,
Speaker 3: and we finally meet the dragon Princess. So things are
Speaker 3: getting real. Now once again, this is this is Bando
Speaker 3: also in the performance as the Dragon Princess. The Dragon
Speaker 3: Goddess is an elegant queen in a red gown embroidered
Speaker 3: with flowers and gold lining. She has this beautiful crown
Speaker 3: of gold and crystal with these dangling pieces that sway
Speaker 3: when she moves. Her face is pale with kabuki makeup,
Speaker 3: so she has a scented eyebrows and deep red lips.
Speaker 3: And she kind of swoops in with her retinue, which
Speaker 3: includes all kinds of figures, these monstrous samurai and these
Speaker 3: ghostly women with faces painted white. And she takes the
Speaker 3: letter from Catfish and tries to read it. First, she
Speaker 3: says how irritating it is to read a letter by moonlight,
Speaker 3: And then one of her servants says, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: your majesty, as the incarnation of the Dragon God, your
Speaker 3: own radiation. The implication is should be enough to read by,
Speaker 3: and it's true enough. She glows and then reads the
Speaker 3: letter by her own glow, and we come to understand
Speaker 3: it as a very good love letter, very well written,
Speaker 3: gentle and beautiful in its language, and the Dragon Princess
Speaker 3: is smitten. She desperately wants to go to Singapond and
Speaker 3: be with this other pond lord. He must be a great,
Speaker 3: awesome pond lord, so she wants that. But her nurse,
Speaker 3: who is an older woman with the catlike appearance and
Speaker 3: these and like wispy white hair, the nurse reminds her
Speaker 3: of her duty. She cannot leave. The nurse makes it
Speaker 3: clear she's like, I'm not saying I love humans. I
Speaker 3: don't care whether they live or die. In fact, she
Speaker 3: refers to them as monkeys without tails. But she says
Speaker 3: a promise is a promise, and the princess cannot break it.
Speaker 3: The princess reacts to this with rage. She tries to
Speaker 3: order her soldiers to go and destroy the bell, but
Speaker 3: her nurse rebukes her again and tells her no, she
Speaker 3: cannot command this. And then the nurse starts trying to
Speaker 3: bargain or compromise. She tells her like, look, you only
Speaker 3: need to wait a little bit longer. It won't be
Speaker 3: thirty or fifty years, just a little bit longer before
Speaker 3: you can be free. And I was trying to think,
Speaker 3: what's going on here is the nurse. Does the nurse
Speaker 3: think she's telling her? The truth is she reasoning, pretty
Speaker 3: soon they'll forget to ring the bell, and then you'll
Speaker 3: be free of your pact, and then you can flood
Speaker 3: the valley and go be free. Or is she just
Speaker 3: trying to kind of like tide her over. I don't
Speaker 3: know really what the nurse is thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point though about like if you
Speaker 2: just keep if you just keep at it, you know,
Speaker 2: don't but break the pledge, the humans are going to
Speaker 2: forget about it, and the bell's not going to be wrong,
Speaker 2: and then we're free.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So I don't know. Maybe the nurse is
Speaker 3: just trying to get through one day at a time.
Speaker 3: But the Dragon Princess, she's furious. She wanders around the
Speaker 3: dark cavern and she says, a yearning, a yearning heart
Speaker 3: will overcome all barriers. I am unwilling to wait, and
Speaker 3: she's just acting out these feelings. She can't stand it.
Speaker 3: And then here it also turns into I mentioned that
Speaker 3: there are multiple scenes of this in the movie, of
Speaker 3: a kind of moral bargaining, where the princess starts making
Speaker 3: a lot of excuses for doing what she knows is wrong.
Speaker 3: She talks about how humans break their promises all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they break their promises. She also says promises are arbitrary,
Speaker 3: and then she says, my ancestors made this play out
Speaker 3: of convenience. Why should I be bound by what they pledged?
