Review of Onibaba (1964) by Marcus M — 22 Aug 2011

The opening ten minutes of Shindo's film remain as effective a fictional demonstration as any of the ruthless efficiency of capitalism... In the context of the prevailing base economic Darwinism - reducing its subjects to feeding, fighting and f**king - we might well see something heroic, or at least admirable, in the women's scrappiness, their ability to eke out a living; the hole becomes, not for the last time in 60s radical theory, a site of female empowerment.

(Particularly in the face of all those men running round with their swords out.) Yet even this notional bond of sisterhood is fragile, and cannot last long: when the daughter-figure breaks ranks with her mother for a roll in the hay with a deserter, everyone falls prey to the demons that lurk whenever desires are inflamed, as a combination of natural and supernatural elements prove to be the characters' downfall - though the very last line has the ring of a defiance cry.

Shindo gives it the storytelling, pictorial sense and otherness of indigenous folk art, but the film also appears universal enough in its themes to be able to play comfortably as an outre double bill with either the similarly elemental "Woman of the Dunes" (which replaced the whispering grass with sand) or Polanski's "Cul-de-Sac" (another great, warped love triangle in a remote location).

However you see it, it remains both a tremendously atmospheric ghost story, and one of the weirdest, not to mention sexiest denunciations of the military-industrial complex that you'll ever see.