Vengeance Is Mine

Shohei Imamura's film covers a seventy-eight-day run of killings by a man named Iwao Enokizu. Played by Ken Ogata, Enokizu comes from a devoutly Catholic family and is a charming, fluent swindler and murderer without a trace of remorse. The character has a real source: Akira Nishiguchi. His name was changed to Enokizu in Ryuzo Saki's documentary novel, from which the film is adapted. Imamura fractures time deliberately. The film opens with the arrest and then jumps backward and forward, with documentary-style captions inserted between scenes. It also refuses every explanation that looks for a cause. The question of why Enokizu killed is raised, his family, his religion and his relationship with his father are all shown, and none of it constitutes an answer. That insufficiency is the film's actual subject. It won six Japanese Academy Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. Who it is for: viewers who value the Japanese New Wave and crime films that refuse explanation. Who it is not for: anyone with no tolerance for coldly staged sex and murder, or who needs a resolution.