Speaker 3: And again her servants and advisors tell her that she
Speaker 3: cannot break the pledge, and they remind her, you know,
Speaker 3: if the humans ever fail, if they ever fail to
Speaker 3: ring the bell three times a day, you are free
Speaker 3: and can leave at your own will. But until then
Speaker 3: you have to do your duty. But she she's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: And so she leads her retinue to the bell. And
Speaker 3: so her whole like drenched court comes out of this
Speaker 3: pondly other world and out into the area of the bell, free,
Speaker 3: and they're standing there with like the wind whipping at
Speaker 3: her hair and clothes. And she says she doesn't care
Speaker 3: if there is divine punishment. Love is more important. Quote
Speaker 3: how blissful to dissolve in the stream of affection. Let
Speaker 3: my body be crushed to pieces, my soul will still
Speaker 3: yearn for him. Is hope as faint as a firefly's
Speaker 3: dim light. And I love this part because maybe I'll
Speaker 3: mention some more parallels later. But so self destructive love
Speaker 3: and passion is a major theme of Pale Flower as well,
Speaker 3: so something in both of these Shinoda movies I've seen.
Speaker 3: So the princess is getting ready to do the unthinkable,
Speaker 3: to violate her packed and destroy the bell, whatever divine
Speaker 3: punishment may come to her. But then she is she's
Speaker 3: given pause because she hears Yuri singing, and from this
Speaker 3: example she learns that when separated from a loved one,
Speaker 3: singing to oneself can provide comfort, like her nurse is saying, yes,
Speaker 3: it's exactly that, Yes, singing to yourself can be comforting,
Speaker 3: and this kind of causes her to come to her senses,
Speaker 3: and she talks about, you know, if the bell were destroyed,
Speaker 3: innocent good people would die too. The implication is that
Speaker 3: like Yuri, who seems to be an innocent good person,
Speaker 3: would perish, though general opinion of the villagers remains low.
Speaker 3: And then Yuri herself comes out to ring the bell
Speaker 3: because Akira is away for the night, so she comes
Speaker 3: out to ring the bell, and once she rings the bell,
Speaker 3: like hits the log into the bell, the princess and
Speaker 3: all of the other creatures are sent reeling. They are
Speaker 3: drawn by some powerful force like a hurricane back to
Speaker 3: the Demon pond.
Speaker 2: Almal shades of a night on bald Mountain, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, actually, so we see them like whipped about by
Speaker 3: this magical wind and slow motion, which is interesting because
Speaker 3: it's like the reminder of the bell is physically efficacious.
Speaker 3: It's not just psychological for the spirits, it literally forces
Speaker 3: them back. And there is this strange, beautiful gravity defying
Speaker 3: kabuki dance when we watch the dragon princess sinking down
Speaker 3: beneath the water, and then at the same time we
Speaker 3: see her sinking into the water, and at the same
Speaker 3: time in the mundane world, Akira and Gakuin are at
Speaker 3: the physical demon pond, standing at the edge, and we
Speaker 3: don't see them encounter each other at all. Is a
Speaker 3: kind of different world's thing, parallel worlds in a way.
Speaker 3: So this is the scene where Gakuwin and Akira kind
Speaker 3: of compare worldviews. Like Gakuwen is a man of science
Speaker 3: and rationalism, Akira is a lover of legends and myths.
Speaker 3: Gakuwin does not typically accept magical reasons for things, like
Speaker 3: Akira says, you know, but if the pond is not magical,
Speaker 3: why is it that no leaf rests on the pond's
Speaker 3: surface and Gakuwan gives an explanation related to the wind,
Speaker 3: though I think it's interesting that he makes an exception
Speaker 3: for Yuri. He is frightened of her, and he tells
Speaker 3: Akira that she is not human. Gakuwin wants Akira to
Speaker 3: leave his wife and escape with him. There's something strange
Speaker 3: about her and about this place, and he's in danger,
Speaker 3: and Akira becomes angry. He violently resists this, and they
Speaker 3: have a brief fight where Akira knocks down his old
Speaker 3: friend and forces him to apologize. And at this point
Speaker 3: I think another motivation for Gakuwin comes into focus. Maybe
Speaker 3: why he's feeling so strange about Uri. It's not just
Speaker 3: the vibes she's giving off. It's also maybe jealousy, jealousy
Speaker 3: of the fact that she has had his old friend
Speaker 3: for all these years and he has not, So there's
Speaker 3: a jealousy there. And then I wonder also if it's
Speaker 3: jealousy the other way, like he finds her beautiful and
Speaker 3: is attracted to her in a way and is jealous
Speaker 3: of Akira because it seems that Gakuin does not have
Speaker 3: a family of his own. This scene gives way into
Speaker 3: what we were talking about earlier, where Akira remembers, like,
Speaker 3: there's a flashback to how he fell in love with Uri.
