Bouncing off Throne of Blood’s Shakespearean bedrock, I decided to take a look at Kurosawa’s underappreciated The Bad Sleep Well; a film grounded in motifs akin to “Hamlet”, but told in a contemporary setting. As we all know, “Hamlet” entails themes of vengeance and corruption, and as it turned out – perhaps fatefully – corporate corruption was a fixture in newspaper headlines during the time this film was made, so Kurosawa found himself facing adversity and naysayers aplenty prior to the picture’s release. Not only that, the director’s biting commentary on Japanese bureaucracy underwent several rewrites from a total of five screenwriters, including Kurosawa himself.
Kurosawa apparently never trusted himself to pen any of his scripts alone; he typically solicited support from secondary writers to ensure that his own writing wasn’t used as a tool to make his directing easier. However, incorporating such a large amount of writers was bound to generate some difficulty, and that it did, as we can tell from the film’s somewhat erratic structure. Although sloppy toward the end – and even a bit rushed – the film still manages to be as engrossing as possible and the acting is hands down the best I’ve seen in any Kurosawa film.
The film’s opening is pivotal and really sets the vengeful tone that permeates throughout. It’s a wedding scene, but far from celebratory. Being my eleventh Kurosawa film, The Bad Sleep Well allowed me to finally pick up on Kurosawa’s recurrent use of choruses: groups of minor characters that fill the audience in on what’s occurring. In Throne of Blood it was usually a group of gossiping soldiers. Here, it’s a group of gossiping reporters. As we later learn, this is purely a marriage of convenience; the bride and groom being the daughter (Kyoko Kagawa) of a development corporation’s Vice President (Masayuki Mori) and that company’s President’s secretary Nishi (Toshiro Mifune, in a deceptively placid role). One would assume the “convenience” here is merely financial, but it’s far more sinister than that.
The reception encounters several noteworthy interruptions. First, the arrival of a mysterious wedding cake baked to resemble the company’s headquarters; with a single rose jutting out one of the windows. Following this peculiar event, Wada (Kamatari Fujiwara), a corporation employee, is arrested under suspicion of partaking in a bribery scheme and, following his inquiry, attempts suicide by jumping into an active volcano. Wada’s more or less “saved” by Nishi (who’s unveiled as a ruthless man bent on avenging his father’s death) but learns that the calculating secretary plans to use him as an accessory to destroy the corporation from the inside.
Not unlike The Most Beautiful, Kurosawa’s portrayal of Japan’s value system in The Bad Sleep Well would probably seem alien to most westerners. The notion of lower level employees vowing silence and even sacrificing themselves in order to veil their superiors’ unlawful activities sounds absurd to most of us, but in post-war Japan – and perhaps even today – many underling employees like Wada felt a constrained sense of loyalty towards their bosses – for reasons purely pertaining to principle – thus placed their lives on the line to protect them.
The most fascinating juxtaposition I’ve seen in a Kurosawa film so far is between Wada and Nishi. Both are victims of the corporation’s crimes in one way or the other, but only Nishi intends to exact revenge. Wada, even after discovering that his superiors essentially threw him under the bus, still adheres to that deluded sense of loyalty and remains reluctant about assisting Nishi. The most blatant difference between these two men is hatred. Mifune’s subservient demeanor is only a facade used to dupe his boss/father-in-law; the actor’s trademark ire – which Wada lacks – is revealed away from the corporation. He’s accepted the fact that the only way to conquer evil is to become evil. “It’s not easy hating evil,” Nishi confesses. “You have to stoke your own fury until you become evil yourself.”
Kurosawa’s taken several whacks at industrial demoralization (High and Low, Ikiru) but I found this to be his weakest blow. He sets the stage up brilliantly, but seems to have trouble structuring his acts. The concept of driving the corrupt insane paces the film nicely up to a point, but the film hits a dry area towards the end and starts to move unnecessarily slow; only to culminate with a cop-out ending. This filler space, however, is transcended by Mifune’s and Fujiwara’s captivating performances. Kurosawa, like Bergman, knows how to develop and examine his characters, so if the plot ever becomes drab in spots, you can always fall back on the man’s compelling characterizations.
Overall, the film’s tone is dark, bleak and coolly crosses lines most films of this period wouldn’t even consider touching. The inventive camera techniques and noir-esque cinematography – which accentuate the characters' grim qualities – are also worth praising. Often melodramatic, yet boldly expressive, The Bad Sleep Well depicts man at his most cynical.
8.5/10
NOTE: I have finals coming up, so I’ll have to postpone the series – and reviews in general – until the semester ends. I’ll pick it back up around December 6th or so.
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