Back in the first week of April in 1990, I found myself in New York City roaming the streets with a couple pals for various kicks. This included finding movies that we sensed would never be playing Raleigh. We caught a matinee of Black Rain directed by Shohei Imamura at the Angelika Film Center that was above a subway station. Every so often I could feel my chair shake as the subway train stopped beneath my feet. This Black Rain was not to be confused with Ridley Scott’s Black Rain with Michael Douglas that had opened the previous September. Imamura’s film was about people dealing in the aftermath of the atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima. It was a powerful film. When he won Cannes in 1997 with The Eel, I was looking forward to seeing the movie at my local art house. I figured the Palme d’Or would make it marquee worthy, but it never made it to my town. The more artsy videostore in my neighborhood didn’t get the VHS tape. The first chance I had to see The Eel is the release of the Radiance Blu-ray which includes both the theatrical version and the director’s cut. The good part is that this is a film you want to see twice.
Takuro Yamashita (Shall We Dance?‘s Kōji Yakusho) is a company man in the city who commutes back to his house in the country. Instead of flipping through a newspaper on the train, he reads a letter from a mysterious neighbor. They want to alert him to the fact that when he goes on all-night fishing trips, his wife has a guy dropping by the house. When he gets home, his wife seems so concerned about him staying warm on his nightly fishing trip. How could she be unfaithful? He takes the bus out that night to catch sea bass with his friends, but returns home early. He discovers that the letter wasn’t a lie. She’s in bed with the guy. He stabs his wife to death. He rides his bicycle to the police station to report the crime and admit guilt. He spends 8 years in prison. When he is paroled, the most valuable thing he has is an eel that he raised inside. The eel is important since it’s the only thing that listens to him. He starts a new life in a new town. His parole agent sets him up with an abandoned barbershop. He learned to cut hair inside the joint. But running a barbershop is a bit different. It doesn’t help that he’s very quiet and rather anti-social. He does recognize one of the locals as having spent time with him in prison. He also gets along with a local fisherman, so he’s not completely cut off from the new community. While hunting near the water for food to feed the eel, he finds the body of Keiko (Sumo Do, Sumo Don’t‘s Misa Shimizu) in the weeds. At first, he doesn’t report it for fear that she’s dead and he’d be in trouble. He’s already killed one woman. He finally tells the cops and it turns out she unsuccessfully tried to take her life. A regretful Keiko repays Takuro by working in his barbershop. He’s not exactly happy about it because he doesn’t want to deal with her. He just wants to cut hair and talk to his eel.
I really wish I’d seen The Eel at the end of the 20th Century. Although it is easy to see why my local art house didn’t run the movie. The late ’90s was when the feel good Dependies (movies distributed by the major studio’s faux indie shingles) dominated the screens. How do you promote a date night with a movie that opens with a husband killing his wife. Shohei Imamura shows everything when Takuro sneaks up on his wife and her lover in bed. This is not a remake of The Fugitive with the one-armed man taking the blame. The Eel could have had believe the husband was set up by the mysterious neighbor who was the real killer. But there’s no fogging up the truth in this movie to make the audience think the husband could be innocent. Takuro’s knife attack is more brutal than any of the killings in the Scream movies of this time. But the film was too artsy for the horror crowd. They weren’t down for a story about a man and his aquatic pal. But there is an audience that wants a film that doesn’t make things easy. A few of those people were judges at Cannes. The Eel exists on its own terms as an uncompromising masterpiece from Shohei Imamura.
The Video is 1.85:1 anamorphic. The 1080p transfer looks great. You’ll see the eel inside a plastic bag with water. The Audio is Japanese LPCM 1.0 mono. Strange to think of a film in the ’90s as being in mono. The mix stays crisp. The movie is subtitled in English.
Tony Rayns (27:31) talks about the career of Shohei Imamura and how The Eel factors into his filmography. He was part of the black market in post-war Japan getting booze from U.S. GI’s. He wanted to work at Toho, but they weren’t taking new employees. He ended up working with Ozu, who wasn’t a nice guy to him. He eventually became a director and won Cannes in 1983 with The Ballad of Narayama. Imamura passed away in 2006 at the age of 79.
Daisuke Tengan (18:52) has Imamura’s son talk about his work on the script of The Eel and his relationship with dad. He gets into the structural nature of his father’s films. He sees The Eel is about wanderers creating a pseudo-community.
1997: A Year To Remember (13:22) is a video essay from Tom Mes about what was happening in Japanese cinema when it rebounded from being at its lowest point in the ’80s. He mentions how Toei’s V-Cinema and J-Horror rose up during this time. This is a great and concise presentation on Japanese cinema.
Trailer (1:08) opens with the crime behind reported. They promote how Imamura hadn’t made a film in 8 years. “A Man. A Woman. An Eel” is the tagline.
Illustrated booklet contains an interview with Shohei Imamura. He talks about the frustration at getting his films funded. The good part is the success of The Eel was able to get his Dr. Akagi movie made.
Radiance Films present The Eel: Limited Edition. Directed by Shohei Imamura. Screenplay by Shohei Imamura, Daisuke Tengan & Motofumi Tomikawa. Starring Kōji Yakusho, Misa Shimizu, Mitsuko Baisho, Akira Emoto, Fujio Tsuneta, Show Aikawa & Ken Kobayashi. Running Time: Director’s Cut – 135 minutes & Theatrical Cut -117 minutes. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: April 15, 2025.