Speaker 3: He remembers the day that he met her. He was
Speaker 3: planning to leave the village, but then they met at
Speaker 3: opposite at ends of opposite docks jutting into this shallow marsh,
Speaker 3: and she tells him that she found papers that he
Speaker 3: left behind on which he recorded the legend of the
Speaker 3: Bell and the Demon Pond, And in this instant he
Speaker 3: falls in love with her, and he can't leave because
Speaker 3: he can't bear the thought of Yuri in particular being
Speaker 3: killed in the flood, so he stays to tend to
Speaker 3: the bell and becomes her husband. He doesn't seem to
Speaker 3: be all that bothered by the idea of anybody else
Speaker 3: in the village being killed in the flood, but if
Speaker 3: Yuri were killed, he's like, that would be unacceptable. And
Speaker 3: we see them falling in love in a montage set
Speaker 3: to again these strange electronic pads with the swirling sounds,
Speaker 3: and they embrace and kiss and they talk about the
Speaker 3: moonflowers and settle into the house by the belfry. Now
Speaker 3: next we get into the final showdown of the movie,
Speaker 3: which is set up by a long sequence where the
Speaker 3: villager is presided over by the politician the diet member.
Speaker 3: Now that they have feasted on polished rice, they begin
Speaker 3: to talk themselves into the idea that there is only
Speaker 3: one way to solve the drought and bring rain, and
Speaker 3: that is to have a human sacrifice. I think the
Speaker 3: diet member is the one who first suggests it, and
Speaker 3: they decide they have to sacrifice the most beautiful young
Speaker 3: woman in town. So there is searching around for which
Speaker 3: woman will be sacrificed. Do they argue about it? Like
Speaker 3: the guy who caught the carp earlier has to defend
Speaker 3: his own daughter against being sacrificed by implying that she
Speaker 3: is sexually promiscuous, humiliating her in front of the town.
Speaker 2: But there's maybe a sense that he's making it. He's
Speaker 2: like youths come in the night or something like that.
Speaker 3: Well, he's like making it up, and she seems humiliated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, she's humilated either way. But also
Speaker 2: where are these youths with no sign of them? But
Speaker 2: he's saying what he has to say to save her life.
Speaker 2: At least that was my read.
Speaker 3: But the blood thirst tests to turn to somewhere, and
Speaker 3: I think it is him that suggests what about Yuri,
Speaker 3: And there's a kind of there's a kind of vengeful
Speaker 3: jealousy suggested here because I think he sees her from Afar,
Speaker 3: but he can't have her, and this turns into a
Speaker 3: kind of resentment where he suggests her, you know, she
Speaker 3: should be the one punished. So then led by the
Speaker 3: village elders, like the mainly the diet member, but then
Speaker 3: also the village has man, the schoolmaster, and the Shinto priest,
Speaker 3: the villagers head up to the house and they capture Yuri,
Speaker 3: saying that they're going to tie her to an ox
Speaker 3: and slaughter her on the mountain side. Actually, first they
Speaker 3: lie to her. They tell her, oh, we're not going
Speaker 3: to kill you, just we'll tie you to the ox
Speaker 3: and then we'll kill the ox. But that is obviously
Speaker 3: not their attention, and so Akira and Gakawin on their
Speaker 3: way home, they hear the commotion and they come to
Speaker 3: Yuri's rescue, and this turns into a big long argument
Speaker 3: and confrontation with the crowd where the two of them
Speaker 3: try to convince the crowd not to do this, but
Speaker 3: the bloodthirsty leaders, especially the diet members push the crowd
Speaker 3: to move ahead. So first Akira very bravely defends his
Speaker 3: wife and will not step aside for them. Like they
Speaker 3: try to tell him that he'll be fine, they'll leave
Speaker 3: him alone if he'll give her up, but he won't.
