The Pitfall
Title: The Pitfall (Otoshiana)
Rating: 4/5
Genre: Drama, Crime
Starring: Hisashi Igawa, Sumie Sasaki, Sen Yano
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Author: Kôbô Abe
Language: Japanese
Release Date: 1962
Preface: A marriage between a philosophical poet and an experimental surrealist film maker, it is this combination that saw them release three thought provoking films across the span of four years, atmospheric and daring in their willing to push the boundaries of conventional cinema into avant-garde.
Opening with the young miner (Igawa) and his child struggling to look for work, traveling far to find another overseer willing to take him on, it isn’t long before he finds work once more. Interspersing documentary footage with his tale, blurring fact with fiction, he quickly becomes noticed by a mysterious figure, told to meet him near an abandoned mine amidst a town of ghosts only to be betrayed and brutally murdered. Rising as the dead he seeks the reason for his demise, becoming ensnared in a feud between look-a-like union leader (Yano) and a rival union, the manipulations of the assailant and the sole woman (Sasake) living in the desolate town layering a web of lies, the truth becoming ever more distorted through the deceit of others.
And yet the dialogue felt anything if not forthright, demonstrating clarity of each of the characters desires, feelings and emotions, aptly performed we can quickly come to terms with their stance and piece them into the ever widening puzzle of betrayal and manipulation, but like the great works of ‘Tennessee Williams’ (Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Glass Menagerie) or ‘John Steinbeck’ (Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men), there is a definite sub-text to each word being carefully chosen, an additional intention by the director made apparent by the specific phrasing used, a moral waiting to be extrapolated from the story, assisted by one of the most obscure soundtracks I’ve ever heard utilised. Avant-Jazz of the most eclectic kind, ranging from complete silence to sudden and short loud bangs and knocks, or a rapid technical chaos of piano sporadically and unpredictably distributed throughout its two hour run time.
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