You ever watch a film and feel bad that you watched? Shohei Imamura's "Vengeance is mine" is that movie.

There is a scene that takes place almost a third of the way into Shohei Imamura's  "VENGEANCE IS MINE"-  The 1979 film based on real life serial killer Akira Nishiguchi (Here called Iwao Enokizu)  that I think forms my own thesis around the film.  The killer (played with unsettling verve by Ken Ogata)  has met his next victim on a train ride back from a recent con in another city ( Nishiguchi was a confidence man as well as a serial killer) we know he has met his next victim because Masuru Baba's script provides unavoidable clues in dialogue and exposition that Iwao is plotting as much,  but Imamura's camera is doing the exact opposite.  There is no distinct close up of either predator Iwao or his prey, no foreshadowing cue in the music (in fact no music at all),  but we know,  and Imamura knows we know.  He cuts away to a completely different scene that doesn't involve Iwao at all,  and when we return Iwao is shopping.  We note that he's picked up groceries,  and then almost as an afterthought stops by a hardware store and picks up a hammer and then nails.  Imamura tarries here a bit,  he wants us to foreshadow,  " He's going to kill the lawyer...Here it comes".  When we arrive at the scene of  where we are sure a future crime will take place-  in a haunting reveal the crime has already taken place and the lawyer is already dead.  The nails and the hammer are so Iwao can shut the now-loose door of an armoire he's stuffed him in.  When it is clear what has happened we are left to wrestle with our own morbid desire and disappointment.  The combination of Ogatas coldly detached,  oddly warm performance,  the dark sense of humor depicted in Iwaos nonchalant tries at holding the door shut,  and Imamura's matter of fact way of shooting it ( a medium shot of Iwaos unbothered sealing of the armoire) makes for one of the most chilling scenes I've seen.

It also speaks to where I think the weight of Imamura's film lies.  Imamura's film  I think understands sociopathy more than other filmmaker on the subject besides Harron in " American Psycho" (Whom I think is not given enough credit for a finely crafted film about veneers,  and male sociopathy)  and more importantly it understands the audiences relationship with the behavior.  The film jumps out to an ominous opening, a setup to what seems to be an evenly paced deep exploration into the mind of a killer with the usual flourishes we're used to of grisly reenactments,  and high concept dialogue,  but then sets about taking its time to wander and meander around the edges of Iwaos chaotic life,  focused intently on some minutae flushed against the backdrop of flashbacks,  time stamps,  and abrupt restrained violence.   It dangles clues to some greater understanding, but Imamura is having none of it.  His film won't allow you to explain it away with a take on religion,  or greater society as a whole (though the film is clearly not a fan of the former) to blame mental illness,  or most importantly to escape the strange connection between the murderer and our own macabre voyeurism.  It baits us into a trap created by our own curiosity and each time switches garish ostentation for frigid realism.  As as the case with the murder of a woman with whom Iwao had seemingly grown close to.  Once again we know this is coming at some point, but when it arrives its so abrupt we have no time to even be shocked by it.   It's chaotic,  and impulsive, and it does not give you time to react or even more to the point to fake a reaction tying us to Ken Ogata's  Iwao as he tries to impersonate feelings near the end of the scene…

In many films of the genre we deny ur own craven desire for the very violence we claim to condemn. We secretly hope for, we await, we ponder where it might end for a high. Imamura's film is misguides us to a purpose.  It gives us the most insight into its disaffected killer by refusing to dress up what we are watching,  or why we are watching it.  It's an uncontaminated look at a mutual- though obviously not for the same reasons - disconnect that occupies much of the same tonal space as Mary Harron's American Psycho.  Both astute absurdist observations on the masks we wear. Calling bullshit on society's obsession with cultural piety,  and the look of things, the aesthetics, with an offbeat senses of humor.  One difference being Imamura's film is hyperrealism,  Harron's satire.  Vengeance is mine accomplished exactly what I thought it would,  just without the benefit of the heavy handed guided tour I've gotten used to for this type of film.  Haunting in its plainness, it's execution,  and the near flawlessness of its actors.  Affecting,  mostly because its so unaffected with itself.  The movie poses no questions,  gives us no answers, as affirmed in the final scene featuring Ogata, and Rentarō Mikuni (himself outstanding as Shizuo Enokizu Iwao's father)  yet another of Imamura's setups for some form of philosophical offering,  that instead turns into the equivalent of one of my favorite lines in Sam Mendes film  "The Road to Perdition"    When Daniel Craig's character is asked by Tom Hanks youngest son  why he's always smiling and Craig's character replies....

Vengeance is mines is a straightforward unornamented look at the detachment of a killer, taking his vengeance on a society he feels no kinship with,  and a director  willing to confront the absurdity of it all,  and the audiences own special brand of detachment, morbid curiosity and desensitization. A cinematic cousin of Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” that left me ruined, confused,  and astounded by its craftsmanship.  A masterpiece study in the absurd.