Speaker 3: And then Gakawin appears to their rationality and argues against
Speaker 3: what they're doing. Like there's one part where the Shinto
Speaker 3: priests say to him, you sound like a Buddhist priest preaching,
Speaker 3: and Gaquin then, I don't know if he's telling the
Speaker 3: truth here he says, I am a priest. I didn't
Speaker 3: fully understand the implications of this part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wasn't sure if he was speaking metaphorically or
Speaker 2: if this is just another dimension to his character. Because
Speaker 2: one thing I do get from Goquain is like quite fitting,
Speaker 2: is like he's a man that has a foot in
Speaker 2: different worlds, you know, like he is a teacher and
Speaker 2: a naturalist, and maybe he is a priest or in
Speaker 2: some sense is a priest, and therefore the things that
Speaker 2: he's doing that are very modern are also deeply rooted
Speaker 2: in things that are very traditional, Like a naturalist is
Speaker 2: kind of a priest in some way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 2: Especially when you're considering Shintoism and so forth.
Speaker 3: Well, I want to get into the idea of traditionalism
Speaker 3: in just a minute here, but first I'll finish describing
Speaker 3: the scene by saying that after this, the diet member
Speaker 3: gets up and he gives this vicious, bullying, demagogic sermon
Speaker 3: about sacrificing for the national spirit. Like he talks about
Speaker 3: how real men, real warriors, used to kill their own
Speaker 3: wives before going into battle so that they would not
Speaker 3: think of home, only of victory. And it's that kind
Speaker 3: of he's like, and he accuses the people defending ury
Speaker 3: of being snivelers and weak, and he kind of rouses
Speaker 3: the bloodlust of the crowd and accuses Akira of being
Speaker 3: a traitor. And then there's an interesting moment where Akira
Speaker 3: confronts the diet member. He's like, well, if somebody has
Speaker 3: to be brave and die, how about you? How about
Speaker 3: you take this sickle and kill yourself? And Akira shames
Speaker 3: the whole crowd. He says, do you not remember tradition?
Speaker 3: And he speaks of these traditional stories where human sacrifice
Speaker 3: went wrong. But this leads into something I thought was
Speaker 3: actually really interesting about the traditional status or lack thereof,
Speaker 3: of human sacrifice. Most movie narratives or most fictional narrative
Speaker 3: generally where the characters debate the institution of human sacrifice.
Speaker 3: I think most of the time this is about old
Speaker 3: ways versus new So the human sacrifice is presented as
Speaker 3: an ancient tradition that must be continued, and then you
Speaker 3: have characters representing new ways of thinking that doubt or
Speaker 3: resist it. But I think that is not the case here.
Speaker 3: That is not how it's being presented.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have kind of an inverse Wickerman here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. The human sacrifice plot put into motion by
Speaker 3: the villagers and the diet member especially feels improvised and
Speaker 3: half cocked at best. Its relationship to tradition is one
Speaker 3: of a compromised, half remembered imitation of some ancient practice
Speaker 3: that is resorted to out of a shameless desperation and cruelty.
Speaker 3: It is not a faithful attempt to keep the old
Speaker 3: ways alive, and Akira makes an appeal against it by
Speaker 3: appealing to tradition. So I think that's really interesting and
Speaker 3: it actually this is where I think some of the
Speaker 3: subtle political themes of the film come out, because I
Speaker 3: know Massa hero Shanoda generally is understood as having been
Speaker 3: very opposed to right wing nationalism and right wing authoritarianism,
Speaker 3: and this film is sometimes interpreted as having those themes.
