the shape of night (1964)
Nakamura’s odyssey of abuse is subtle, it involves its audience deeply when we least expect it. The script’s split in chronology constantly feels as though the story is on the verge of evolving to a new chapter, and it never does. All the while, we are slowly pulled in by this whirlpool, forming our own bond, becoming entranced in the same deep weaving of the threads of two lives, two lives entwined by destruction and remorse. Nakamura cuts deeply into the feeling that is the bond, another that attaches, ever-present, until the only fear left in this world is of detachment from that other. To bond is one of the deepest primal instincts of nature, it is psychological, spiritual, physical. It brings with it elation, mania, desperation, longing, euphoric bliss in equal measure. In the case of the bond at the center of The Shape of Night, the deeper and more intense the trauma, the deeper and more intense the bond that results from it, the more extreme the abuse, the more pronounced the psychological impression, and therefore the dependence. Now, Nakamura shoots the picture with all the sensibilities of a magazine ad, including the subtly erotic opening credit sequence, drowning in jazz and saturated with color, he beckons us into this world with the same aloof salesmanship of our star on her street corner, look ‘em in the eye and don’t flinch for a second or you’ve lost the play. We don’t realize what’s lurking, we don’t know who’s watching from the shadows and we don’t know what’s in this woman’s sordid past.
The film reveals its shape through a slow and steady unfolding, First that silent figure, the form of feminine luxury, and next archetype; the shy young man and the callous working girl. What begins as a bookend to add that air of fatalism to our extended flashback soon reverses to become a hope of salvation, some light at the end of our tunnel. What’s unexpected is that from the archetypes will soon breathe life, the deeper we follow these young tragic figures the deeper grows our disdain, our sympathy, our attachment. What begin as figures soon become flesh and blood before our eyes, Nakamura’s humanity is the film’s greatest strength, no suffering is wasted on spectacle, rather it is essential and vital to the trauma-based bonding of not only our two leads, but of the audience to the picture. Even the most tragic of images when lensed here take on beauty. It’s the humanity with which each sequence is presented that makes the picture standout, it rightly casts its characters in a desperate bid for survival amid an ever-descending spiral of self-destruction, the gambler’s curse of always thinking there will be a score on the other side of their ill-fated decisions. Promises of protection from Yakuza, the weight of the pressure on the young man from the bosses and soldiers he’s gotten himself in too deep with. We’re led to believe there’s debts from his own reckless stupidity, each action creates more implication, our young characters become more guilty of causing their own suffering at every turn, yet feel trapped and powerless to break the cycle. The bright glow of neon bathes each scene, the same street, the same sad story, the same images of the same neon shop signs provide the segue from one scene to another. A story so simple except for the ones who live it. Another girl from the street gets out, starts a family and moves on, from the outsiders perspective Yoshie should easily be able to do the same, but the attachment to the source of our suffering is the paradox ay work here, the central point around which all of Nakamura’s downward spiral is focused on. As she becomes drawn in, her vampire lover becomes strong with each action that leads to her weakness. He becomes more possessive, more crazed, grooming her for further use as a source of cash. The dichotomy is expertly highlighted, His fear outweighs his possessiveness only for so long before his jealousy takes over, her trauma only lasts so long before she gives in again and again to his demands.
When Nakamura eventually inverts the spiral is when the film shows its truest color. As Yoshei becomes more independent, Eiji, whose monicker ‘princess’ served as an emasculating Yakuza tactic of control, is fully robbed of his ‘manhood’. He shrinks, becomes servile. His displays of his inadequacy in the form of psychological control and physical abuse give way to the weakness underneath it all, a desperation for affection of any kind from Yoshei. Here our director discovers his darkest truth about the weakness at the heart of those who take part in the aggressive role of the abuse, and the equal measure of the same from their victim. In the end, as Yoshei is bathed in blue light, no longer red, we fear her suffering is only beginning, what should be her day of liberation is the crushing realization that she is bound to him forever, and that some ties defy all logic, this bond at the level of trauma is difficult, if not impossible, to break. Nakamura concludes his tragedy at the crossroads where the past and present narrative threads collide and leave us at the peak point of the devastation. His story is told with great understanding and his aesthetic is enraptuing, even when when grotesquery is on display. The triumph here is in the detail and nothing is left unsaid, the curtain falls at the point of saturation; tragic, poetic and deeply moving.
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