Speaker 3: And it does make me think about how a lot
Speaker 3: of right wing nationalist movements appeal to a simulacrum of
Speaker 3: the past because they appeal to a past that never
Speaker 3: actually existed. What they're trying to create is actually a
Speaker 3: new thing that is calling itself a restoration of the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was thinking about this too. We see, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: see numerous echoes of this in our contemporary world, calls
Speaker 2: for intolerance and blood lust that are rooted in some again,
Speaker 2: like you say, some half remembered imitation of the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I detect that kind of critique in this movie,
Speaker 3: that there's something about people thinking that they are enacting
Speaker 3: a tradition and like retrieving the wisdom of their ancestors,
Speaker 3: but actually they're just bumbling into viciousness.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the traditions, especially in the context of this film,
Speaker 2: the traditions are what is keeping cataclysm from taking place.
Speaker 3: Ye, these they're acting opposite that. Yeah, they don't understand
Speaker 3: the tradition. What they think tradition is yeah. So anyway,
Speaker 3: this leads all into a physical fight at the belfry
Speaker 3: where Akira, Uri and Gakawin they they are chased onto
Speaker 3: the belfry by the village's war the villagers warriors and swordsmen.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And in this final confrontation, Uri she kills herself, I
Speaker 3: think to I think the idea is she's trying to
Speaker 3: save Akira.
Speaker 2: With that tool with the sickle.
Speaker 3: Yes. And after this happens, in despair, Akira cuts the
Speaker 3: cords of the log that is used to ring the bell,
Speaker 3: so the bell remains unwrung at dawn as dawn breaks,
Speaker 3: and this leads into the final apocalyptic conclusion of the story,
Speaker 3: because now the pact has been rent, has been sundered,
Speaker 3: it has been you know, they've they've cut the cord.
Speaker 3: They broke their end of the pact, and so the demon,
Speaker 3: the Dragon Princess, is no longer bound by her end.
Speaker 3: And so the sky darkens and this giant water spout
Speaker 3: comes up out of the demon pond and pours into
Speaker 3: the sky. And now too late, the villagers beg Akira
Speaker 3: to ring the bell, but nothing can be done at
Speaker 3: this point. And then comes a tidal wave that flows
Speaker 3: over the mountain and not only destroys everything in the village,
Speaker 3: but destroys the land itself fundamental rends the landscape. This
Speaker 3: part is it has some miniature work and some camera
Speaker 3: tricks to show these horrible like these tidal waves rushing
Speaker 3: over the village as the people are running away in terror.
Speaker 3: There's one shot of the like the cowardly, you know,
Speaker 3: vicious diet member and the other leaders are like up
Speaker 3: on the top of a house and people are trying
Speaker 3: to crawl up onto the house for safety, and they're
Speaker 3: like kicking them to get them to, you know, come down.
Speaker 3: But eventually everyone is washed away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and speaking like shifting tones in this movie, like
Speaker 2: now we're in full blown disaster movie mode and special
Speaker 2: effects movie mode, tremendous water spout.
Speaker 3: And it's terrifying. Yeah, And so everything is just destroyed
Speaker 3: and then finally the only person left is Gakawin. Everyone
Speaker 3: Gakawin survives by tying himself with a rope to the
Speaker 3: post of the belfry, which it turns out in the
Speaker 3: end is the only structure left standing. And get a
Speaker 3: final vision of the liberation of the Dragon Princess where
Speaker 3: she rises out of the pond elated and she flies away.
Speaker 3: She's depicted. Maybe there is a more direct to Japanese
Speaker 3: inspiration for this, but what it actually looked like to
Speaker 3: me was she looks like an angel in a Renaissance
Speaker 3: European painting, like drifting with you know these kind of
Speaker 3: like other figures kind of reclining against her as they
Speaker 3: all flowed up into these rays of light from the clouds. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and the implication is finally she is free and she's
Speaker 3: going to sin Japan to meet her love, to be
Speaker 3: reunited or not. I don't know if they've ever been
Speaker 3: united before, to meet her love from Afar, the lord
Speaker 3: of Sinjapond.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, an impressive ending here, because then we're left
Speaker 2: with Gokuin on the like the edge of this tremendous waterfall.
Speaker 2: And this is actually Igazoo Falls in Brazil, so there's
Speaker 2: not a Japanese location, but they needed something that just
Speaker 2: seemed like this cataclysmic, you know, this much water has
Speaker 2: been unleashed by demon Pond and to your point, the
Speaker 2: idea that the world has just been shaken and changed
Speaker 2: by it.
Speaker 3: The entire landscape is transformed into these rocks and waterfalls,
Speaker 3: and only the belfry is left, the only structure of
Speaker 3: human creation left here is a reminder of the promise
Speaker 3: that was kept for so long and then broken.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so quite a finish to the film.
Speaker 3: So we've talked about a lot of the themes as
Speaker 3: we went through talking about the plot, but it's just
Speaker 3: so rich with things to think about the way the
Speaker 3: movie treats the relationship between humans and nature. That there
Speaker 3: is a power in nature that is only kind of
Speaker 3: barely held back, and that we are ants compared to
Speaker 3: the power of nature, and we just operate with complete
Speaker 3: obliviousness to that power most of the time and don't
Speaker 3: respect it at all until we do something to screw
Speaker 3: it up and unleash the devastating potential of that power
Speaker 3: upon ourselves. There's a lot about fidelity and duty, keeping promises,
Speaker 3: keeping to one's duties, and the difference between the kinds
Speaker 3: of situations people can be in, or the types of
Speaker 3: personalities that cause one to be to have fidelity to
Speaker 3: a promise or keep to a tradition versus wanting to
Speaker 3: violate and break it. There are, as we were talking
Speaker 3: about just a minute ago, these political themes where I
Speaker 3: think it's doing something really interesting with like trying to
Speaker 3: deny a kind of bloodthirsty right wing politics the authority
Speaker 3: of associating itself with tradition, And I think that's an
Speaker 3: interesting move. Talking just I think it generally is about
Speaker 3: that respecting tradition comes with a sense of humility. That's
Speaker 3: an important thing, like that one cannot actually respect tradition
Speaker 3: from a place of arrogance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, that's a great point.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think in general, like this film is just such
Speaker 2: a fertile bed of ideas concerning these themes that you
Speaker 2: can I feel like you can rewatch it multiple times
Speaker 2: and you can sort of draw different connections each time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, tremendous. Oh.
Speaker 3: Also, one thing I wanted to revisit. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you have any thoughts on this. Maybe we'll just
Speaker 3: have to ponder it. But demon ponder it is that
Speaker 3: both this movie and Pale Flower have this seems like
Speaker 3: or maybe it's just these two movies, who know, who knows,
Speaker 3: they're the only two Shanoda movies I've seen, But I
Speaker 3: thought it was interesting that both of them have scenes
Speaker 3: of people talking themselves into or giving justifications for doing
Speaker 3: what is clearly the wrong thing to do. That's a
Speaker 3: process that I find very interesting, like the justifications people
Speaker 3: come up with for doing what's wrong. But that both
Speaker 3: movies have scenes where characters dwell on this. You see
Speaker 3: them working themselves up into doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 2: M yeah, yeah, that's a good point. And you know,
Speaker 2: we watch movies all the time where people do the
Speaker 2: wrong thing. If people just did the right thing, what
Speaker 2: kind of movie would you have?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 2: Of course, sometimes people complain about that. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: the characters in this movie, they were so stupid, they
Speaker 2: did the wrong things. But mistakes have to be made.
Speaker 2: That's what greases the wheels of narrative half the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I like that it's showing that it's not
Speaker 3: always easy to do the wrong thing. Sometimes it takes work. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like sometimes you got to really convince yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and yeah, so other things. Just to mention a
Speaker 3: few of the things I noted about Pale Flower. One
Speaker 3: thing that I really liked in the cinematography of Pale Flower,
Speaker 3: and I wonder if you see any connections here, is
Speaker 3: that in Pale Flower, we see a lot of shots
Speaker 3: of people through other people, like the subject people in
Speaker 3: scenes are in the background framed by people in the foreground.
Speaker 3: Something about that seemed kind of significant, And I don't
Speaker 3: really know if there was an equivalent to that in
Speaker 3: Demon Pond, but you just wanted to throw it at you.
Speaker 2: Having not seen that other film, You do you think
Speaker 2: it sort of frames the interconnectedness or social dynamics of
Speaker 2: different groups, because I could it would be interesting to
Speaker 2: go back and look at some of the especially the
Speaker 2: townsfolk scenes in this movie with that in mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I guess that would be interesting. A lot
Speaker 3: of times it creates a feeling of social claustrophobia but
Speaker 3: also alienation. Like it something about the way these people
Speaker 3: are framed suggests that they are surrounded by people and
Speaker 3: can't get away, but also do not fit in and
Speaker 3: are not part of the group.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, very much, very much on point with this
Speaker 2: film as well, that we see those themes explored multiple times.
Speaker 3: Another thing that's pretty cool in Pale Flower is a
Speaker 3: focus on physical ritual, which you can definitely see in
Speaker 3: this movie. In Pale Flower, it's not religious ritual. There's
Speaker 3: no religion at all that I recall in that movie,
Speaker 3: but a big focus on ritualized gambling scenes. So the
Speaker 3: characters go to these gambling parlors and we see the
Speaker 3: cycle of the games repeat with these there are a
Speaker 3: lot of sights and sounds that happen in sequence over
Speaker 3: and over, and they're kind of hypnotic. With the dealers
Speaker 3: in these gambling in these games, chanting as they call
Speaker 3: for bets, and the clacking of these cards as they
Speaker 3: go through to the next motion seem to very I
Speaker 3: don't know, I noticed a connection there with the emphasis
Speaker 3: on the physical process of ritual in this movie.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, I don't know enough about say, American gambling culture.
Speaker 2: Really the comment I'm wondering, are we seeing something We're
Speaker 2: talking about something distinctly Japanese, because there certainly plenty of
Speaker 2: examples where like the Japanese version of the thing takes
Speaker 2: on like additional physical ritual in a very evocative way.
Speaker 2: Like just thinking, this is not a maybe this doesn't
Speaker 2: compare greatly with what we're talking about, but I think
Speaker 2: of like cocktail culture in Japan, something I have gotten,
Speaker 2: I have had the opportunity to witness firsthand, with like
Speaker 2: the shaving of the ice and the way a drink
Speaker 2: is prepared and it takes on, it has a sort
Speaker 2: of theater all its own.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, there's a feeling of care and attention taken
Speaker 3: at multiple steps than a process that are repeated over
Speaker 3: and over, and a big emphasis on interesting and pleasing
Speaker 3: repeated sites and sounds as we go through those steps
Speaker 3: over and over. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, so I recommend Pale Flower. Also, I'm,
Speaker 3: like I said, I'm a new Shinoda fan. Now I
Speaker 3: want to see all these movies, all right.
Speaker 2: Well, as we close out here, we would love to
Speaker 2: hear from folks out there who have thoughts on other
Speaker 2: Shinoda movies or certainly Demon Pond. If you had the
Speaker 2: chance to see it back in the day and whatever
Speaker 2: form was available to you, or if you've had the
Speaker 2: chance to see it on the big screen or via
Speaker 2: the Criterion releases, let us know we would love to
Speaker 2: hear from you. We'd love to carry this discussion on
Speaker 2: into future episodes of Listener Mail. Just a reminder for
Speaker 2: everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, but on Fridays we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema. And we've been doing
Speaker 2: these episodes for a while while Now I was looking back,
Speaker 2: it's like, have we been doing like five years of
Speaker 2: Weird House cinema? Is that even possible?
Speaker 3: Could it be?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 3: I guess that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe so we've been doing it all wet as.
Speaker 3: Like it just started. Really the past five years have
Speaker 3: been meant something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we started during the pandemic. I think yeah,
Speaker 2: we did yeah, early, early and pandemic. So at this
Speaker 2: point we've covered a slew of films. So if you
Speaker 2: want to go back and look at all of them,
Speaker 2: you'll find a full archive of Weird House Cinema episodes
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts in the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind podcast feed. Also, if you're on letterbox dot com,
Speaker 2: look us up there. Our username is weird House and
Speaker 2: we have a nice list of all the movies we've
Speaker 2: covered over the years, and sometimes there's a peek ahead
Speaker 2: at what comes out next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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